WEATHER ECCENTRICITIES.
Some of the smaller attributes of the strange and delicious weather that broke on Bank Holiday are worth recording. If you walked across any fields or commons in the evening you came suddenly upon ice-cold corridors in an otherwise warm world. The reason was that a still mist lay in these places, and did not share in the drift of air warmed by sun and earth radiation. For similar reasons the hill gardens are, or were, many days earlier than the valley -gardens. You could feel the warmth increasing with every hundred yards' progress up the southern slopes. Hunting people noticed curious alterations in scent. It lay like Browning's " good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke in some hollows and clean vanished on the hot ridges. Surprisingly the heat seemed utterly to depress the vitality of the foxes, though not of the hounds, and they proved easier victims than most followers of the hunts could remember. The tilths were so dry that in one point-to-point race that I saw men and horses were almost concealed in the dust they raised. Farmers rejoiced. Never in memory did seed settle so comfortably into the seed-bed. The first act of harvest has been acclaimed.
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