250 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Mar. 1 6, iS 



With respect to wind, most districts have some special 

 quarter from which, if the wind blow, wet weather may 

 be expected. The wind exercises a great influence on 

 the carriage of sound ; and when the wind is in the 

 proper quarter it is sometimes astonishing how far the 

 sounds of church bells, cock-crowing, and the barking of 

 dogs may be wafted on the still country air. It is a 

 common occurrence for people living in the country to 

 connect certain sounds with certain weather. For 

 instance, they may perhaps be able to hear the bells of 

 some particular church only when the wind blows from 

 that particular quarter : that wind may perhaps in that 

 locality generally bring rain ; so that they naturally 

 regard the sound of those bells as the precursor of wet 

 weather. A good example of this came to the writer's 

 knowledge during a stay in South Devon. At one 

 o'clock every day a gun is fired as a time signal from a 

 battery in Plymouth Sound, and the report is carried far 

 and wide over the neighbourhood. Now Plymouth enjoys a 

 fair share of wet weather, the winds at such times being 

 chiefly from the south-west, and the writer was informed 

 that at several of the hamlets and villages lying miles 

 inland to the north-east of the town, the sound of that one 

 o'clock gun is regarded as a very good rain-portent. 



It goes without saying that the rainbow implies 

 showery weather, for that sky-spanning arc owes its 

 existence to co-existent sunlight and rain. At times 

 fragments of rainbows may be seen on isolated pieces of 

 clouds. In sailors' parlance these disjecta membra go by 

 the name of " wind dogs " or " wind gales," and are 

 considered to portend wind squalls and rain, as is also 

 said to be the case when the red hue seems to predomi- 

 nate in the ordinary rainbow. 



Coming now to the animal world, we find many traits 

 supposed to be due to weather influence. When cats 

 indulge in frequent face-washing, rain is said to be 

 foretold, and a sudden change in the existing state of the 

 weather, whatever it may be, is considered to be pre- 

 saged, when they appear more than usually restless. 

 When cattle crowd together in the corner of their field, 

 or when they stretch out their necks and sniff the 

 breezes, when asses shake their long ears and bray, and 

 when lambs are more frisky and playful than usual, wet 

 may be expected. Virgil, too, in his "Georgics," credits 

 swine with weather-wisdom, and reckons it a sign of 

 wet when they " toss about with their snouts the 

 loosened bundles of straw." 



Birds are reckoned to be peculiarly sensitive to hygro- 

 metric changes, owing to the comparative dryness or 

 moistness of the atmosphere readily affecting their 

 feathers, and consequently their feelings. Perhaps it is 

 the extra susceptibility due to its long tail plumes which 

 makes the peacock mdulge in its cat-like screams when 

 rainy weather is approaching. High-flying swallows are, 

 as almost everyone knows, a sign of fair weather ; and 

 virhen their insect prey flies low, and the pursuing 

 swallows skim over the surface of the earth, sometimes 

 even disturbing the stillness of some pond with the tips 

 of their wings, wet weather is foretold. The omen is 

 reckoned the same, too, when the farm-yard occupants 

 are particularly noisy, when the cocks crow frequently 

 and the ducks and geese are uproarious. Rooks and 

 gulls, and other far-flying birds, deserve attention as 

 weather guides, as they do not venture far from home 

 when heavy weather is approaching. Storms at sea 

 make sea-birds keep to the shore, and at such times they 

 are often seen far inland, The times of arrival and 



departure of our migratory birds are also considered by 

 some as indicative of the character of the approaching 

 season. The early departure of our swallows and other 

 summer visitors, and the speedy arrival of our winter 

 migrants, especially field fares, are both considered to 

 forebode a hard winter. The old rhyme — 



Autumn hips and haws 



Bring a winter nip nose 

 shows that a plentiful supply of berries, as food for these 

 visitors, had as a prognostication the same meaning. 

 The missel-thrush, one of the earliest of our song-birds, 

 has earned a rather unenviable reputation as a bad 

 weather prophet, and in some parts of the country bears 

 on this account the name of the storm-cock, his loud 

 jerky song, delivered from the top of some woodland 

 tree, being generally held to presage a storm. 



Amongst insects, the garden spider seems to take first 

 rank as a weather-guide, the state of his web perhaps 

 affording him the necessary clue to atmospheric pertur- 

 bations, but as this point was fully described in a late 

 issue of Scientific News (Vol. i, page 172, First Series) 

 it need not be repeated here. Ants, too, if they could 

 be observed, would probably show themselves as little 

 inferior to spiders in weather-wisdom, their solicitude for 

 the welfare of their eggs making them especially mindful 

 of coming storms. The bustle in one of their under- 

 ground towns when a rain-storm is at hand, and the 

 hurry-skurry to get all the eggs well down out of harm's 

 way in the innermost recesses before the rain comes, 

 would probably be a sight to be remembered if observa- 

 tion were only possible. 



In conclusion, the writer would add that although 

 many of the foregoing " signs " may not be of great 

 practical value, the antiquity of the belief in some 

 of them — for some of them were old when Virgil wrote 

 two thousand years ago — makes the subject not only 

 interesting, but worthy perhaps of more systematic and 

 scientific consideration than it has hitherto received. 

 • — "^jw^"^*^-* — 



SELF-LUMINOUS BUOY. 



AMONG the tried devices for rendering buoys luminous 

 are lamps arranged to burn for a long time, phos- 

 phorescent mixtures, electric illuminators supplied with 

 the current from the shore by means of a cable, and the 

 more recent luminous paint, which absorbs light by day 

 and gives it out at night. Compressed gas has been em- 

 ployed with great success, some of the buoys having been 

 designed to carry six months' supply of gas and to serve 

 as lightships. 



An illuminating apparatus has been designed as an 

 auxiliary to bell buoys and whisthng buoys. Based upon 

 the generation of electricity by the agitation of mercury 

 in ahigh vacuum or in gas of high tension, the self-exciting 

 Geissler tube involves the same principle. The buoy re- 

 presented in the cut is adapted to ring a bell by the 

 rolling motion imparted to it by the waves. Advantage is 

 taken of this motion to agitate mercury in the annular 

 tubes placed in the upper portion of the frame of the 

 buoy. The tubes are made very heavy and strong, and 

 each contains barriers for causing friction of the mercury 

 against the sides of the tubes. 



To insure the action of one or more of the tubes at 

 all times, they arc inclined at difterent angles. A slight 

 motion of the buoy causes the mercury to travel circularly 

 in the tubes, and generate sufficient electricity to render the 

 tubes Jyminous. — G.M. Hopkins, in " Scieulijic American" 



