A succession of showers passing across the country to the north, within one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles, almost always produces a southerly wind to the southward of them. There is more that is peculiar about these belts of showers. Although they consist of large highly-electrified cumuli, there is a strong tendency to cirro-stratus condensation in the lower part of the trade over them; and it is that condensation rather than the cumuli, which attracts the surface atmosphere from the south. They would be storms, if the atmosphere had not a summer-tropical tendency to showers. There is, too, a tendency in these belts to extend to the south, and it is generally, as far as I have observed, the extension southerly of those belts, by the formation of new showers which terminate the "hot spells" or "heated terms" of mid-summer. The very oppressive and fatal one of the summer of 1853, was, in character, a type of all--although exceeding them in severity. The first three or four days were calm, hot, and smoky--an appearance which attends all similar periods more or less, refracting the red ray of the light, and giving the sun a peculiar dry-weather, red appearance. (This smoky haze is usually atmospheric, and occasionally seen even in March, although not unfrequently fires in the woods fill the air with actual smoke, and very much increase it, and when this is so, the odor of the smoke is often perceptible.) Then we began to have a fresh south-west by south breeze in the day-time, hauling to the south-west, and dying away at nightfall. The next day, the tendency to condensation and consequent belt of showers having extended further south and approached nearer to us, the S. S. W. wind blew _fresher_ toward it, and _did not die away at nightfall_. During the evening the reflection of the lightning playing upon the tops of the thunder clouds, just visible at the north (heat-lightning, it is termed, because supposed to be unaccompanied by thunder, but in reality lightning reflected from clouds at too great a distance for the thunder to be heard), and the continuance of the southerly wind after nightfall, gave sure evidence of the coming showers the next day, and an end of the excessive heat for that time. So ended both of those long-to-be-remembered "heated terms" of 1853.