LETTERS. 455 
the water is carried with much labour from the 
Nile. The inhabitants of thefe places have there- 
fore the pleafure of beholding green fields, when 
the Egyptians fee nothing but a parched earth ; but 
they pay dear for their pleafure, for all the plagues 
of Pharaoh, frogs, flies, gnats, &c. which delight 
in putrid water and a moift earth, make their 
dwellings almoft uninhabitable. 
It is in this exceflive hot weather, that we muff 
admire the wifdom of God, who ordered that a 
quantity of Dew lhould fall in the evenings and 
mornings, and prevent the total deftruclion of the 
country. 
This Dew is particularly ferviceable to the trees, 
which would otherwife never be able to refill this 
heat •, but with this affiftance they thrive well, 
blofiom and ripen their fruit. Therefore, the 
upper parts of the Egyptian trees, at one time of 
the year, do the office of roots, attra&ing nouriffi- 
ment by their abforbent vefiels, the leaves, from 
the moift air ; which the root, at other feafons of 
the year, draws from the damp earth. It is far- 
ther to be obferved, that the dew falls at the fame 
time, that the heavy clouds move from the north 
to fouth ; and by the number of thefe, the 
Egyptians judge of the future, affluence of the 
Nile. Thefe darken the Heavens in the morning j 
but in the day it clears up, and the nights are as 
refplendent with as many liars, in the midft of 
fummer, as the lighted: and cleared: winter nights 
in the north ; this appearance of the fkies in Egypt 
never changes, and has been, undoubtedly, a 
great inducement for the ancient Egyptians, and 
afterwards for the Egyptian Arabs, to ftudy aftro- 
nomy. I am furprized, that none of the European 
Academies of Sciences, have ever thought of fup- 
porti.ng 
