May, in our climate, should be, and normally is, a wet month, and a cool one, considering the altitude of the sun. The atmospheric machinery which the sun moves is, however, ordinarily about six weeks behind it--the latter reaching the tropic the 20th of June, and the former its farthest northern extension about six weeks later. Hence it is not a cause for alarm if May be wet and cool. The great staples, wheat, grass, and oats, are benefited; and corn, according to the proverb, will not be seriously retarded. The movable belt of excessive magneto-electric action, with its tropical electric rains, so exciting to vegetation, and its periods or terms of excessive heat, is on its way north, and sure to arrive in season, and remain long enough to mature the corn. There have been but two seasons in this century when corn did not mature in the latitude of 41 deg.. One during the cold decade, and the cold part of it, between 1815 and 1820; and the other, during the cold half of the fourth decade, between 1835 and 1840. The distinguishing feature, if there be one, of May, is its long, and, for the season, cool storms. These have, in different localities, different names. In pastoral sections we hear of the "_sheep storms_"--those which effect the sheep severely when newly shorn--killing them or reducing them in flesh by their coldness and severity. In relation to this too early shearing, there is an old English proverb, in "Forster's Collection," viz.: "Shear your sheep in May, And you will shear them all away." So there are others called "_Quaker storms_," which occur about the time when that estimable sect hold their yearly meeting. And there are other names given in different localities to these long spring storms. But they are all _mere coincidences_--equinoctial and all. Notwithstanding the storms, however, the temperature rises at a mean. The declination is often as great as in mid-summer. The earth is growing warmer by the increase of magneto-electric action, whatever the state of the atmosphere. The yellow, sickly blade of corn is extending its roots and preparing to "_jump_" when the atmosphere becomes hot, as it is sure to do, when the machinery attains a sufficient altitude, how backward soever it may seem to be. The farmer need not mourn over its backwardness, unless the season is a very extraordinary one, like those of 1816 and 1836. The storms ensure his hay, wheat, and oat crops; the warming earth is at work with the roots of his corn, and is filling with water, and preparing for the hot and rapidly-evaporating suns of mid-summer. The earth would grow warmer if every day was cloudy. By the middle of June the atmospheric machinery approaches its northern acme, the summer sets in, and not unfrequently, as extremely hot days occur during the latter part of the month, as at any period of the summer. But the heat is not so continuous, or great, at a mean.