2. If the moon either at her first appearance or within a few days after, has her lower horn obscured and dusky, it denotes foul weather before the full; but, if she be discovered about the middle, storms are to be expected about the full; and, if her upper horn be affected, about the wane.
3. When on her fourth day the moon appears pure and spotless, her horns unblunted and neither flat nor quite erect, but between both, it promises fair weather for the greatest part of the month.
4. An erect moon is generally threatening and unfavorable, but particularly denotes wind; though if she appears with short and blunted horns, rain is rather to be expected.
The influence of the moon on the weather was one of the cardinal beliefs, not only of the ancients, but of our forefathers, and the old gardeners and orchardists believed implicitly in its effect on most operations connected with husbandry, regulating these operations with the greatest exactitude, according to the various phases of the planet. Harvard, in his treatise on the art of propagating plants, referring to the proper time for grafting, declares, “the grafts must alwaies be gathered in the old of the Moone.” Lawson, in his New Orchard and Garden, advises as the best time to remove sets, “immediately after the fall of the Leaf, in or about the change of the Moon;” and the best time for “graffing” as “in the last part of February or March, or beginning with April, when the Sun with his heat begins to make the sap stir more rankly about the change of the Moon, before you see any great apparancie of leaf or flowers; but only knots and buds, and before they be proud, though it be sooner.”
Very frequent references to the moon’s influence with respect to forestry and its operations occur in Evelyn’s Sylva. In felling timber, he charges the forester to “observe the Moons increase” (chap. iii, 13). And again, “the fittest time of the Moon for the Pruning is (as of Graffing) when the sap is ready to stir (not proudly stirring) and so to cover the wound” (chap. xxix, 6.) The old lunar rules for felling trees are thus given by Evelyn (chap. xxx, 26): “Fell in the decrease, or four days after conjunction of the two great Luminaries; some of the last quarter of it; or (as Pliny) in the very article of the change, if possible; which hapning (saith he) in the last day of the Winter Solstice, that Timber will prove immortal: At least should it be from the twentieth to the thirtieth day, according to Columella: Cato four dayes after the Full, as far better for the growth: But all viminious Trees silente Lunâ; such as Sallies, Birch, Poplar, etc. Vegetius for ship timber, from the fifteenth to the twenty-fifth, the Moon as before; but never during the Increase, Trees being then most abounding with moisture, which is the only source of putrefaction: And yet ’tis affirm’d upon unquestionable Experience, that Timber cut at any season of the year, in the Old Moon, or last Quarter, when the Wind blows Westerly; proves as sound, and good as at any other period whatsoever; nay, all the whole Summer long, as in any Month of the Year.”
Few of our large storms are of local origin; they are hatched for the most part on the plains east of the Rocky Mountains, and thence move eastward, deflecting slightly to the north during winter. In Europe, the meteorologists assert, storms are more nearly round than in America, where they are of a more irregular oval form, varying in size from the diameter of a few miles to those that surge from the gulf to beyond the lakes.
But Blasius for storms! the supreme authority, the Aristotle of the clouds and air-currents. When all our ordinary signs fail, we have only to turn to the Hanover professor to read and learn.
Unquestionably, nevertheless, the most infallible of weather rules is that there is no rule. So far as ordinary signs go, there is nothing more true than that all signs may fail during a protracted drought, or continuous rainy weather. Vainly then the peacock screams, or the sun emerges from a dripping sky. At best the weather is a hoiden, and, perhaps, loves a frown better than a dimple. The rain may come and the rain may go, persistently following the course of a lake or river, favoring this locality and slighting that; deluging one county to leave the adjoining one parched with thirst. For it is true of the weather and other things besides; it never smiles but it laughs, it never rains but it pours.
