318 OP ATMOSPHERICAL CHAP. 10. 2. 



in fevers, people see spots of colours on the wall, 

 or imagine insects on the bed clothes.* For the 

 same morbid condition of the animal system, 

 which may cause persons to see the spectral 

 prognostick, would, in this case, cause them to 

 behold the subsequent phantom, and thus the 

 omen and its awful consequence would be 

 viewed together to the support of superstition. 

 Besides this, the particular mode of burning 

 observed in the wicks of lamps and candles, is 

 really found to be caused by atmospherical 

 peculiarities, and from it, a sure sign of Rain 

 is frequently ascertained, I remember in the 

 year 1819> on the eve of the Holy Innocents, 

 that the wick of a candle, left for a long time 

 unsnuffed, had, by degrees, assumed a com- 

 pletely cruciform shape, which being viewed by 

 the common people a standing up amidst the 



* The occular spectra of children, who go to bed with too 

 full stomachs or with irritable nervous systems, are to be 

 referred to modifications of the real impressions of objects 

 seen in the day time, such as the passage of uncouth faces by 

 the bed at night. The forms of specks and freckles, which 

 pass in imagination before us with closed eyes at night, and 

 which continually change their shapes, are referable to the 

 previous impression made on the retina and its auxiliary 

 nervous parts, by accidentally beholding the figured paperings 

 of rooms or the patterns of printed calicoes during the day. 



