JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 33 



" The journeying atoms, 

 Primordial wholes, 

 Firmly draw, firmly drive. 

 By their animate poles." 



" Open innumerable doors the heaven where unveiled Allah pours 

 The flood of truth, the flood of good, the seraphs' and the cherubs" food ; 

 Seek not beyond the cottage wall, redeemers that can yield thee all.'' 



— Translation from Saadi. 



In the alleged premonitary sinking of the water level, and in 

 the case of a warning fall of the barometer or thermometer like what 

 occurred on Sunday, 8th of January last, in the morning of which 

 day the mercury rapidly rose from about io° to 31°, some thought a 

 thaw was imminent, but the rise proved a sort of ruse de guerre^ 

 shall we say a deceptive move, and was abruptly succeded by a 

 drop to 5 degrees below zero, and the frigidity lasted three or four 

 days, or sixty hours. 



This fake reminds one of the French phrase, Recieler pour 

 mieux sauter, a sort of concentration of energy for an antagonistic 

 effort. 



As when in meteorology a cold wave treads on the heels of a 

 warm one (or vice versa), there is crowding of the molecules at 

 " the ragged edge " of contact, and in bucolic weather lore an unsea- 

 sonably fine day is thought to be unreliable and termed a " weather 

 breeder." In meteorology there seem from time to time fresh atti- 

 tudes or " moods " or new grouping of the ruling conditions. The 

 rationale of this perhaps is that if the design can be perceived in 

 one region of physics, analogy would tolerate the assumption through 

 the whole purview and range of human thought. 



Occasionally during some of the recurring cold spells of mid- 

 winter ihese parts are visited by small parties or squads of aquatic 

 birds, such as the grebes and the Icons or divers. 



The grebes occasionally alight among the ducks or geese of the 

 farmer's barnyard. A few incidents of this kind came to our notice 

 one very severe spell in the month of Februiry several years ago. 

 About sunrise one clear morning, when the temperature was about 

 23° below zero, a grebe alighted in one of our fields, seemingly 

 exhausted by a long flight and famine. At the base of the bjrd's 



