144 THE WEATHER, AND WEATHER PROPHETS. 



dinate fluctuations, embracing in their whole extent and 

 in different years the longer period referred to.* 



(5.) Meteorology, so far as prediction of the weather 

 is concerned (which most persons consider, very erron- 

 eously, to be its only practical object), may be regarded 

 as a science still in its infancy ; though if such be the 

 case, to judge from the voluminous nature of its records, 

 and the multitude of books which have been written 

 on it, its maturity, if ever attained, would promise to be 

 gigantic indeed ; were it not that the progress of all 

 real science is towards compression and condensation, 

 and its whole aim to supersede the endless detail of 

 individual cases by the announcement of easily remem- 

 bered and readily applicable laws. Most of the indica- 

 tions of the " weatherwise," from Aratus down to Foster, 

 have hitherto been little more than what, in the language 

 of Mr Mill, would be called " simple connotations." 

 The condor is circling in the sky : therefore a lion is 

 devouring a horse below. The sheep turn their tails to 

 the south-west : therefore there will be a gale of wind 

 from that quarter. The " Rainbow in the morning," 

 &c. The " Evening red and the morning gray," &c., 

 &c. All such connotations have their value in an abso- 

 lute ignorance of causes and modes of action : but it is 

 only by the study of these that we learn what to connote. 

 And there is no doubt, that since, after an immense 



* This is the direction of the progress of the wave. That of the 

 wind during the gales which accompany it is at right angles to that 

 direction, or from S.W. to N.E. : in analogy (?) to the transverse 

 rotation of the etherial molecules in the propagation of a circularly 

 polarized ray of light. 



