1871.] WEATHER-WISE. 69 



whatever, with one slight exception ; and that is, during the time of a 

 solap eclipse which we lately experienced the temperature sank 

 several degrees. The great bulk of our rustic meteorologists, however, 

 credit the moon with great influence; or rather, because she has entered 

 certain of her quarters, certain other effects must follow to the weather, 

 but the reason why is not made clear. When there is such a prepon- 

 derating amount of weather-wisdom in rural parts, whether the moon, 

 old Moore, or the newer Dietrichen be the authorities, it is no matter 

 of surprise if some shrewd and true and infallible observations have 

 been arrived at by dint of experience rather than of reason, and there- 

 fore more likely to stand good, and chiefly as regards the winds of the 

 locality. It is wonderful how meteorology as a science is being de- 

 veloped, and how such capricious things as winds and clouds and rain 

 are being understood. We wish we were read up in the subject : IMr 

 Buchan's book is one we long to read with a poor gardener's longing, but 

 for the prohibitory number of shillings and sixpence, who do (not) place 

 it within the reach of everybody. What irony is contained in these few 

 commendatory words ! 



I daresay most of our readers have seen a great cotton-mill or 

 engineering works or tweed factory, and wondered at the variety of 

 intricate and compound and apparently contradictory motions there in 

 action. However heterogeneous these motions be, and diverse in their 

 various applications, there is only one source of all the activity, the 

 engine ; or, strictly speaking, the coal-fire under the boiler. Now the 

 weather appears to us to be just the motion of a great and complicated 

 system of machinery, this motion originating in the sun as the engine, 

 and air, vapour, condensation, evaporation, heat and cold, are the parts 

 of the machine through which this motion makes itself felt. Now though 

 the source of this motion is well known, it is difficult to trace the con- 

 nection of every outlying and remote motion through the parts of the 

 machine to that source ; it is difficult to believe that it forms part of 

 a harmonious whole, what is the immediate cause of all the shiftings 

 and eddyings of the wind, which we see every day at present, right 

 round the compass in twenty-four hours. Part of this intricate motion 

 of the machine, no doubt, is produced by the friction of very large 

 streams of air at different temperatures, moving in oblique or contrary 

 directions, like the eddies produced in water by the motions of con- 

 trary currents : still we are so far in mystery that we cannot anticipate 

 local changes, nor great changes of the wind and weather, except so 

 far as the barometer enables us to guess. W^e live and carry on our 

 operations in the midst of the motions of this machine; the gardener's 

 work is entirely controlled by its influence ; and while we must defer- 

 entially bow our acknowledgments to old Sol as the prime turner of 



