OLD AND NEW WEATHER-WISDOM.
WE owe a great deal to science, but our obligations—or at least, our feelings of gratitude—are not a little diminished by the aggressive fashion in which it attacks some of our cherished, if mistaken, beliefs. Were science always pre. pared with a substitute for the superstitious lore which it destroys, we should have less cause for complaint; but as a rule, it contents itself with merely stating, in a superior and alto- gether supercilious manner, that there is no scientific ground whatever for the knowledge upon which we have prided our- selves, that it must therefore be based upon the crassest ignorance, and that only ridiculous fools can continue to give it their belief. The ordinary person, conscious of his own comparative nescience, generally submits humbly enough, though it may be somewhat resentfully, to the dictates of professional knowledge ; but it does sometimes occur to him that, after all, science does not know everything, and that it has, before now, explained away one 'or two things which it has since seemed anxious to explain back again. Now meteorological science has doubtless the best and
most scientific reasons for holding all the tenets which it professes, reasons which it is prepared to support with exact and mathematical argument ; but why, on that account, should it think fit to discredit the unscientific lore of popular weather-wisdom, which is unprepared to give chapter and verse for all the rules which it quotes ? Why should not the shepherd still continue to rejoice in a red sunset, and take warning from a red sunrise ? The signs may not be infallible, bat, at least, they are not more deceptive than the published Meteorological Report.
This protest is suggested by an address recently delivered before the Meteorological Society by their President, under the title of "Weather Fallacies." According to this gentleman all signs that do not emanate from the Meteorological Office, or are without its sanction, are equally fallacious. The wisdom of the shepherd is a vain thing ; the warnings that he derives from plants and animals are but fond imagin- ings. Neither flower nor beast has any more prescience of the coming weather than has man himself, and the latter does but waste his time in taking their counsel. In the ease of plants, however, he admits,—" There is no doubt that they act in sympathy with changes in the dampness, gloominess, or chilliness of the air, and as these conditions generally precede rain, one cannot term the indications altogether fallacious ;" but, he adds, "an artificial leaf of paper may be made to do the same thing;" such signs are only a proof of the existing conditions of the weather, and in no sense are they a fore- warning of what is to come. In the same way animals are equally untrustworthy as weather-prophets. They may in- dulge in unusual actions, but such actions do but express their present discomfort, and do not manifest their fear of more dis- comfort in the near future. In other words, animals and plants can tell man what the weather is at the moment, but have no more sense than has man himself of what the weather will be in an hour's time. And, as man is presumably as good a judge of the immediate condition of the weather as any other living organism, he has no need of consultation outside his own feelings. No doubt, from a scientific point of view, this argument entirely demolishes any claim to weather-wisdom on the part of beast, or bird, or flower ; nevertheless, we still presume to have our unscientific doubts. The shepherds and other country people, to whose observation we owe our homely weather-wisdom, were more or less skilled observers in their own homely fashion. They had anxious reason to scan and note the signs of the sky, and if they pro- fessed to find a sometime surer indication of the coming weather in the behaviour of animal and vegetable life, we are convinced they had good cause for their preference. Take the case of the pimpernel; which is known in some places as "the shepherd's dial," owing to the fact that it opens and closes at regular hours. If the simple countryman finds the pimpernel closed when it should be open, though the weather be at the moment both fine and dry, he says, "There will be rain." The more enlightened president of the Meteorological Association, finding the flower under similar conditions, would say, we suppose, This pimpernel tells me that there is damp in the air ; I do not feel any damp in the air ; this pimpernel must, then, either be a fool or a liar.' But the pimpernel, and the shepherd who trusted it, may prove right after all, and the rain may come in spite of the scientific snubbing. The fact is, that though the meteorological expert knows how the pimpernel performs its trick, and the conditions under which it ought to perform, he does not know how easily the pimpernel may be affected by those conditions. Pimpernels and marigolds close their petals, and poplars and maples show the under-part of their leaves because the latter curl when the air is damp. "An artificial leaf of paper may be made to do the same thing if constructed on the same principle as the natural one—a hard, thin paper to represent the upper side of the leaf, and a thicker, unsized paper for the lower side—these will, if stuck together, curl up or bend down in sympathy with the hygro- scopic condition of the air." We do not deny it, nor do we doubt the ability of science to construct leaves of paper which will curl and bend against any natural leaf in creation ; but we doubt its ability to construct a leaf which has all the properties of a natural one ; and we may suspect that the latter has a subtle sensitiveness of its own which would be beyond all the powers of science to reproduce. Surely it is conceivable that the pimpernel or marigold may be sensitive to a growing dampness in the air, which would baffle the registration of even the most delicate scientific contrivances. Sensitiveness has been given to the plant for some end; but though we may guess correctly at the end, we, who are not vegetables, cannot. tell the exact measure of the sensitiveness. For all we know, it may infinitely exceed that of any humanly contrived, machinery. Admitting, too, that dogs and other animals only indicate the weather that they feel, that is hardly a reason for denying that they predict the weather that is to come. The- barometer only indicates the weather that it feels; yet we habitually speak of its indications as predictions, and it is mere cavilling to object to the word. Their critic, however, is not content with asserting that their altered behaviour is due to the dampness, darkness, or chilliness preceding rain, "which render these creatures uneasy," but adds that they are- not more affected by these conditions than is man himself. Evidently he will not even allow that a dog, let alone a. flower, has its own feelings. This contention is one that can hardly be seriously maintained, especially in view of the fact- that men themselves are affected by the weather in a widely varying degree. No one who has lived much with animals,. particularly if he has had to do with large flocks of sheep or herds of cattle, or if he has attempted to study gregariona animal life in its wild state, can have failed to notice how much more swiftly they are seized by the uneasiness which preludes a violent change in the weather, than he is himself, manifesting that uneasiness sometimes under apparent con- ditions of light, warmth, and atmospheric dryness which entirely deceive their human companion. Nor can any one who has been in contact with a wilder and less civilised humanity fail to remark how much quicker the savage or the half-civilised man is to detect atmospheric changes.
Is it not possible—with all respect to the Meteorological, Office we hazard the suggestion—that man himself in the course of ages has lost a sense still possessed by the brute creation, for which the Meteorological Office is but a poor substitute ? Man,. who wears clothes, dwells in houses, and possesses stores- of food which make him independent of the caprices of the- weather, has certainly no longer the same reason to dread its changes as had his ancestor who ran wild in the woods and, lived by his daily hunting. Even where the weather-sense is abnormally developed, as it is in some cases, the complicationa of civilised life deprive its warnings of half their force. People. who suffer from the after-effects of old wounds, or from gout and other like complaints, frequently assert that a renewal of pain heralds a coming change in the weather ; but the warning loses all its weight when the same symptom is produced by individual imprudence, by mental anxiety, or a reckless. indulgence in champagne. Undoubtedly even the average- man is affected to some degree by an impending at- mospheric change ; but, in view of all the precautions- taken by generation after generation against the inclemency- of the sky, it is not reasonable to believe that we can affected to the same degree as he was in his natural state. And, that being the case, the belief that animals have a finer- and more delicate sense—a sense which detects a change- while it is yet extremely distant—is rational enough. Hardly- any writer who has recorded his impressions of some great natural convulsion, cyclone, or earthquake, has not noted the- fact that the feeling of malaise which preceded it seemed to- affect the beast-creation not only more deeply, but also ranch earlier than it affected human beings. If one could only rea& the signs aright, the barometer of nature might well prove- of a more trustworthy character than any artifice of man's, invention.
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