392 PECULIARITIES OF 



in the finest order, producing good-sized ricks and 

 mows ; yet their bulk was delusive, the provender 

 cutting out light and strawy. The heat and 

 drought continued, with very partial and slight 

 showers of rain, all June and July ; nor had we 

 anything like serviceable rain till the second of Au- 

 gust. In consequence our grass lands were burned 

 up, and our fields parched, presenting deep fissures 

 in all parts. The heat was unusually distressing 

 all day ; and evening brought us little or no relief, 

 as every wall radiated throughout the night the 

 heat it had imbibed from the torrid sun of the day. 

 Our bed-room windows were kept constantly open, 

 all apprehension from damps and night airs, which 

 at other times were of the first consideration, being 

 disregarded ; a cooler temperature, however ob- 

 tained, was alone required; and we lingered below, 

 unwilling to encounter the tossings and restlessness 

 that our heated beds occasioned. Our wainscots 

 cracked, furniture contracted and gaped with seams ; 

 a sandal-wood box, which had been in use for 

 upwards of twenty years in dry rooms, shrunk 

 and warped out of all form ; a capsule of the 

 sandbox tree (hura crepitans), which had remained 

 in repose over a shelf above the fire-place for an 

 unknown length of time, now first experienced an 

 excess of dryness, and exploded in every direction ; 

 door-frames contracted, window-sashes became fixed 

 and immovable. These are trifles to relate, but 

 yet they mark the very unusual dryness of the at- 

 mosphere. 



