CHAPTEE LVIII. 



Showers in Harvest Time— Magnificent Sunset— Night sometimes seeming not to descend 

 but to ascend— Death of M. Leverrier— The Discovery of Neptune — Pigeon cooing at 

 Midnight— The Owl at Noon— Cage-Birds singmg at Night. 



The weather continues wonderfully fine for the season [Octoher 

 1877], and with the exception of the potato-lifting, aU our harvest 

 labours are at length concluded. The ingathering has upon the 

 whole been highly satisfactory, far more so than any one could have 

 had the courage to predict up to the very advent of this our 

 autumnal summer, which has already lasted just thirty days, 

 uninterruptedly sunny and dry, without any more serious break 

 than a mere passing shower, which invariably did more good than 

 harm. More good 1 the reader exclaims interrogatively, how can a 

 shower do good, how can it be otherwise than harmful in harvest 

 time 1 Patience, courteous reader, and we shall explain. It is a 

 case of something of this kind. You are driving along the road ; 

 the horse in the shafts before you is upon the whole a steady-going 

 and wiUing animal enough, but you have let him have it just his 

 own way for the last half hour, and dreaming, perhaps, of fresh 

 fields and pastures green, he has for the moment forgotten your 

 existence, and begins to lag. His usual pace of a good eight mUes 

 an hour is now hardly over five, and what in such a case shall you 

 do 1 You drop the lash gently across his flank, as light and gently 

 as falls the angler's cast on the waveless pool ; you are too much of 

 a Christian and a gentlemen — the terms are or ought to be 

 synonymous — to do otherwise untU it is absolutely necessary. 

 Your horse forgets his dream ; becomes instantly alive to the work 



