108 Notices of Books. (January, 
we hope that so valuable a contribution to ethnology will appear 
in some form accessible to the English public. 
A paper on “‘ Matter, a Mode of Motion,” ranks, unfortunately, 
among the missing. 
La Pluie et le Beau Temps. Par Paut LAuRENcIN. Paris: 
J. RoTHscHILD. 
THE appearance of this book might be taken as a sign that an 
interest in the state of the weather, sometimes considered as an 
English national peculiarity, has spread to our neighbours across 
the Channel. M. Laurencin has given the public a popular and 
handy manual of meteorology. He treats of the atmosphere, 
atmospheric heat, atmospheric currents, atmospheric moisture ; 
rain, with its good and evil effects ; storms, cyclones ; the rain- 
bow; fine weather; climates; the seasons; prevision of the 
weather ; the moon; observatories; and the sanitary effects of 
rain and fine weather. 
On all these subjects he gives in a pleasant, chatty manner, a 
great amount of information in which even the educated classes 
are often found wanting. A curious feature of the work is the 
quaint old proverbs in which the French peasantry have ex- 
pressed their traditional weather wisdom. Some of these are 
preferable to their English representatives. We say in this 
country— 
“A rainbow in the morning 
Is the shepherds’ warning ; 
A rainbow at night 
Is the shepherds’ delight.” 
Jacques Bon-homme, it appears, is less confident :— 
“ Arc-en-ciel du matin 
Pluye sans fin ; 
Arc-en-ciel du soir, 
Il faut voir.” 
A very wise conclusion! The work is abundantly illustrated. 
Many of the engravings are essential to a right understanding 
of the text. But the views of sunrise and sunset, and the cuts 
of a swallow, a cart-horse, and a cat—the latter evidently in a 
very bad humour—can scarcely be pronounced either useful or 
ornamental. 
Taken as a whole, we may pronounce this manual no unworthy 
member of that valuable and interesting series of popular scien- 
tific works which during the last few years have issued from the 
French press. 
