1775 J. Adair Hist. Amer. Indians 87 Rain-making, in the Cheerake mountains, is not so dangerous an office, as in the rich level lands of the Chikkasah country, near the Mississippi.

1857 Monroe (Wisconsin) Sentinel 11 Feb. 1/6 The rain making seems very stupid to an European, but it is not so to an African sitting beneath a burning sky.

1866 P. T. Barnum Humbugs of World xlviii. 405 The rain-making business, though very lucrative, is not without its disadvantages.

1891 Daily News 13 Oct. 5/4 General Dyrenforth's experiments in rain-making by means of explosions..have not convinced his scientific opponent.

1903 Folk-lore Sept. 252 The sorcerers..are capable of rain-making, sun-making, and wind-making.

1925 Science 24 July 81/2 For successful rain-making, it is necessary to find first a region in which rain is expected but has failed to come.

1976 G. A. Browne Slide (1977) 14 The Air Force had been conducting rain-making manoeuvres above the Mojave and Death Valley.

1889 H. R. Haggard Allan's Wife 158 This old rain-making savage.

1995 P. Roth Sabbath's Theater 451 The cruiser had driven off, leaving Sabbath ankle-deep in the pudding of the springtime mud, blindly engulfed by the alien, inland woods, by the rainmaking trees and the rainwashed boulders.