270 ATMOSPHERIC OBSERVATIONS. 



sphere. During the night, and the earlier parts of the 

 morning, water was falling on the earth in minute 

 particles, constituting what we call fog; then out 

 burst the sun, and reclaimed this moisture which had 

 fallen, and we could see it obeying the mandate, and 

 pass away in steam. In the evening it will probably 

 return again in fog, or in rain, when the atmosphere 

 cools ; and thus a constant visible intelligence is going 

 on. How much insensible intercourse takes place we 

 know not, but we can comprehend its agency by the 

 effects and events that manifest themselves. Our country 

 people think these "rokings" (reekings) of the earth 

 greatly favorable to the growth of vegetation, supposing 

 it occasioned by the internal heat of the earth pro- 

 ducing a vapor like that from fermenting soil, thus 

 warming the roots , % but if the theory be defective, the 

 fact may be true, by the caloric in the sun's rays pro- 

 moting the decomposition of the water, or separating 

 the component parts (oxygen and hydrogen), which 

 uniting with other matters contained in the earth and 

 atmosphere (carbon and carbonic acid) become by this 

 means the basis of all our fruits, our sweets, our sours, 

 resins, &c., in the vegetable world; and hence there 

 is a constant decomposition of water going forward by 

 these alternations, and a constant formation of matters 

 beneficial and necessary for the various inhabitants of 

 the earth. When we perceive that a shower of rain 

 has revived or promoted the increase of vegetation, we 

 must understand, that the mere wetting it has not ac- 

 complished this; but that the vegetable has by means 

 of its foliage, aided by light and heat, decomposed or 

 separated the combined matters of the water, and taken 

 from it certain portions as essential to its vigor, or been 

 revictualled, in a manner, by the nutriment contained 

 in the water. 



Jan. 10. The ground covered with snow, the pools 

 with ice, trees and hedges leafless, and patched here 

 and there with a mantle of white, present a cheerless, 

 dreary void ; no insects are animating the air, and all 

 our songsters are silent and away ; a few miserable 

 thrushes are hopping on the ditch bank, swept bare by 



