270 ATMOSPHERIC OBSERVATIONS. 
sphere. During the night, and the earlier parts of the 
morning, water was falling on the earth in minute 
particles, constituting what we call fog; then out 
burst the sun, and reclaimed this moisture which had 
fallen, and we could see it obeying the mandate, and 
pass away in steam. In the evening it will probably 
return again in fog, or in rain, when the atmosphere 
cools ; and thus a constant visible intelligence is going 
on. How much insensible intercourse takes place we 
know not, but we can comprehend its agency by the 
effects and events that manifest themselves. Our country 
people think these “ rokings ” (reekings) of the earth 
greatly favorable to the growth of vegetation, supposing 
it occasioned by the internal heat of the earth pro- 
ducing a vapor like that from fermenting soil, thus 
warming the roots ; but if the theory be defective, the 
fact may be true, by the caloric in the sun’s rays pro- 
moting the decomposition of the water, or separating 
the component parts (oxygen and hydrogen), which 
uniting with other matters contained in the earth and 
atmosphere (carbon and carbonic acid) become by this 
means the basis of all our fruits, our sweets, our sours, 
resins, &c., in the vegetable world ; and hence there 
is a constant decomposition of water going forward by 
these alternations, and a constant formation of matters 
beneficial and necessary for the various inhabitants of 
the earth. When we perceive that a shower of rain 
has revived or promoted the increase of vegetation, we 
must understand, that the mere wetting it has not ac- 
complished this ; but that the vegetable has by means 
of its foliage, aided by light and heat, decomposed or 
separated the combined matters of the water, and taken 
from it certain portions as essential to its vigor, or been 
revictualled, in a manner, by the nutriment contained 
in the water. 
Jan. 10.— The ground covered with snow, the pools 
with ice, trees and hedges leafless, and patched here 
and there with a mantle of white, present a cheerless, 
dreary void ; no insects are animating the air, and all 
our songsters are silent and away ; a few miserable 
thrushes are hopping on the ditch bank, swept bare by 
