THATCHED ROOFS. 
duty for him to perform. The “ disinterested party 
duly arrived, looked carefully over the place, made 
a good many jottings in his pocket-book, asked Mr, 
Brown a few casual unimportant questions, just as if 
it was necessary for him to say something, tooktiffiin, 
smoked in the verandah, and went away, but Mr. 
Brown never heard what was settled. Even Wild- 
goose would not tell, and always shuffled the subject. 
Of course this behaviour just tended to make Mr. 
Brown and his friends the more curious to know. 
Messrs. A. B. C. & Co. ordered him to render an aC“ 
count to Mr. Wildgoose of the cost of coolies employed 
in checking the fire. A straw shews which waj the 
wind blows. Mr. Brown came to the conclusion that 
Mr. Wildgoose was going to pay the value of damages 
assessed by the “ disinterested party” and the cost of 
his coolies in putting out the fire, but he never ven- 
tured to ask Wildgoose, who was a very close fellow 
about money matters, and nothing would annoy him 
more than to ask him. In fact he would nob tell ; 
it was no use asking him. 
A day or two after the fire, there came on a good 
shower of rain. It has often been noticed that it very 
often rains not long after a big fire. < an there be 
any atmospheric disturbance which induces or draws 
rain on ? * Whether there is or not, the rain caused 
a disturbance inside the bungalow and cooly lines. 
The people who had been on the roof to prevent dan- 
ger from fire had made holes in the thatch, their feet 
and legs going through the dry crisp grass. Through 
these holes the wet I’an down, and it was evident 
the whole of the buildings would have to be re-thatched, 
Mothing injures a thatched roof more than any one 
walking on it : it is almost impossible to make it 
watertight again, especially if the thatch is of any 
age, and any of it partially rotten ; even if rotten un- 
derneath, it will last a long time if not disturbed, but 
if it is once broken up, however, slightly, the more 
you try to patcli it up the more it becomes damaged, 
because the action of the feet of those who try to 
repair it merely increases the damage. 
^ The heat of a great fire produces a vacuum, which 
the air from every quarter rushes in to fill np. Hence 
the friction gives birth to electricity, which probably 
acts on moisture clouds, causingtheir particles to coalesce 
and be deposited as rain. We well remember the 
cannon firing of a sham battle on the Galle Face bring- 
ing on a ' tremendous downpour of rain, whilst it 
was notorious, during the Austro-Prussian and Franco- 
German wars, that battles in which artillery was 
much employed were followed by ‘‘heavy wet,”--EIp, 
