concentrated in the winter, is no less dangerous than to tell children of bugbears and goblins. Fear will find every house haunted; and idleness will wait for ever for the moment of illumination.

This distinction of seasons is produced only by imagination operating on luxury. To temperance every day is bright, and every hour is propitious to diligence. He that shall resolutely excite his faculties, or exert his virtues, will soon make himself superior to the seasons, and may set at defiance the morning mist, and the evening damp, the blasts of the east, and the clouds of the south.

'It was the boast of the Stoic philosophy, to make man unshaken by calamity, and unelated by success; incorruptible by pleasure, and invulnerable by pain: these are heights of wisdom which none ever attained, and to which few can aspire; but there are lower degrees of constancy necessary to common virtue; and every man, however he may distrust himself in the extremes of good or evil, might at least struggle against the tyranny of the climate, and refuse to enslave his virtue or his reason to the most variable of all variations, the changes of the weather.' With some homely lines, not altogether inappropriate, we conclude the subject.

The WEATHER.

The wise man remarks-as we all ought to know,-
'Who observeth the wind, shall not find time to sow;
And he who regardeth the clouds shall not reap,'
For doubt and dismay in his bosom shall heap;
'But at morn sow thy seed, nor at eve hold thy hand,
Nor fear but thy seed prosper well in the land','
Notwithstanding the weather, the wind and the rain,
God prospers us still, and man must not complain.
If the weather be open, 'tis good for the lambs,
And grass springs up fresh for the use of their dams;
If the snow shall descend, and be followed by sleet,
It serves to protect from the cold my young wheat;

1 Ecclesiastes xi, 4-6.
Bb

If mild, then my team can go out with the plough;
In frost, they can carry manure from the mow;
And, whate'er be the weather, the wind and the rain,
I prosper in sooth, nor have cause to complain.

If dry, it is good for the corn in the field;
If wet, then my turnips the better will yield;
If the corn be less good when we happen to reap,
More plenteous the grass for the cows and the sheep;
If hot, it is better to ripen the grain;

If cloudy, my men their work better sustain ;
And, whate'er be the weather, the wind and the rain,
Still all goes on well, and I never complain.
Instead, then, of watching the clouds and the wind,
That promise most gracious I bear in my mind,
That' thro' ages, so long as the earth shall remain,
Shall seed-time require, and harvest give grain,
The cold and the heat, and the day and the night,
And summer and winter their course take aright';'
And, whate'er be the weather, the wind and the rain,
I will still trust in God, and will never complain.

The Virginia-creeper (hedera quinque-folia) is particularly rich and beautiful in the autumnal months, with its leaves of every hue, from a bright to a dark green and deep crimson.

That highly-esteemed fish, the salmon, now ascends rivers to deposit its spawn in their gravelly beds, at a great distance from their mouths.

The trees are now stripped of their foliage. See T.T. for 1818, p. 294. On the decay and fall of the leaf, see also T.T. for 1817, p. 333, and in the Naturalist's Diary, for October and November, in our former volumes. A popular description of Forest Trees, alphabetically arranged, at the close of the different months, will be found in T.T. for 1816.

TREES in AUTUMN.

Alas! their splendour does but mark their fall,
Such is, and e'er shall be the lot of all;

Soon the north winds th' neighbouring vales shall fill
With branchy spoils from every tow'ring hill :
The leaves by fits too, strewn upon the ground,

May rouse the wanderer from his thoughts profound;

Genesis viii, 22.

Yet still for me these ruins have their charms,
And, if some fond regret my soul alarms,
With nature's grief I love to mix my own,

Well pleased to stray amidst these scenes alone;
And whilst I on their leafy honours tread,
The days of vanity and folly fled,

Let me to musing melancholy bring

A tribute equal to the sprightly spring;

Not her whose cloud-wrapped brow is mixed with storms,
Or angry lightnings which her face deforms;
But her who through her misty veil we trace,
When lovely Autumn shews each softer grace,
With pensive looks, calm front, and dewy eyes,
That sober sympathy to all supplies.

DELILLE.

The stock-dove (columba ænas), one of the latest winter birds of passage, arrives from more northern regions, towards the end of this month. The females and young of the brown or Norway rat now leave their holes at the sides of ponds and rivers, to which they had betaken themselves in the spring, and repair to barns, out-houses, corn-stacks, and dwellings. See T.T. for 1817, p. 338. Moles now make their nests, in which they lodge during the winter, and which are ready for depositing their young in the spring. These are distinguished by being of a larger size than the common mole-hill, and are lined with dried grass, leaves, &c.

The woodman now repairs to the woodlands to fell coppices, underwood, and timber. Some particulars of forest scenery, in this month, are noticed in T.T. for 1818, p. 297.

Violent storms of wind are not uncommon in October and November; the partial injury which they occasion is amply compensated by the benefits derived from them, in purifying the atmosphere.

Winds from all quarters agitate the air,
And fit the limpid element for use,

Else noxious. Oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams,
All feel the fresh'ning impulse, and are cleansed
By restless undulation. E'en the oak

Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm.

He seems indeed indignant, and to feel
The impression of the blast with proud disdain,
Frowning, as if in his unconscious arm

He held the thunder. But the monarch owes
His firm stability to what he scorns,

More fixed below, the more disturbed above.

Winds have been measured, and their velocity calculated. The following is Mr. John Smeaton's table of the rate at which the wind travels :

The most decisive circumstance tending to show the great velocity of brisk winds, (says Dr. O. Gregory,) is that of the rapid passage of the celebrated aëronaut M. Garnerin from London to Colchester. On the 30th of June, 1802, the wind being strong, though not impetuous, M. Garnerin and another gentleman ascended with an inflammable air-balloon from Ranelagh Gardens, on the south-west of London, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon; and in exactly three quarters of an hour they descended near the sea, at the distance of four miles from Colchester. The distance of the places of ascent and descent is at least sixty miles; so that, allowing no time for the elevation and depression of

the balloon, but supposing the whole period occupied in transferring it in a path nearly parallel to the earth's surface, its velocity must have been at the rate of eighty miles per hour. If, therefore, the wind moved no faster than the balloon, its velocity was then eighty miles per hour, or 1173 feet per second; a celerity but little less than the greatest assigned by Kraaft: and hence it is probable, that the velocity of very impetuous winds is not less than 130 or 140 feet per second'.

A most dreadful tempest happened on the 27th November, 1703, commencing three days before it arrived at its height. A strong west wind set in about the middle of the month, the force of which was increased every day till the 27th. Great damage was sustained, and much alarm excited, both by sea and land. The late Rev. Dr. Stennett, in endeavouring to account for it, observes, that 'having most probably taken its rise in America, it made its way across the western ocean, and, collecting confederate matter in its passage over the seas, spent its fury on those parts of the world, whither this army of terrors was principally commissioned.' The violence of the wind produced a hoarse, dreadful noise, like one continued peal of thunder; whilst the excessive darkness of the night added to the horror of the scene. Some accounts say, that it lightened; but it is probable that this apprehension arose from there being, at times, many meteors and vapours in the air; the hurry and agitation of nature being too great to admit of thunder and lightning in their usual course.

Great loss of property was sustained; many painful accidents happened to those who escaped with

'Hay's Nat. Phil. vol. i, p. 282, and Wood's Mosaic History of the Creation of the World, p. 172, 2d edit. a most pleasing and justly popular work.

2 The whole loss of property in the above storm was estimated at four millions of money-of lives about 8000-and cattle without number!