174 THE WEATHER, AND WEATHER PROPHETS. 



country uninhabitable in summer from mere want of 

 water. 



(34.) To return to our prognostics. We would 

 strongly recommend any of our readers whose occupa- 

 tions lead them to attend to the " signs of the weather," 

 and who, from hearing a particular weather adage often 

 repeated, and from noticing themselves a few remarkable 

 instances of its verification, have " begun to put faith in 

 it," to commence keeping a note-book, and to set down 

 without bias all the instances which occur to them of 

 the recognized antecedent, and the occurrence or non- 

 occurrence of the expected consequent, not omitting 

 also to set down the cases in which it is left undecided ; 

 and after so collecting a considerable number of in- 

 stances (not less than a hundred), proceed to form his 

 judgment on a fair comparison of the favourable, the 

 unfavourable, and the undecided cases : remembering 

 always that the absence of a majority one way or the 

 other would be in itself an improbability ', and that, 

 therefore, to have any weight, the majority should 

 be a very decided one, and that not only in itself, 

 but in reference to the neutral instances. We are 

 all involuntarily much more strongly impressed by the 

 fulfilment than by the failure of a prediction, and it 

 is only when thus placing ourselves face to face with 

 fact and experience, that we can fully divest ourselves of 

 this bias. Any one before whose eyes these pages may 

 pass, for instance, who may feel disposed to give our 

 dictum respecting the clearance of the sky under the in- 

 fluence of the full moon (we will not say through a hun- 



