ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS ON VEGETATION. B67 



rain dissolving the clod, and bringing it to view. 

 This, I am sensible, is an incident little deserving 

 of narration, but has been done from two motives : 

 we village historians meet with but few important 

 events to detail from the annals of our district ; 

 we have no gazettes, few public records, or official 

 documents to embellish our pages, and if we will 

 write, must be content with such small matters as 

 present themselves ; and to point out how fre- 

 quently very mysterious circumstances may be elu- 

 cidated, and appear as consistent events by an 

 unbiassed examination. We may not be able always 

 satisfactorily to see why a tide of good fortune 

 should flow at the desire of one, and ebb from the 

 wishes of another ; yet many of the occurrences of 

 human life are perhaps not so extraordinary as they 

 are made to appear by the suppression of facts, or 

 our ignorance of circumstances. 



The effects of atmospheric changes upon vege- 

 tation have been noticed in the rudest ages : even 

 the simplest people have remarked their influence 

 on the appetites of their cattle, so that to " eat 

 like a rabbit before rain" has become proverbial, 

 from the common observance of the fact : but the 

 influence of the electric fluid upon the common 

 herbage has not been, perhaps, so generally per- 

 ceived. My men complain to-day that they can- 

 not mow, that they " cannot any how make a hand 



