CHAPTER VIII 



THE WEATHER 



BESIDES the regular changes in the seasons, which 

 give us the warmth of summer and the cold of 

 winter in the course of each year, there are other 

 slighter changes, from warm days to cold days 

 even in the same season. Sometimes, too, it 

 rains at frequent intervals for many days to- 

 gether ; at other times a long drought turns the 

 lawns and pasture fields brown, and causes the 

 water-supply of towns and villages to fail. In 

 this chapter we are going to study these changes 

 in the weather, and try to find out some reason 

 for them. 



If we carefully watch the rainy days through- 

 out a year, we shall find that in the British 

 Islands most of them come when the wind is 

 from the south, south-west, or west. It is true 

 that rain occasionally falls when the wind is in 

 other directions, but this happens much less 

 often. As a general rule, then, we find that a 

 south, south-west, or west wind is likely to bring 

 rain, while dry weather is more probable if the 

 wind is in the north, north-east, or east. Now 

 let us look at a map of Europe. To the west 



