254 SMITH ON THE BOTANY OF KENT. 



of the weather often do not take place on the days of the full and change 

 of the moon, which is the middle of the springs ; or on the quadratures, 

 which are the middle of the neap tides. But two or three days before 

 each of these periods, when the springs and the neaps actually commence, 

 the character of the weather to be expected at these periods is very often 

 indicated, both by the appearance the clouds themselves assume, and 

 also by the motions of the mercury in the barometer. About sixty hours 

 after the full and change, or as many after the quadratures in stormy 

 or unsettled weather, the most violent wind and rain may be expected ; 

 and this crisis past, especially with an increasing moon, a favourable 

 change very often takes place. 



In summer a considerable descent of the thermometer, and conse- 

 quently an unseasonable coldness in the air, is a certain presage of unset- 

 tled weather, and is often followed by rain. But in winter, a sudden 

 rise of the thermometer above 40 degrees, attended by a descent in the 

 barometer, is a certain indication of rainy and unsettled weather. 



MR. SMITH ON THE BOTANY OF KENT*. 



WE do not recollect to have ever met with a work like this of Mr. 

 Smith's, full of notices strictly and sometimes profoundly scientific, 

 interspersed at intervals with bursts of sentimental enthusiasm, exhi- 

 bited in paragraphs as florid as a flower-garden, and proving that the 

 author has not devoted himself at St. John's exclusively to the dry logic 

 of Aristotle, and the still drier details of Linnaeus, whose lifeless and 

 marrowless catalogues did much to banish the beautiful study of natural 

 history from the literary world. Although, however, we are by no 

 means disposed to look upon the brochure before us as a faultless model, 

 we think that the little sketches of pretty writing are calculated to 

 attract many local readers who would be infallibly repelled by his dry 

 Linnsean enumerations. " The paths pursued," he says, " lie as threads 

 upon the map : but they led to many a rare and beautiful object, and 

 were attended by discoveries unhoped for by so young a botanist, and 

 unexpected within the circle of the metropolis of science, and in the 



* Rare or remarkable phoenogamous Plants collected in South Kent. By 

 G. E. Smith, of St. John's College, Cambridge. 8vo. pp. 87, coloured plates. 



