of long grass and weeds, his floating nest in the
pond, that he may have a place to retire to, when the rain fills it up and
drives him from his burrow in its banks.

But man, with all his intellect, is too heedless of the change. Additional
clothing is now as necessary to him as to animals, but it is burdensome to
him in the day time, and therefore he will not wear it, how much soever it
would add to his comfort and safety during the night. He stands with his
thin summer soles upon the changed ground, or sits in a current, or in the
night air, less protected than the animals, and dysentery or fever sends
him to his long home. He has _intelligence_, but he lacks _instinct_. He
has time for the changes of dress which fashion may require, but none for
those which atmospherical changes demand. _Fashion_ has attention in
_advance_; _death_ none till _at the door_.

Now the southern line of the extra-tropical belt of rains descends upon
those who, living between the areas of magnetic intensity, have a dry
season; and the focus of precipitation in that belt descends every where.
"_Winter no come till swamps full_," the Indians told our fathers, and
there is truth in the remark; although like other general truths
respecting the weather, it is not always so in our climate. Rains fall
during the autumnal months, as during the spring months, and while the
transit of the machinery is active and the evaporation is less. And the
magnetic comparative rest, and the seed time and equable "spell" of April
is reproduced in the Indian summer of autumn.

The machinery gradually and irresistibly descends, and with an excess of
polar positive electricity, comes snow; Boreas controls, and winter sets
in, reaching its maximum of cold in January again.

Remembering, then, the differences in the normal conditions of the seasons
and months, and the different characters that the winds, and storms, and
clouds, and other phenomena bear in them respectively, let us now look at
the signs of foul or fair weather not herein before fully stated, upon
which practical reliance may be placed.

In the first place, we must look to the forming condensation. There are
many days when the atmosphere is without visible clouds, but few when it
is entirely without condensation. Such days are seen during the dry season
in the trade-wind region; and with us, in mid-summer drouths, which
partake of this tropical character; and when, at any season, but
particularly