io6 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



It cannot be said that the man who depends on 

 the weather for his living is hampered by any mis- 

 calculation that the long-distance weather prophet 

 may make. He does not practise any costly means 

 of counteracting the effect of untimely frost or hail- 

 storm, nor have the insurance companies yet offered 

 him weekly or monthly weather policies. The 

 prospect of a blizzard in June no more stays the hand 

 of the sower in May than the sincerest belief that the 

 world will be totally destroyed next year prevents 

 us from buying houses or planting orchards. If we 

 had to decide between two practically negligible 

 quantities, we should say that the countryman is 

 more misled by perennial superstition than by the 

 pretensions of astrologers. The only heavenly body 

 he believes in as a disturber of the earth's weather 

 is the moon, and therein he is no doubt in the main 

 right. But he keeps no sort of record to show 

 whether his too arbitrary estimate of the rules of the 

 moon is right or wrong, and most that he says about 

 the moon is pure superstition. The notion that the 

 young moon on her back holds water, and, therefore, 

 signifies a wet month, is better held by the cockney 

 than the countryman. Nevertheless, it is, of course, 

 of country origin, and still stands for a good deal 

 with otherwise serious weather prophets. The belief 

 that the weather at the new moon is a sample that 

 will be proved in bulk until the full is universal : if 

 the full moon does not change it, then there is nothing 

 to do but wait and see what the next new moon will 

 do. As changes in our climate are never so dramatic 

 that you can say that a single day has brought them 

 about, it is hard to say exactly when they begin, and 



