408 ATMOSPHERIC EXPERIMENTS. 



very accurate data can be drawn from this experi- 

 ment ; for different soils will give out their moist- 

 ure more or less easily, and succulent vegetables 

 be more influenced than those of a drier nature ; 

 but it served at the time to indicate the portion 

 of moisture that was escaping from a given hori- 

 zontal surface. From the invisible and insen- 

 sible nature of evaporation, its influences are not 

 always considered ; but such an action on the sur- 

 faces of things as that related above, must put into 

 operation all the inherent powers of matter suscep- 

 tible of impulse, and probably would produce effects 

 which we might suppose to be accomplished by the 

 agency of other means. 



Nov. 10. Many effusions of the mind have been 

 produced by the approach or existence of the sea- 

 sons of our year, which seem naturally to actuate 

 our bodily or mental feelings through the agency 

 of the eye, or temperature of the air. The peculiar 

 silence that prevails in autumn, like the repose of 

 wearied nature, seems to mark the decline and ter- 

 mination of being in many things that animated our 

 summer months ; the singing of the bird is rare, 

 feeble, and melancholy ; the hum of the insect is 

 not heard ; the breeze passes by us like a sigh from 

 nature, we hear it, and it is gone for ever. But it 

 is the vegetable tribes, which at this season most 

 particularly influence our feeling, and excite our 



