210 POPULAR WEATHER PROGNOSTICS. 



observation of the fur of animals as likely to furnish 

 important meteorological indications. As this is not 

 noticed by Dr Mitchell, we submit it for his consid- 

 eration. 



The vegetable kingdom also opens up a curious field 

 of investigation, in which the meteorologist will learn 

 much regarding the mutual interdependence of all de- 

 partments of creation. If light and electricity be so 

 influential in exciting the movements of animals breath- 

 ing the vital air, plants are equally subject to the same 

 potent agencies, and testify to their influence, mutely, 

 it is true, but so visibly as to attract the notice alike 

 of the scientific botanist and of the illiterate rustic. In 

 some parts of England the peasants mark the blooming 

 of the large water-lily, and think that the number of its 

 blossoms on a stem indicates the price of wheat per 

 bushel for the ensuing year each blossom being equi- 

 valent to a shilling ! We smile at this as superstitious 

 folly ; but even philosophy does not disdain " the poor 

 man's weather-glass" the pimpernel (Anagallis ar- 

 vensis) and is too wise to despise the weather indi- 

 cations afforded by the shutting of the flowers of the 

 small bindweed, the wood-anemone, the wood-sorrel, 

 and the common daisy, which appears to have derived 

 its expressive name day's eye from its sensitiveness 

 to the light. 



Such phenomena, as Dr Mitchell notes, are probably 

 determined by the action of light ; and the flowers of 

 such plants being shut at ten or eleven A.M., tells of 

 clouds and gloom, and so predicts rain. It has been 

 ingeniously proposed to form a floral timepiece from an 

 arrangement of plants whose periods for opening and 

 closing their flowers are known. The star of Bethlehem 

 expands its flowers about eleven, and closes them at 

 three in the afternoon. The goat's-beard closes its 

 petals at noon, and hence its provincial name of go-to- 

 bed-at-noon. And that light is a chief agent of these 

 changes, is proved by the experiments of Decandolle, 



