198 POPULAR WEATHER PROGNOSTICS. 



their signs and observations of the weather ; and he 

 added that he never found them mistaken." 



Weather prognostics such as guide the movements 

 of fishermen, sailors, and shepherds, are not to be laughed 

 at because trusted in by those making no pretension to 

 science. Let the scientific consult their instruments, 

 and, if classically disposed, learn by heart the celebrat- 

 ed Addison's Latin poem, entitled t Barometri Descrip- 

 tio ; ' but let them not despise the empirical knowledge 

 of the unlearned, handed down from the days of old, 

 and trusted in because founded on experience. 



As we declared, in our article on the eating of fun- 

 guses, that we would, in a matter affecting the bodily 

 senses, follow the opinion of a savage rather than of the 

 Pope or the President of the Eoyal Society so say we 

 now of weather prognostics, that, being matters of fact 

 such as any man living much in the open air can ob- 

 serve, the recorded observations of the illiterate are 

 worthy of careful attention. They relate to matters in 

 which they are daily interested, and, as such, are level 

 to their capacity ; and it is mainly to such observers 

 that we are indebted for those prognostics in the expla- 

 nation of which philosophers have as yet said so little 

 that is satisfactory. 



It is to the credit of such observers that our scienti- 

 fic meteorologists seem nowadays seriously disposed to 

 test the value of those popular maxims which appear 

 alike in the writings of ancient philosophers, and in 

 those curious repositories of weather- wisdom alma- 

 nacs which a recent French writer asserts are perhaps 

 the oldest books in the world, except the Scriptures. 

 Aristotle in his book * De Meteoris,' appears to have 

 been the first of the Grecian philosophers to collect and 

 systematise the various prognostications of the weather ; 

 and his speculations on meteorology, though often un- 

 satisfactory, are sometimes as in his remarks on dew 

 remarkable for their approximation to the discoveries 

 of modern science. 



