_Animals_, by some peculiar sensibility to electrical or other atmospheric influence, often indicate changes of weather by their peculiar motions and habits. _Ants._--An universal bustle and activity observed in ant hills may be generally regarded as a sign of rain. The ants frequently appear all in motion together and carry their eggs about from place to place. _Asses._--When asses bray more than ordinary, particularly if they shake their ears as if uneasy, it is said they predict rain, and particularly showers. We have noticed, that, in showery weather, a donkey, confined in a yard near the house, has brayed before every shower, and generally some minutes before the rain has fallen, as if some electrical influence, produced by the concentrating power of the approaching rain-cloud, caused a tickling in the windpipe of the animal, just before the shower came up. Whatever this electric state of the air preceding a shower may be, it seems to be the same that causes in other animals some peculiar sensations,--which makes the peacock squall the pintado call “come-back,” and which creates a variety of prognosticative motions in the different species of the animal kingdom. An expressive English adage says, When that the ass begins to bray, Be sure we shall have rain that day. We have, says the writer of the preceding, repeatedly been able to give our hay-makers useful admonitions founded solely on the braying of the ass. Thus the proverb says truly, ’Tis time to cock your hay and corn When the old donkey blows his horn. _Barometer._--There is no instrument now more generally used for ascertaining the coming weather than the barometer. It may however be remarked, that it is more from its rising or falling, than from its height or lowness, that we are to infer fair or foul weather. Generally speaking, the rising of the mercury presages clear fair weather, and its falling, foul weather, as rain, snow, high winds, and storms. In very hot weather, the falling of the mercury indicates thunder. In winter, the rising indicates frost, and in frosty weather, if the mercury fall three or four divisions, there will follow a thaw; but in a continued frost, if the mercury rise, it will snow. When foul weather happens soon after the falling of the mercury, expect but little of it; and, on the contrary, expect but little fair weather when it proves fair shortly after the mercury has risen. In foul weather, when the mercury rises much and high, and so continues for two or three days before the foul weather is quite over, then expect a continuance of fair weather to follow. In fair weather, when the mercury falls much and low, and thus continues for two or three days before the rain comes, then expect a great deal of wet, and probably high winds. The unsettled motion of the mercury denotes uncertain and changeable weather.