THE MOON AND THE WEATHER. 47.3 



sideration, whicli almost threatened the whole fabric of society ; and, 

 finally, with a long-continued indisposition on the part of the govern- 

 ing classes to make any concessions looking to the betterment of 

 the masses, except under the pressure of influences which they had 

 little or no share in creating. And yet, without any " violent spe- 

 cifics," or radical societary changes, and apart from any force of 

 statute law, except so far as statute law has been an instrumentality 

 for making previously-existing changes in public sentiment effective ; 

 but rather through the steady working of economic laws under con- 

 tinually increasing industrial and commercial freedom, the working 

 masses of Great Britain, " in place of being a dependent class, without 

 future and without hope, have come into a position from which they 

 may reasonably expect to advance to any degree of comfort and civili- 

 zation." 



Kow, with humanity occupying a higher vantage ground in every 

 respect than ever before ; with a remarkable increase in recent years in 

 its knowledge and control of the forces of Nature — the direct and con- 

 stant outcome of which is to increase the abundance of all useful and 

 desirable commodities in a greater degree than the world has ever 

 before experienced, and to mitigate the asperities and diminish the 

 hours of toil — is it reasonable to expect that further progress in this 

 direction is to be arrested ? Is the present generation to be less suc- 

 cessful in solving the difficult social problems that confront it than 

 were a former generation in solving like problems which for their time 

 were more difiicult and embarrassing? If the answer is in the nega- 

 tive, then there is certainly small basis for pessimistic views respecting 

 the effect of the recent industrial and social transitions in the future. 



But, in view of these conclusions, what are the reasons for the 

 almost universal discontent of labor ? 



THE MOOX AND THE WEATHER. 



By JOHN WESTWOOD OLIVEK. 



THE persistent survival of weather-lore in these days of intellectual 

 emancipation is not at all remarkable when we consider the extent 

 to which the vulgar sayings embody real truths. A few years ago 

 Messrs. Abercromby and Marriott embarked on an extremely interest- 

 ing inquiry with a view to determine, by actual comparison, how far 

 the popular proverbs express relations, or sequences, which the results 

 of meteorological science show to be real. The investigation proved 

 that something like a hundred of the more popular sayings are, under 

 ordinary conditions, trustworthy. Such being the case, w^e need not 

 be surprised that simple country folk prefer familiar couplets to all 

 the " isobars," " cyclones," and " synchronous charts," in the world. 



