“The smoke from chimneys right ascends,
Then spreading back to earth it bends.
The wind unsteady veers around;
Or, settling in the south is found.”
Those are as philosophically accurate and valuable as any.
“The tender colts on back do lie;
Nor heed the traveler passing by.
In fiery red the sun doth rise,
Then wades through clouds to mount the skies.”
The first of those couplets is untrue. It is doubtless alluded to as one of the acts of the animal creation, indicating sleepiness and inaction, which precede storms; but colts do not lie on the back. The other couplet is both true and important. This collection entire, whether written by Darwin or Jenner, contains most of the signs which have been preserved, and which are of much practical importance in our climate.
It is unquestionably true that “appointed signs foreshow the weather,” to a great extent, every where, but with more certainty in the climate in which Virgil wrote than in our variable and excessive one. “Showers” and “freezing gales” we can, perhaps, as well understand; but the “reign of heat,” by which he probably meant the dry period, when the southern edge of the extra-tropical belt of rains is carried up to the north of them, we do not experience. Something like it we did indeed have, during the excessive northern transit, in the summer of 1854; but it was an exception, not the rule.
Some of the most important of those signs from Virgil and Jenner I propose to allude to in detail; but it is necessary to look; in the first place, to the character of the season and the month.
We have seen that the years differ during different periods of the same decade. That they incline to be hot and irregular during the early part of it, and cool, regular, and productive during the latter portion—subject, however, to occasional exceptions. The latter half of the third decade of this century (1826 to 1830, inclusive) was comparatively warm; and, in the latitude of 41°, was very unhealthy, and so continued during the early part of the next, over the hemisphere, embracing the cholera seasons. The spots upon the sun were much less numerous than usual, during the latter half of the third decade. Thus the spots from
| 1826 to 1830, inclusive, were 873 |
| 1836 to 1840""1201 |
| 1846 to 1850""1168 |
and the size of those from 1836 to 1840 exceeded those of the other years.
The attentive observer will very soon be satisfied that the seasons have a character; and those of every year differ in a greater or less degree from those of other years in the same decade, and those of one decade not unfrequently from those of some other. Periodicity is stamped upon all of them, and upon all resulting consequences. Like seasons come round, and, like productiveness or unproductiveness, healthy or epidemic diatheses, attend them. We have seen that, in relation to mean temperature, there are such periodical diversities, but they are more strongly marked in the character of storms, and other successions of phenomena. “All signs fail in a drouth,” for then all attempts at condensation are partial, imperfect, and ineffectual. “It rains very easy,” it is said, at other times, and so it seems to do, and with comparatively little condensation. In the one case, no great reliance can be placed upon indications which are entirely reliable in the other. So “all our storms clear off cold,” or, “all our storms clear off warm,” are equally common expressions—as the prevailing classes of storms give a character to the seasons. It “rains every Sunday now,” is sometimes said, and is often peculiarly true—the storm waves having just then a weekly or semi-weekly period, and one falls upon Sunday for several successive weeks; and when it is so, that coincidence is sure to be noticed and commented upon, and the other perhaps disregarded.