326 THE KITE. 



is most in sight, as well as most easily seen. There is 

 not any thing majestic in the stoop of the kite, it 

 rather sneaks cowardly down, like a thief. In stormy 

 weather, or rather in that warning before storms, when 

 the air is dark and the birds take to their coverts, the 

 kite, when it does appear, is clamorous ; and hence it 

 has been said that its noise presages bad weather. 

 That it does precede bad weather is true, for we have 

 often observed it ; and therefore there is no more harm 

 in taking it as an omen of the weather, than there is in 

 predicting thunder and rain when the sky is full of 

 thunder-clouds. But still the crying of the kite has no 

 reference to the weather that is to come, for it refers 

 to the existing state of the atmosphere. The kite is 

 more than usually hungry, or it would not hunt in such 

 weather : the state of the air keeping the birds at rest, 

 they are difficult to be seen, and the kite screams to 

 rouse them to motion, and make their attempts at securer 

 concealment the means of their more easy discovery. 



Considered merely in itself, no phenomenon or event 

 is an indication of the future, though there is not one 

 that may not be made so by due observation ; and the 

 principal distinction between superstition and philosophy 

 consists in this, that philosophy looks carefully into 

 nature, and finds what is the future event or pheno- 

 menon that follows a present one ; while the super- 

 stitious person either overlooks the succession of the 

 phenomena of nature altogether, or connects with the 

 present a future event, which has no natural connexion 

 with it. All knowledge is founded upon this observation, 

 and all ignorance arises from the want of it ; nor is 

 there any occurrence, however apparently trifling and 



