106 



setting. This disk, beheld across the strata of 

 air that lie immediately upon the ocean, an- 

 nounces the duration of fine weather, and the 

 slackness or strength of the wind. It is a 

 kind of diaphanometer*, the indications of which 

 have been interpreted with greater or less cer- 

 tainty for ages. Under the torrid zone, where 

 the meteorological phenomena follow each other 

 with great regularity, and where the horizontal 

 refractions are more uniform, the prognostics are 

 surer than in the northern regions. A great pale- 

 ness of the setting Sun, a wan color, an extra- 

 ordinary disfiguration of it's disk, are almost un- 

 equivocal signs of a tempest ; and we can scarce- 

 ly conceive, how the state of the low strata of 

 the atmosphere, which this natural diaphano- 

 meter shows us, can be so intimately connected 

 with meteorological changes, that take place 

 eight or ten hours after the setting of the Sun. 



Mariners have carried the physiognomical 

 knowledge of the sky to a much higher state of 

 perfection, than the inhabitants of the fields. 

 Viewing only the ocean, and the sky which 

 seems to repose upon it's surface, their attention 

 is continually fixed on the slightest modifica- 

 tions of the atmosphere. Among the great num- 

 ber of meteorological rules, which pilots trans- 



* See the description of the apparatus, to which Saussure 

 has given this name in the Memoires de Turin, vol. iv. 

 p. 425. 



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