212 POPULAR WEATHER PROGNOSTICS. 



Thanks to Mr Piazzi Smyth, and other recent observers, 

 we are acquiring new information as to matters lunar, 

 which in due time will, we doubt not, be traced out in 

 their relation to things terrestrial ; so that to them we 

 shall not always have to apply the observation of 

 Pliny " The cause lies concealed in the majesty of 

 Nature." 



While hesitating to acknowledge the effect of the 

 aurora on the weather, Dr Mitchell attaches great im- 

 portance to the following prognostic observed by Pro- 

 fessor Christison : " For a period of between thirty- 

 five to forty years I have never known an exception to 

 the rule, that the first great aurora, after a long tract 

 of fine weather in September or beginning of October, 

 is followed on the second day and not till the second 

 about one o'clock on the east coast, and about eleven 

 o'clock in Nithsdale, by a great storm ; and that the 

 next day after the aurora is fine weather, fit for all 

 agricultural purposes." Although, then, the same pheno- 

 menon may, by different persons in the same locality, 

 be made to predict totally different conditions of the 

 weather though the aurora has been thought to pre- 

 dict wind by some, and war by others while the 

 Esquimaux fancy that it is a game which is played by 

 the departed spirits of their relatives nevertheless, 

 there is room for rational investigation. More than 

 thirty years' observation by one so cautious as Professor 

 Christison is not to be put aside, especially when Fitz- 

 roy makes this acknowledgment : " Among the more 

 experienced seamen who have visited many climates, 

 an opinion prevails that lightning, the aurora, meteors, 

 or shooting- stars, are indicative of disturbance in the 

 air, and foretell wind or rain, if not both, in no long 

 interval of days." 



Dr Mitchell may also be less sceptical as to halos, 

 when reminded that Sir Humphrey Davy writes thus : 

 " As an indication of wet weather approaching, no- 

 thing is more certain than a halo round the moon, 



