AUr action on Clouds and Vapours. 59 



hourly experience in the atmosphere. Impressed with this 

 idea, and not without some degree of wonder to find it, as 

 for as I could learn, unnoticed by the philosophical world, 

 I began when at school to form a journal of the weather; 

 noting at every observation the quarter of the wind, as well 

 as the moon's altitude and azimuth; and had the satisfac- 

 tion of finding my infantile speculation so well grounded, 

 that I observed the weather almost invariably thick or 

 rainy, when the wind and moon, being at or near the same 

 quarter, were acting in conjunction ; the latter drawing 

 the clouds, as I imagine, to her nearest point of the hori- 

 zon, from whence the former drives them over its surface; 

 and that it became proportionally clearer as their relative 

 change of situation enabled the wind to counterpoise the 

 moon's attraction, and prevent those vapours from collecting. 

 In the year 1800, a voyage across the Atlantic, and a 

 residence of some months at Havannah, enabled me to 

 extend my observations to the northern extremity of the 

 trade winds, as well as the climate of the torrid zone, both 

 on sea and land. I shall therefore extract the journal of 

 a few days in each of the situations wherein I have no- 

 ticed the weather; with a slight comment on the nature of 

 the country and the prevailing winds, or periodical change 

 of seasons, leaving your philosophical readers to compare 

 my statement with the idea that gave it birth. 



Journal of the Weather at Wandsworth, near London. 



