Prognostics of the Weather. 155 



exortu, meridie expandit; incolae dormire eum dicunt." 

 Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xii. c. 2. 



" The stalk of trefoil," my Lord Bacon observes, " swells 

 again, strains and grows, more upright ; and the like may 

 be observed, though not so sensibly, in the stalks of most 

 other plants." He adds, that " in the stubble fields there is 

 found a small red flower, called by the country people 

 ' winco-pipe, which opening in the morning is a sure indica- 

 tion of a fine day." 



That vegetables should be affected by the same causes 

 that affect the weather is very conceivable ; if we consider 

 them as so many hydrometers and thermometers, consisting 

 of an infinite number of tracheae or air vessels, by which 

 they have an immediate communication with the air, and 

 partake of its moisture and heat, &c. These tracheae are 

 very visible in the leaf of the scabeus, vine, &c. 



Hence it is, that all wood, even the hardest and most 

 solid swells in moist weather; the vapours easily in- 

 sinuating themselves into the pores thereof, especially of 

 that which is lightest and driest. And hence we derive a 

 very extraordinary use of wood, viz. for breaking rocks and 

 mill-stones. The method at the quarries is this : Having 

 cut a rock into a cylinder, they divide that into several 

 lesser cylinders, by making holes at the proper distances 

 round the great one : these holes they fill with so many 

 pieces of sallow wood, dried in an oven ; which, in moist 

 weather, becoming impregnated with the humid corpuscles 

 of the air, swell, and, like wedges, break or cleave the 

 rocks into several stones. 



The speedy drying of the surface of the earth is a sign 

 of a northerly wind, and fair weather ; and its becoming 

 moist, of southerly wind and rain. Hence the farmer may 

 be instructed never to trust a sunshiny day while the 

 surface of the earth continues wet, and to rely on a change 

 to dry weather as soon as he observes the moisture dried 

 up, even though the appearance of the clouds should not be 

 favourable; for the air sucks up all the moisture on the 

 surface of the earth, even though the sky be overcast, and 



