SEASONAL PREDICTIONS. 241 



defends us, confounds our knowledge of the weather. 

 A storm in the Arctic regions, of which we have no 

 note, may send thence a surface current of cold air, 

 which, opposing and mingling with the previous one 

 from the south-west, may drench us in rain, wither our 

 vegetation with frost, or even cover the earth with snow, 

 in the most advanced and promising season. Snow 

 upon the secondary mountains, after they have been 

 once cleared, may, by the cold that it produces, nip 

 the buds over an extensive district. Indeed, there is 

 hardly any thing that does not make, to some extent 

 at least, an element in the estimate of the weather; 

 and thus he who would be " weather wise," must know 

 the contemporaneous state of all places. It is there 

 that true knowledge lies ; but unfortunately it is not 

 there that it is most frequently sought. Our informa- 

 tion may be accurate, but it is all in scraps ; and the 

 average for a country that is diversified almost to infi- 

 nitude is taken from a very few places, and very 

 frequently a few places similarly situated ; whereas to 

 have a result of any, even the smallest, value, we 

 should contemporaneously observe the whole, in order 

 that we might be able to see how the one affects the 

 other. Those local registers of states and changes 

 are merely memorial scraps ; they tell us, " what," 

 but they never tell us, " why ;" and there is no prin- 

 ciple upon which we can combine them, other than the 

 general progress of the year ; and thus, though meteor- 

 ology be really the science in which we all have the 

 deepest interest, because the atmosphere is the substance 

 most immediately conducive to our health, there is no cer- 

 tainty in it beyond that which is founded upon astronomy. 



