380 MOVEMENTS OF NATURE. 



quantities of oxygen, or vital air, discharged from 

 vegetable foliage : but these agents of benefit, by 

 the autumn, are no more consequently the dis- 

 charge of oxygen is suspended, but the production 

 of unhealthy air increased by the additional decom- 

 position of the season. To counteract this is pro- 

 bably the business of the storms of wind and rain 

 prevailing at this season, which, by agitating and 

 dissipating the noxious airs, introduce fresh cur- 

 rents, and render the fluid we breathe salubrious. 

 The same may be advanced in regard to spring : 

 the whole decay of winter, having no neutralizing 

 body to render it wholesome, requires some great 

 influencing power to remove it. But all this is 

 reasoning without actual evidence ; a discursive 

 license, from the fallibility of human judgment not 

 often to be indulged in : yet we can so rarely per- 

 ceive the purport of the movements of nature, that 

 our conceptions, vague as they may be, are almost 

 all that remain to us. 



We have here so few operations of nature de- 

 serving mention, that I must not omit to notice a 

 rather uncommon appearance in some of our clay- 

 lands, which the surrounding parishes do not pre- 

 sent. The soil of a few fields seems to cover for 

 some depth a rock of coarse limestone, which we 

 never burn for use. In a direction bearing nearly 

 east and west, in a line pointing to the Severn, a 

 number of sinkings and pits are observable, like 

 abandoned shafts, or the commencement of mines. 

 They are called by the country people " whirly 



