Fishes, when they bite more readily, and gambol near the surface of the streams or ponds, foreshow rain.
Flowers are many of them excellent indicators of the approaching weather by their opening and shutting, and other motions.
Fleeces, and Mares’ Tails, as they are called, seen in the sky, are signs of rain and wind. By fleeces are meant those clouds which look like fleeces of wool.
Flies, and various sorts of volatile insects, become more troublesome, and sting and bite more than usual before, as well as in the intervals of rainy weather, particularly in autumn, when they are very numerous, and often become a great nuisance. This observation applies to several sorts of flies. The horse-flies likewise of all sorts are more troublesome before the fall of rain, and particularly when the weather is warm.
Forests.—The hollow sound of forests, while the wind is roaring among the woods, is a sign of rain and of storms.
Geese washing, or taking wing with a clamorous noise, and flying to the water, portend rain. Geese, by the way, are excellent guards to a house against fire or thieves.
Gnats afford several indications.—When they fly in a vortex in the beams of the setting sun, they forebode fair weather: when they frisk about more widely in the open air at eventide, they foreshow heat; and when they assemble under trees, and bite more than usual, they indicate rain.
Halo.—When this phenomenon is observed round the sun or moon, it shows that hail, snow, or rain, according to the season, will soon follow. Colored or double halos are still more certain indications of rain, and often of wind also. When mock suns or mock moons, bands of light, and other unusual phenomena attend halos, a peculiar condition of the atmosphere is indicated. The proper halo or luminous ring, is distinguished from the corona or luminous disk, which is sometimes a forerunner of rain also, but is a thing of more frequent occurrence. When halos are very red, wind almost always follows.
Headaches often foretell a change of weather in persons subject to such complaints. There is also some obscure change of weather near to the periods of new and full moon, which causes a certain ephemeral headache that begins usually in the morning, gets worse about two o’clock, and subsides in the evening, attended with an irritated stomach; it much resembles the ordinary bilious headache from repletion, but differs from that which follows immediately on a certain sort of indigestion. Indeed, most periodical disorders seem to be connected with some atmospheric changes. And it is very remarkable, that they should so often have their worst paroxysms and the crisis of their terms, about the time of the conjunction and the opposition of the moon.
Hogs, when they shake the stalks of corn and spoil them, often indicate rain: also when they rub in the dust, the same or some similar phenomenon may be expected. When they run squeaking about, and throw up their heads with a peculiar jerk, windy weather is about to commence: hence the Wiltshire proverb, that “Pigs can see the wind.”