ainst the wind; it is a roof, but it is not a wall. The
real want in blowy weather is a dense low screen, perfectly wind-tight,
as high as the knee above the ground. Thus, if a traveller has to encamp
on a bare turf plain, he need only turn up a sod seven feet long by two
feet wide, and if he succeeds in propping it on its edge, it will form a
sufficient shield against the wind.

In heavy gales, the neighbourhood of a solitary tree is a positive
nuisance. It creates a violent eddy of wind, that leaves palpable
evidence of its existence. Thus, in corn-fields, it is a common result of
a storm to batter the corn quite flat in circles round each tree that
stands in the field, while elsewhere no injury takes place. This very
morning that I am writing these remarks, November 158, I was
forcibly struck by the appearance of Kensington Gardens, after last
night's gale, which had covered the ground with an extraordinary amount
of dead leaves. They lay in a remarkably uniform layer, of from three to
five inches in depth, except that round each and every tree the ground
was absolutely bare of leaves for a radius of about a yard. The effect
was as though circular discs had been cut out, leaving the edges of the
layer of leaves perfectly sharp and vertical. It would have been a
dangerous mistake to have slept that night at the foot of any one of
those trees.

Again, in selecting a place for bivouac, we must bear in mind that a gale
never blows in level currents, but in all kinds of curls and eddies, as
the driving of a dust-storm, or the vagaries of bits of straw caught up
by the wind, unmistakably show us. Little hillocks or undulations,
combined with the general lay of the ground, are a chief cause of these
eddies; they entirely divert the current of the wind from particular
spots. Such spots should be looked for; they are discovered by watching
the grass or the sand that lies on the ground. If the surface be quiet in
one place, while all around it is agitated by the wind, we shall not be
far wrong in selecting that place for our bed, however unprotected it may
seem in other respects. It is constantly remarked, that a very slight
mound or ridge will shelter the ground for many feet behind it; and an
old campaigner will accept such shelter gladly, notwithstanding the
apparent insignificances of its cause.

Shelter from the Sky.--The shelter of a wall is only sufficient against
wind or driving rain; we require a roof to shield us a