i879-] 
in Relation to the Weather. 
73i 
A connexion between the movements of the animal world 
and the revolution of the seasons has been observed since 
the earliest dawn of Science, and to explain those move- 
ments may still furnish problems for the acutest of natural- 
ists ; but it would appear to be inferring too much to 
conclude, from their ordinary migrations, a possession of 
prophetic insight into the course of the weather. It seems 
more rational to believe, with regard to most of these ap- 
pearances, that it is by virtue of -their highly-developed 
senses and peculiar nervous organisation that some species 
become predictive in their habits. Whether the supposed 
presentiment which induces them to deviate from their 
normal line of aCtion arises simply from a vague feeling of 
disquietude, or results from an aCtual perception and con- 
notation of various phenomena which escape the human 
observer, is very difficult for us to decide. 
To observe with exactness and to compare notes in a 
certain fashion are arts in which many insignificant crea- 
tures excel, and human beings are very apt to underrate 
both the power of observation and of “ co-relating” in animals. 
The very conditions of their existence give them indeed an 
advantage as compared with the more artificial life of man, 
inasmuch as they are more en rapport with the physical 
forces of Nature, and more in harmony, therefore, with their 
onward movement. 
It has been said that, in regard to weather prediction, the 
conditon of the barometer cannot, in any direCt way, be 
regarded as prophetical, as it simply registers the present 
condition of the superincumbent air; yet by virtue of the 
association of phenomena, it must be allowed to be practi- 
cally prophetical, inasmuch as it registers conditions which, 
in a general way, have a certain sequence. 
And it appears that this simple law of the association of 
phenomena applies also, and with perhaps greater force, to 
the movements of the animal world : for it can scarcely be 
doubted that animals are in many cases highly sensitive 
recorders of atmospheric influences, and that they often 
register the aCtion of those more subtle forces to which the 
movements of the barometer are less intimately related. 
3 A 
VOL IX. (N.S.) 
