information--he prophesies directly in the teeth of the best meteorological records; for it is a well-known fact that in June the average number of days on which rain falls is under twelve--the lowest number of any month in the year. June, therefore, is in general the most favourable month for hay-making, whatever exceptions there may be in particular years; of which “Francis Moore” could know no more beforehand than the most ignorant peasant whom he deludes. But let us look a little further at the prophecies of the Weather-Almanac. June being lost to the hay-farmer by the fear of “rain and electrical phenomena,” July is to make him happy “with fair and hot weather.” The hay-harvest therefore will be, if possible, deferred by the dupes onward to July. Now in July a continuance of rainy weather commonly happens about the middle of the month; and this periodical tendency to rain has given rise to the popular tradition of St. Swithin. Of course there are exceptions to this tendency; but in this, as in most cases, the popular error has some little foundation in truth. The chances, therefore, are that the farmer who, for fear of “electrical phenomena,” has let June pass over without cutting his grass, will find a very short interval between the beginning of July and the periodical rains of the middle of that month; and thus a great deal of national property may be destroyed, and the credulous individual’s capital expended in vain, because he has chosen to believe in a musty cheat, of which even the propagators of the deception are ashamed. We have endeavoured to show in a former Number (and we shall continue the subject in a future paper), that by the careful use of good instruments, some few facts may be established as guides in operations dependent upon the weather. In the place of these the observations of shepherds, fishermen, and others who have attended to the _passing_ and _local_ signs of winds, and clouds, and tints of the sky, and other omens, are not to be despised. These men are practical philosophers, who may fairly claim some accurate knowledge of the weather from day to day. They are much too sensible and honest to pretend to any power of predicting if it will be fair or foul weather, for a year, or a month, or even a week beforehand. Such a man has been described by the poet:-- ⸻“In his shepherd’s calling he was prompt, And watchful more than ordinary men. Hence had he learned the meaning of all winds, Of blasts of every tone; and, oftentimes, When others heeded not, he heard the South Make subterraneous music, like the noise Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills.”