WINDS. ] 75 



When the cause which heats the air is powerful, 

 and its action long continued, the whole mass of 

 the atmosphere may be put into motion ; and the air 

 which is moved may spring so fast upon that which 

 has in itself no cause of motion, as to produce very 

 grand, but, at the same time very serious effects. 

 In the alternate halves of the year there are alter- 

 nating heats of the sun in the north and south hemi- 

 spheres of the earth ; and these of course cause, in 

 the middle latitudes, a shifting of all the currents 

 and motions of the air, as the surface wind always 

 blows from the cold place towards the warm. 



The sun is no doubt the general cause of all those 

 motions of the air that are on the grand scale ; and 

 it is worthy of notice, though of course there is no 

 instructive analysis in it, that the young sunbeams 

 are as sportive as the young animals. In March 

 and April, and the early part of May, the atmosphere 

 is absolutely wild. It is cold bleak wind : then cas- 

 tled clouds, and gusts flitting about; then a hail 

 shower; after that hot sunny gleams; then fog; 

 next cold wind again ; after that, thunder and more 

 hail showers, often in lumps in the warmer places ; 

 and after these again, weather almost as hot as that 

 of summer. One would almost think that every 

 spring, the prayer of the farmer to Jupiter, in the 

 old fable, were granted to every farmer in England, 

 and that they all had different weather for their dif- 

 ferent fields, if not just at the same time, yet all in 

 the course of the same day. 



That is the grand time for observation the busy 

 season with all nature in every thing that grows and 

 lives. How countless are the millions of little buds 

 which one of these " showering and shining" days 

 brings into leaf ! They are fresh and washed by the 

 shower ; and when the warm comes you would ab- 

 solutely think that you can both see and hear them 

 cracking their scaly cases in which they were con- 

 fined and protected for the winter ; and that the 



