METEOROLOGICAL. THE ATMOSPHERE, GASES, DEW, RAIN AND CLIMATE. THE following extracts from a Manual of Agriculture, for the use of families and schools, now in preparation under the direction of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, for the purpose of promoting a knowledge and love of the subject among the people, by George B. Emerson and Charles L. Flint, will be found interesting to our numerous readers. The air forms a coat about us, which we tity of vapor which air can hold depends call the atmosphere, which extends up-upon the warmth of the air. Wind blowwards to the height of forty or fifty miles ing from the sea is always saturated with from the surface of the earth. It is that moisture. If it blow upon low land warmwhich we breathe, and by which we are jer than itself, it becomes warmer, and reconstantly surrounded. It is very thin tains all this moisture. If upon land and light, and yet has some weight. colder, and gradually or rapidly higher, it The wind is air in motion. We feel it, is cooled, and parts with its moisture, and we may feel the still air when we move which descends in the form of rain. our hand rapidly through it, and we feel If air full of moisture is met by air and hear it when we move a stick swiftly much colder than itself, the sudden coolthrough it. The air is springy or elastic, ing causes the moisture to be precipitated and is essential to burning or combustion. in torrents of rain. Without air a candle would be extin- Electricity is always evolved during guished, and fire would go out. It is not evaporation; and a cloud formed by evapless necessary to the life of man and other oration must be full of electricity. When animals, and to plants. a cloud so charged meets another cloud, The air is composed of, first, a thin fluid or a mass of air charged with the opposite or gas, called oxygen (producer of acids), electricity, the opposite electricities unite and, second, another gas called nitrogen in a lightning flash, and the moisture, (producer of nitre), or azote (not sustain-which had been held suspended by the acing life). The air also contains, third, a tion of electricity, is precipitated to the gas called carbonic acid, and, fourth, a ground in rain. small quantity of watery vapor, and it But the subject of rain is imperfectly commonly has floating in it smoke and understood. No person can yet predict dust. with certainty whether next month or next Oxygen is the most vital part of the air, week will be dry or rainy. No signs are that which is essential to our life and to entirely reliable. When the sun sets in a combustion. It is invisible, and has no mass of clouds, rain may be expected withtaste nor smell. in a night or a day. But it may not come. Nitrogen does not sustain combustion, When the swallows often dip their wings nor the life and respiration of animals.**in the water over which they are flying; Carbonic acid is the gas which rises in when the crow cries louder and more frethe form of bubbles in the fermentation of quently than common; when the waterbeer, &c., and is formed by the combina-fowl are very active and noisy; when dogs tion of oxygen and carbon or charcoal. appear unusually sleepy and dull; when Every place occupied by a living being, pigs run about and look uneasy; when the particularly by night, ought to be venti- croaking of frogs is uncommonly loud and lated; that is, it ought to have a commu- general, and earth-worms are seen in great nication, by means of a chimney flue, or numbers on the surface, some people exin some other way, with the pure open pect rain. But no prognostics are sure. air. Neither the body nor the mind of a Careful and intelligent observation of person who has to breathe night after the barometer will often enable a person to night the close, foul air of an ill-ventilated foresee rain for some hours, or a day, or room, can remain healthy. **** possibly longer, before it comes. It is only By daylight, and especially in the sun-of late that precise and systematic observshine, plants absorb carbonic acid. This ations have been carried on, upon a large gas is a compound of oxygen and carbon scale, to discover the laws of storms. or pure charcoal. Plants decompose it, These are found, in America, to come from convert the carbon into the substance of the west, and travel rapidly eastward; the wood, stem, leaves, and other solid and, hereafter, we may know certainly the parts, and throw back the oxygen into the approach of a storm many hours before it air. reaches us. There are other atmospheric phenom- As, in New England, we are liable, in ena, which it is important for the hus-some years, to long droughts in spring or bandman to be acquainted with,-such summer, and in others to excessive rain, as dew and hoar frost, which occur during it should be the aim of the farmer to renthe night, when the sky is clear; snow, der his fields, as far as possible, indepenwhich is frozen rain; hail and hurricanes, dent of variations in the amount of moistwhich are attributed to the action of a ure. A rich soil, rendered rich and melparticular cause called electricity. low by judicious ploughing and thorough Dew depends upon a property which all cultivation, and by a wise system of undersolid substances have, in a greater or less draining, is the best preventive to the degree, of radiating heat. consequences of drought which the farmer RAIN. Water is, from its nature, al-can provide. The saine measures are also ways disposed to evaporate, and the quan- most effectual against excessive rain. 1,854 Worcester's Quarto Pages Dictionary The Standard Over 1,000 Mustrations. More Words and Meanings than any other English Dictionary. THE TWENTY-FIFTH THOUSAND IN PRESS. THE EXECUTIVE PRINTING, THE DEBATES OF CONGRESS, THE OFFI CIAL RECORDS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, AND THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE, TO CONFORM IN ORTHOGRAPHY TO Worcester's Quarto, IN ACCORDANCE WITH CERTIFICATES JOHN HEART, Esq., Superintendent Public Printing. JOHN C. FITZPATRICK, Clerk Accounts Senate U. S B. G. DANIELS, Esq., Clerk Accounts H. R. Ог WORCESTERIAN ORTHOGRAPHY IN THE U. S. SENATE. In a recent discussion, in the Senate, of the bill to carry into effect the treaties between the United States and Siam, China, Japan, Persia, and other countries, the following orthographical amendments were made, as reported in the Washington Globe: Mr. Bayard. I have another amendment: wherever the word "offense" is spelt with an "s" instead of a "c," to strike out the "s," and insert "c," because it is an offence against the English language to spell it in that way. [Laughter.] The Presiding Officer. That modification will be made. Mr. Bayard. I move, also, in the fourteenth line of the twenty-eighth section, to strike out the second "e" in the word "employee." The Presiding Officer. It will be so modified. The bill was reported in the Senate as amended, and the amendments were concurred in, and the bill ordered to be engrossed, and read a third time. It was read a third time, and passed. WORCESTER'S QUARTO DICTIONARY. OPINIONS IN ENGLAND. The lapse of a few months will be sufficient to establish WORCESTER'S DICTIONARY as the acknowledged standard of reference among the scholars of England and America.- London Literary Gazette, Feb. 11, 1860. Letters commendatory have been received from the following eminent English philologists, namely: CHARLES RICHARDSON, the venerable author of Richardson's Dictionary; HERBERT COLERIDGE, Secretary Philological Society; RICHARD C. TRENCH, B. H. SMART, and also from REV. DR. BOSWORTH, Professor Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, who says: "In short, it is the most complete and practical, the very best as well as the cheapest English Dictionary that I know, and I have, therefore, no doubt of its success. PROF. W. WHEWELL, D. D., Master Trinity College, Cambridge, England, says: "The Dictionary is more complete and exact than any of its predecessors." H. R. H. PRINCE ALBERT, in an autograph letter addressed to Hon. EDWARD EVERETT, dated Buckingham Palace, May 9, 1860, writes: My dear Mr. Everett,—I have to acknowledge the receipt of the very handsome copy of Dr. Worcester's Dictionary, which you have been good enough to send me; and I must beg of you also to assure the publishers that I am very sensible of the kind feeling which they manifested toward me. It is very gratifying to see that the parent language receives such valuable aid for its development and the preservation of its purity in your country. With regard to Webster's Dictionary, it may interest those who wish to buy a new Dictionary, to know that the much talked of new edition is printed on the old plates, with some additions. Worcester's Dictionary is a new work-a correct record of the use and meaning of the English language at the present time. It is superior to Webster's Dictionary in every particular; and it is so admitted by the literary men both of England and America. The work has been introduced into the public schools of Boston, PROVIDENCE, NEW YORK, ST. LOUIS, CHICAGO, and other principal places, by votes of the several Boards of Education. Swan, Brewer & Tileston, |