THE WEATHER.—No. 1.

No term is more familiar to every body than the term air. But if an uninstructed person were asked what the air was, his first answer would probably be, that it was nothing at all. This hand, he might say, which is now plunged in water, on being drawn out of the water is said to be lifted into the air—which means merely that there is nothing, or only vacancy, around it. In other words, he might say, the air is just the name that is given to the empty space, which is immediately over the surface of the earth.

A little reflection, however, or a question or two more, would probably raise some doubts as to the correctness of this philosophy. If the air be nothing, it might be asked, what is the wind? Or what is it, even when there is no wind, which makes very light substances wave or flutter on being swiftly drawn through the air, or, when they are merely dropped from the hand, detains them on their way to the ground? Or, to take another illustration from the commonest experience, who is there that has not seen a bladder distended or swollen with air? If the air be nothing, how comes a portion of it to present such palpable resistance to pressure, when thus confined?

The truth is, the air in which we walk is as much a real and substantial part of our world as the earth on which we walk. Empty space would no more do for our bodies to live in, than it would for our feet to tread upon. The atmosphere, that is, the case of air in which the solid globe is enveloped, is composed of matter as well as that solid globe itself. As the one is matter in a solid, so the other is matter in a fluid state. It is merely a thinner fluid than the water, which also rests upon and encompasses a great part of the earth; but as fishes exist and can only exist in their ocean of water, so do we exist and can only exist in our ocean of air.

The weather is another term with which every body is familiar. But the weather is merely the state or condition of the air. Heat and cold, moisture and drought, wind and calm, all make themselves felt by us principally in and through this element. The study of the weather is but the study of the variations of the air.

Man is so dependent upon the weather, not only for his comfort but even for his subsistence, that to be able to ascertain its coming changes has naturally always been to him an object of extreme solicitude. When we are very desirous to attain any end, we are easily deluded by whomsoever or whatsoever promises to help us in reaching it. The weather is one of the subjects upon which the credulity of mankind, thus excited, has in every age been taken plentiful advantage of; and, indeed, it seems to be the one of all others over which superstition and imposture have succeeded in establishing the widest and firmest dominion. We have outlived most of the other fond beliefs of more ignorant times; the love of money, though as strong and as universal a passion as ever, blinds nobody now to waste his time in the attempt to discover a solvent for turning all metals into gold; the desire of long life no longer keeps our medical chemists busy in experimenting how to extract or compound an elixir of immortality; these hopes have passed away from the imaginations both of men of science and of the multitude. Even the predictions which astrology pretends to draw from the positions and movements of the stars as to the fates of individuals and kingdoms, although they have still their readers, have lost much of the old faith which used to reverence them almost as direct intimations from heaven. But the prognostications of the same vain science which are published every year on the subject of the weather continue to be not only bought but believed in, almost as much as they were in the darkest ages, by hundreds of thousands, even in our own comparatively enlightened England. ‘Moore’s Almanac’ still sells a quarter of a million of copies. If this were the proper place it might not, perhaps, be difficult to point out the causes which have kept this particular superstition alive so long after so many others have perished, and been nearly forgotten; but it will be more to the present purpose to state in a few words the grounds on which it may be confidently pronounced to be to the full as visionary and absurd as any of those which it has survived.

The weather, as we have remarked, is but another name for the state of the air, as to heat or cold, dryness or humidity, rest or motion, and perhaps one or two other similar particulars. The causes, therefore, which influence the condition of the air in these respects are those that occasion the variations of the weather; and these variations cannot be foretold unless we could calculate and measure the exact force of all those influencing causes. There is plainly no other way of arriving at the knowledge in question. To pretend to divine it, as the almanac-makers affect to do, from the movements of one or two particular stars, is as idle as it would be to attempt to discover what wind should blow on a certain day in December by the motion of a bit of straw or paper thrown up into the air in the preceding January. Even if it were proved, which it by no means either is or is likely to be, that the positions of the heavenly bodies in question really exerted any effect whatever upon our atmosphere, and if the amount of that effect could be calculated, the ascertainment of it would be of no use, unless we could also ascertain the force of all the other operating influences. Without this we are, at the best, merely in the condition of the man who should attempt to describe the whole of a large building from the inspection of one of the bricks brought from its ruins. Were our almanac prophets, therefore, even to take the trouble of going through any calculation to get at the information with which they favour us, it would not be the more valuable or trustworthy on that account. But it is almost needless to remark, that they do not proceed through their work of solemn quackery and fraud with so much form and ceremony. The “dull, though mild,” “fair and frosty,” “mild for the season,” “frosty and more fair,” “rain, perhaps hail,” “windy, perhaps rain,” and other phrases of their cheating trade, which they scribble at intervals, along the calendar, are come at by an easier process than even the simplest or shortest calculation—being in fact, with the exception of course that some regard is had to the general character of the different seasons, put down merely at random. There is not an individual among all those by whom the oracle is consulted, who might not in half an hour manufacture quite as good a calendar of the weather for himself.

Even the most accomplished science, in truth, has as yet made comparatively but very little way into this most difficult subject. The principal properties of the air, both chemical and mechanical, have indeed been ascertained. The apparently simple element has been separated into its two component ingredients of nitrogen and oxygen. Its weight has been taken. Its elasticity, or capability of compression and expansion, has been measured. Instruments have been invented for detecting the quantity of heat, or of moisture, or of electricity, with which it may at any particular moment be charged. But the knowledge of all these different circumstances and properties enables us to do but little in predicting the coming changes of the weather. The property of the air, from the observations of which intimations of this kind have hitherto been chiefly derived, is its weight; and even this can only tell us at most, what the weather is to be for a few hours forward, and does not always speak to us to that extent either very certainly or very precisely.

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