30 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



But the hot wind blows and the rain does not come ; 

 the sky is open and free from clouds, less blue, per- 

 haps, but harder in tint. The nights are bright and 

 clear and warm ; you may sit here on the turf till 

 midnight and find no dew, and still feel the languid, 

 enervating influence of the hot blast. This goes in 

 time, and is succeeded by heavy morning mists hang- 

 ing like a cloak over the hills and filling up the hollows. 

 They roll away as the day advances, and there is the 

 sun bright as ever in the midst of the cloudless sky. 

 The shepherds say the mists carry away the rain ; 

 certainly it does not come. 



Every now and then promising signs exhibit them* 

 selves. A black bank of vapour receives the setting 

 sun, and in the east huge mountainous clouds with 

 beetling precipices and caverns, in which surely the 

 thunder lurks, swell and roll upwards in the hush of 

 the evening. The farmer unrolls his canvas over the 

 new-made hayrick, which is not yet thatched, think- 

 ing that a torrent will descend in the night ; but no 

 the morrow is the same. It is a peculiarity of our 

 usually changeable climate that when once the weather 

 has become thoroughly settled either to dry or wet, 

 no signs of alteration are of any value, true as they 

 may be at other times. 



So the heat continues and the drought increases. 

 The " land-springs " breaking out by the sides of the 

 fields have long since disappeared ; the true springs 

 run feebly as the stores of water in the interior of the 

 earth gradually grow less. Great cracks open in the 



