COINCIDENT PROPHETS.
In talking weather—a subject no Englishman can avoid— I was surprised to fend a close and surprising coincidence between the rural labourer and the Victoria Street specialist. The villager thinks—for no articulate reason—that we are going to enjoy three months of fine weather. The specialist said that he expected a fine summer for two reasons. One was that he was beginning to believe in more or less regular cycles, and parallelism suggested a dry summer. The other was that fine summers were apt to follow the sort of late winter we have experienced. May the intuitive and the scientific prophets be together justified ; but it needs a lusty faith to believe them. Does any man or other animal— such, as bird, butterfly or queen wasp—know anything what- ever about the weather of the month, much less the months to come? What a benefit the prophet could confer on the farmer if he were authentic !
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