146 ON THE FOLIATION 
fwer to the heavenly bodies ; entirely negle£!> 
ing the things that grow round about us. 
We 
be not fo good a guide to us as the vegetation of certainplants | 
iuppofing we could once fix on the proper one for Towing 
each kind of feed. I have been told by a common hulband- 
man in Norfolk, that when the oak catkins begin to fhed 
their feed, it is a proper time to fow barley ; and why might 
not fome other tree ferve to direft the farmer as to other 
feeds ? The prudent gardener never ventures to put his houfe 
plants out, till the mulberry leaf is of a certain growth. 
It appears from Geminus in his elements of afironomy, 
that the coincidence of the feafons as to heat, cold, rain, &c., 
with the rifings and fettings of the ftars, had caufed a notion 
to prevail among the antient?, thatthefe celeltial phenomena 
were not merely the figns, but the caufes of the different 
feafons. This notion, which he takes fome pains to over- 
turn, would never have begun in fuch uncertain climates, as 
are found in thefe parts of the world. But in ^Egypt, where 
the Nile begins to rife regularly upon the appearance of Si- 
rius, or the dog-ftar, where the Etefian winds begin, and 
c.eafe to blow conflantly about the fame time of the year ; 
and in general the variation of the weather is nearly uni- 
form, fuch a notion might eafily prevail in the minds of an 
unenlightened, and fuperflitious people. From them it was 
propagated into Greece, where, tho’ it muff have been fre- 
quently thwarted by a much lefs conftant uniformity, yet it 
might ftill be upheld by that blind veneration, which generally 
attends antiquity, efpecially amongfl the ignorant, and un- 
learned. As for the Romans, they went frill farther, for 
without even adapting an almanack to their own climate 
and time, they fixed the feafons for hufhandry-work of all 
kinds by the rifings and fettings of the liars, fuch as they 
found 
