Rain and Thunder. 4I 
obscured with cloud. The old folk in the vale, whose 
whole lives have been spent watching and waiting on 
the weather, say that the hills‘ draw’ the thunder—- 
that wherever a storm arises it always ‘ draws’ towards 
them. If it comes from the west it often splits—one 
storm going along the ridges to the south, and the 
other passing over detached hills to the northward ; 
-so that the basin between is rarely visited by thunder 
overhead. They have, too, an old superstition—based 
apparently, on a text of the Bible—that the thunder 
always rises originally in the north, though it may 
reach them from a different direction. For it is their 
belief also that thunder ‘works round ;’ so that after 
a heavy storm, say in the afternoon, when the air has 
cleared to all appearance, they will tell you that the 
sunshine and calm are a deception. In a few hours’ 
time, or in the course of the night, the storm will 
return, having ‘worked round:’ and indeed in that 
locality this is very often the case. It is to be observed 
that even a small copse will for a short distance in 
its rear quite divert the course of a breeze; so that a 
weathercock placed on the leeside is entirely untrust- 
worthy: if the wind really blows from the south 
and over the copse, the weathercock will sometimes 
point in precisely the opposite direction, obeying the 
*undertow’ of the gale, as it were, drawing back- 
wards. 
In summer especially, I fancy, an effect is some- 
times produced by a variation in the electrical con- 
