METEOROLOGY. 



No. I. 

 ON LUNAR AND PLANETARY INFLUENCES OVER THE WEATHER. 



It may be regarded as a maxim, that the encouragement of a 

 satisfied un-enquiring credulity is at variance with the spirit of a 

 genuine pliilosophy, and that tlie general tendency of the latter is to 

 explain and elucidate. Still, as science advances, in proportion as its 

 elaborations are unfolded and its combinations resolved, in many 

 instances, the statement, the satisfactory and continuous chain of proof, 

 becomes of more intricate and complicate detail. Every step, how- 

 ever, in such a process abundantly repays the attentive enquirer for a 

 little of close and it may be of difficult attention. Fresh prospects of 

 beauty and of wonder aie from time to time disclosed, the mental 

 stimulus indispensable to the successful pursuit of knowledge is more 

 and more vigorously excited, until at length the laborious ascent of 

 the " Hill of Science" is rewarded by a thrilling and enrapturing view 

 of those unseen and beautiful operations and relations, which are 

 manifested to untiring diligence alone. In other words, an industrious 

 accumulation of facts, and the careful and accurate record of phenomena 

 require to be inductively pursued through their several and varied 

 connections : we are by this means led to the discovery of first prin- 

 ciples and simple laws, and to a revelation of the beauties and wonders 

 of organic and inanimate nature. All past experience assures us of 

 everything to hope from an assiduous pursuit of the mode of philo- 

 sophising which in later ages has been thus successfully adopted ; for 

 however desirable in certain stages of philosophic investigation, theories, 

 hypotheses, or even empiricism may be, it cannot be questioned 

 that ultimately they must abide the test of facts, phenomena, and 

 experience. 



Occult or mysterious influences might, in the infancy of science, 

 seem to comport with phenomena, frequently to appearance para- 

 doxical and still more often inexplicable ; these however have gradually 

 weakened their hold on public credence, as the obscurity and diflliculties 

 connected with the various departments of natural science have been 



