21 



he wants, and " doesn't believe he contracted to sapply the country," without, worse still, 

 having to tramp after your beasts three or four miles along the dusty roads to a creek. 

 Or, if you have plenty of water, and your neighbours none, it is hard to say whether you 

 are much better off. If you supply them you are a thoroughfare without a toll-gate. If 

 you refuse, you are a tyrant, and are informed over your fences that "there will be water 

 when you're dead and maybe you'll want it yourself before you die." 



More, the water which supplies moisture for the crops comes largely from below. It 

 is not because the rain fell on the herb of the field that growth chiefly proceeds, though 

 that does good ; but it is because the earth received the water, and the great underground 

 system of natural pipes and channels has obtained its due supply. If, during the shower, 

 some malevolent giant shouM hold his umbrella completely over your farm, his spiteful 

 intentions would be, in large measure, frustrated, for the whole network of channels, 

 which everywhere tunnel the soil — ^millions invisibly small — millions conveying vast quan- 

 tities — would have all over the land received their share, and your land would receive 

 from below some compensation for what the overgrown gentleman had kept off above. It 

 is this underground store, which, in a dry time, sends moisture up to the roots, and 

 thence to leaf and twig. The dry board lying on the ground will split and crack in the 

 sun — the pitch will boil out of the seams of the upturned boat — the rock will glow till it 

 will nearly burn your finger ; but the plant will not — it is cool, green and moist long 

 after all around is parching. It has had no rain ; it may not flourish, but it does not die. 

 It has other means of obtaining moisture, and one of them is by drawing through its roots 

 from below, water, which, it may be, fell in rain two months before, has been preserved on 

 forest floor or subterranean cavity till now, has now in its turn passed on its course to 

 the sea, and in its way preserves from death the growing herbage till the rain from above 

 give it of life a new and a firmer hold. 



If my readers will travel with me a little way on a very dusty road of dry techni- 

 calities, we will endeavour to find a clear explanation of what brings rain, and what 

 causes the winds which bear the clouds along. Let us here remark that when we see a 

 cloud apparently come with the winds, we need not be sure it came at all. That cloud 

 may have been above us in propria persona, but we could not see it. The air may have 

 had much water in it which we could not see^; the wind may have brought sufiicient cold 

 to condense the moisture, when we could see it at once. The cloud in that case did not 

 come. The means of changing it into visible form came. 



A writer says in relation to a certain storm in India : — " Previous to such a down- 

 pour of rain the heavens were perfectly clear, without a cloud to be seen ; yet there, it 

 may be, the whole of that moisture was suspended, dissolved in the air. The rain cloud 

 may have appeared to proceed from beyond the horizon, and to come thence, advancing 

 with resistless force, borne forward by the gust of wind, more like a tornado than aught 

 else ; but there are reasons, and these satisfactory ones, to warrant the conclusion that 

 the cloud had not been blown thither by the blast, but had been formed at the various 

 points of its advance by the wind suddenly cooling down the air below a temperature at 

 which it could hold the moisture in solution, very much as is the case with the sand and 

 dust filling the air immediately before the falling of the rain ; whatever proportion of 

 these may have been brought from a distance more or less remote, most of it may have 

 been seen raised from the ground on the spot as the mighty rushing wind passed on in its 

 course, and the little lapse of time between the appearance of this precursor and the pre- 

 cipitation of the rain was only such as was occupied in the aggregation of the rain 



