ominous and unwelcome sound is the
call of the cuckoo, which I hear and have heard at nearly all hours for
many days, and which surely bodes rain. The countryman who first named
this bird the "rain crow" hit the mark. The cuckoo is a devourer of
worms and caterpillars, and why he should be interested in rain is hard
to see. The tree-toad calls before and during a shower, mainly, I think,
because he likes to have his back wet, but why a well-dressed bird like
the cuckoo should become a prophet of the rain is a mystery, unless the
rain and the shadows are congenial to the gloomy mood in which he
usually seems to be. He is the least sprightly and cheery of our birds,
and the part of doleful prophet in our bird drama suits him well.

A high barometer is best for the haymakers and it is best for the human
spirits. When the smoke goes straight up, one's thoughts are more likely
to soar also, and revel in the higher air. The persons who do not like
to get up in the morning till the day has been well sunned and aired
evidently thrive best on a high barometer. Such days do seem better
ventilated, and our lungs take in fuller draughts of air. How curious it
is that the air should seem heavy to us when it is light, and light when
it is heavy! On those sultry, muggy days when it is an effort to move,
and the grasshopper is a burden, the air is light, and we are in the
trough of the vast atmospheric wave; while we are on its crest, and are
buoyed up both in mind and in body, on the crisp, bright days when the
air seems to offer us no resistance. We know that the heavier salt
sea-water buoys us up more than the fresh river or pond water, but we do
not feel in the same way the lift of the high barometric wave. Even the
rough, tough-coated maple-trees in spring are quickly susceptible to
these atmospheric changes. The farmer knows that he needs sunshine and
crisp air to make maple-sugar as well as to make hay. Let the high
blue-domed day with its dry northwest breezes change to a warmer,
overcast, humid day from the south, and the flow of sap lessens at once.
It would seem as if the trees had nerves on the outside of their dry
bark, they respond to the change so quickly. There is no sap without
warmth, and yet warmth, without any memory of the frost, stops the flow.

The more the air presses upon us the lighter we feel, and the less it
presses upon us the more "logy" we feel. Climb to the top of a mountain
ten thousand feet high, and