iscovered, were thickly clothed with
forests. Since these have been destroyed, the climate has been dry. In
Fuerteventura the inhabitants are sometimes obliged to flee to other
islands to avoid perishing from thirst. Similar instances occur in the
Cape Verdes. Parts of Egypt, Syria, and Persia, that once were wooded,
are now arid and sterile deserts.

In the temperate zones these results are not so immediately apparent.
It is now much in doubt whether the climate of our country has changed
its character within the last two hundred years. Jefferson and Dr.
Rush both contended that it had. Our oldest inhabitants assert that in
their day our winters began nearly two months earlier than they do
now.

The general laws laid down in relation to rain are these:--

1. It decreases in quantity as we approach the poles.

2. It decreases as we pass from maritime to inland countries.

3. It decreases in the temperate zones on eastern coasts as compared
with western coasts, but within the tropics it is the reverse.

4. More rain falls in mountainous than in level countries.

5. Most rain falls within the tropics.

* * * * *

The rainless regions, not deserts, are parts of Guatemala, the table-land
of Mexico, the Peruvian coast, parts of Morocco, Egypt, Arabia,
Persia, etc.

The electric character of the air is another subject of interest, and
a leading one in Meteorology. What can be more magnificent, what more
awful, than those storms of lightning and thunder which are witnessed
sometimes even in our own latitudes?

Faraday, who as a chemist and philosophical writer is of the highest
authority, professes to have demonstrated that one single gram of
water contains as much electricity as can be accumulated in eight
hundred thousand Leyden jars, each requiring to charge it thirty turns
of the large machine at the Royal Institution.

It is not intended that this astounding statement should be received
without some grains of allowance; but a very elegant and scientific
writer, who adopts it without hesitation, adds, "We can from this
crystal sphere [of water] evoke heat, light, electricity in enormous
quantities, and beyond these we can see powers or forces for which, in
the poverty of our ideas and our words, we have not names."

Flashes of electricity have been detected, during warm, close weather,
issuing from some species of plants. The Tuberose and African Marigold
have been seen to emi