IN A FISHING COUNTRY 

 As someone jingles it: — 



The moon and the weather 



May change together ; 

 But change of the moon 



Does not change the weather. 

 If we'd no moon at all, 



And that may seem strange, 

 We still would have weather 



That's subject to change. 



Like the ground-hog, and much in the 

 same way, she gives a little encouragement 

 to her votaries; for happen it must in the 

 nature of things that her phases, and the 

 weather's shifts, sometimes fall together. 

 Moreover when she comes in fair, or the 

 reverse, the chances of the type persisting 

 are in her favour. More cannot be con- 

 ceded, and this observations and records 

 put beyond doubt; but we are altogether 

 likely to hand on, for yet a few generations, 

 the little trinity of persistent errors con- 

 cerning the rule of the fickle moon, the 

 streaky-bacon theory of weather, the gift 

 to birds and beasts of piercing deep into 

 the future. 



Little danger there is indeed of shatter- 

 ing these illusions: — or the other pleasant 

 fancies that a beneficent Gulf Stream 

 laves the British Isles; the equinoxes are 

 beset with storms; intelligence, and not the 

 very lack of it, makes of the horse the use- 

 ful beast he is; theoretical beliefs control 

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