The attentive observer will very soon be satisfied that the seasons have a character; and those of every year differ in a greater or less degree from those of other years in the same decade, and those of one decade not unfrequently from those of some other. _Periodicity_ is stamped upon all of them, and upon all resulting consequences. Like seasons come round, and, like productiveness or unproductiveness, healthy or epidemic diatheses, attend them. We have seen that, in relation to mean temperature, there are such periodical diversities, but they are more strongly marked in the character of storms, and other successions of phenomena. "_All signs fail in a drouth_," for then all attempts at condensation are partial, imperfect, and ineffectual. "_It rains very easy_," it is said, at other times, and so it seems to do, and with comparatively little condensation. In the one case, no great reliance can be placed upon indications which are entirely reliable in the other. So "_all our storms clear off cold_," or, "_all our storms clear off warm_," are equally common expressions--as the _prevailing classes_ of storms give a _character_ to the _seasons_. It "_rains every Sunday now_," is sometimes said, and is often peculiarly true--the storm waves having just then a weekly or semi-weekly period, and one falls upon Sunday for several successive weeks; and when it is so, _that_ coincidence is sure to be noticed and commented upon, and the other perhaps disregarded. If the seasons depended upon the northward and southward journey of the sun alone, entire regularity might be expected--for we have no reason to believe that magnetism and electricity contain, within themselves, inherently, any tendency to irregularity, or periodicity; and, the sun being constant in his _periods_, would be constant in his _influence_. But he is inconstant and variable in his influence, and it is apparently traceable to the existence of spots; but I am not quite sure that it is occasioned by the _observable_ spots alone. Grant that the intensity and power of his rays differ on the same day, in different years, and that difference may be attributable in part to causes which our telescopes can not discover.