his claims as a prophet, this year; for, he has
predicted that one of the most fearful storms
known for a century past will take place in
Venetia between the 29th of November and the
3rd of December.

The belief that if it rain on St. Swithin's Day
it will rain for forty days thereafter, is still very
general in the rural districts, though not to the
old extent. Perhaps many who may have heard
the saying, may not know how it originated,
or who the saint was. The information may be
given in very few words. He was Bishop of
Winchester, died in 862, and was buried in
Winchester churchyard. At a later period he
was canonised, and it was resolved to dig up his
remains and place them in a shrine in the
cathedral; but, when the day arrived for his
removal, it began to rain, so heavily that the men
employed were unable to work, and it
continued to rain in the same manner for forty
days; hence if it rain on St. Swithin's Day it
will rain for forty days afterwards, and if it
be fine on that day it will continue fine for a like
period. A similar belief is current in France,
with respect to St. Medard and St. Gervais, and
occasionally causes great discouragement among
the cultivators of the soil. Dr. Berigny relates
that he was once called in to prescribe for a
female patient who lived in the neighbourhood
of Paris. Medicine had no effect upon her, and
shortly afterwards her husband fell sick, and
presented identical symptoms. After a good
deal of questioning he elicited from them that
their crops had been bad for several years, and,
it having rained on St. Medard's Day, which
is on the 8th of June, they became so fearful
that a similar misfortune was in store for them
again, that both were rendered ill. All the
efforts of the doctor to discover the origin of
their superstition were in vain, but he was
enabled, by a reference to the meteorological
records of the Paris observatory, to ascertain
that there was no foundation for it.

It is said that if timber be felled when the
moon is on the increase, it will decay, and that
it should always be cut when the moon is on the
wane. Nobody can give a reason for this,
yet the belief is common in several countries,
and, what is still more strange, professed
woodcutters, whose occupation is to fell timber, aver,
as the actual result of their observation, that
the belief is well founded. It was formerly
interwoven in the Forest Code of France, and,
unless expunged by recent alterations, is so still.
The same opinion is said to obtain in the German
forests, in Brazil, and in Yucatan. The theory
given, to account for what is assumed to be a
fact, is, that as the moon grows, the sap rises,
and the wood, therefore, is less dense than when
the moon is waning, because at that time the
sap in the tree diminishes. No evidence whatever
can be offered in support either of the belief
or of the theory; and as a matter of fact we
may rest assured that there is no more foundation
for the one than the other. There are persons
who will say, If you admit that the moon is capable
of drawing a vast body of water to a heap,
why not admit also the possibility of her
attracting the moisture in a tree? To these it
may be replied, that the rise or fall of the sap
depends on the quantity of heat which reaches
the roots of the tree, and not at all on attraction.
The belief in the moon's influence as regards
timber, extends to vegetables, but we believe the
idea to be less generally entertained in this
country than abroad, where they act upon the
maxim that root crops should be planted when
the moon is decreasing, and plants, such as peas,
beans, and others, which bear their crops on their
branches, between new and full moon. Some
time ago, a body of sages had a long discussion,
and wrote numerous treatises, to explain why
it was that a lump of metal, if laid on water,
would sink to the bottom, while, if it were
beaten out into a sheet, it would float. The
theories were very plausible, though they were
opposed to one another. At last it occurred to
one of the sages to suggest that it would be well
to ascertain by actual experiment if it were
really the fact that the metal would float under
the circumstances stated. Accordingly, a vessel
of water was brought, a sheet of the metal
was laid on it, and it very soon lay at the
bottom. An example of the kind is furnished
by Toaldo, the Italian meteorologist, who, to
account for the belief current among wine-growers,
that wine, the making of which is begun in the
old moon and finished in the new, is never clear
nor of good quality, attributes it to the
circumstance that the absence of the lunar rays, by
lowering the temperature of the air, checks the
fermentation. Now, if it had occurred to him to
expose the most delicate thermometer to the
full light of the moon shining with its greatest
lustre, he would have found that the mercury
was not elevated a hair's breadth; neither
would it have been, if he had exposed it in the
focus of her rays, concentrated by the most
powerful lenses. This has been proved by actual
experiment.

The power of the moon's rays to produce
blindness, where a man has slept with his face
exposed to them, is firmly believed in by sailors,
and numerous cases have been related in which
this has happened. It may be admitted that
blindness has ensued where a sailor has foolishly
laid himself down on the deck on his back to
sleep, with his face exposed to the bright moon,
in warm latitudes. But it does not follow that
the blindness was caused by the moon's rays;
for more probably, it was owing to the rapid
radiation of heat from the exposed portions of
the body, or from some other physical cause.
The moon is also supposed to exercise influence
on the skin by darkening it. In this matter we
have the aid of photography to assure us that
the moon's rays must positively be incapable of
affecting the colour of the skin. Dr. Lardner,
in his writings on the subject, says that the lunar
rays, even when condensed by the most powerful
lenses, do not darken paper which has
been steeped in a solution of chloride of silver.
In this statement, however, he goes rather
beyond the facts of the case, as Mr. Delarue's