coat as a cover.

The smell of the bacon, the smell of the scap, the smell of the candles, the smell of the stale tobacco fumes which filled the dining-room, all tended to oppress me and take my breath away. I saw that sleeping in a horizontal position was out of the question, so I sat up, and, resting my head on my hands, dozed off for very weariness. At eleven, however, I was on my feet. My hands were terribly swollen and itched to a maddening degree. I lit my candle and searched for water, but there was none.

I spent a wretched, but a busy night, and felt the utmost relief when I heard the clock strike the hour of 5 A.M. I left my room, went through the dining-room on tiptoe, unbolted the front door, and went out. Happily the rain had stopped, the stars were merrily twinkling, and the last quarter of a waning moon was standing high overhead. By its light I found the carthouse, where Jakob had put up. I woke him, bade him look after the horses, and betook myself to the dam a large reservoir where the rainwater was stored for irrigation purposes. Here, despite the chilling cold, I partly undressed and cooled my itching skin and aching temples, thoroughly enjoying the wash. I took deep draughts of the delightfully fresh air, and soon began to feel myself again. Going back to the house, I finished my toilet, and then went for a stroll.

It was nearly eight o'clock when I returned. The family were only just ready to begin the day. Mr. Du Plessis sat at the side table in the dining-room. And there was Mrs. Du Plessis, whom I had not seen before, and the children were there, girls and boys, down to a baby under twelve months. These had all ranged themselves on the chairs along the walls, and all sat mute.

Presently the old lady came in from the kitchen, carrying a basin of water, a towel, and a piece of soap. These she placed on the table at the top end by the front door, and then, seating herself, laconically said, 'Now, Meester, wash yourself.'

I had but just recovered from the effects of that terrible night, the wearisome hours of which had failed to erase from my memory the painful moments of the evening before. Was I now to be subjected to further torture?

'Thank you,' I said, 'I have washed.'

'You lie,' she said, as if it were the most natural expression to use; 'you had no water in your room.'

There was no water in my room,' I replied, 'but I went to the dam at five o'clock this morning, and had a delightful wash.

VOL. VIII.-NO. 43, N.S.

3

'But how is it your eyes are so swollen if you have been up so long?' she asked.

'The room did that for me,' I answered calmly. My lids are still swollen and very painful.'

'Oh, ho!' laughed Mr. Du Plessis, 'he got bitten! Fancy a man getting bitten! Those things don't trouble us in the least, you see.'

'I am not accustomed to them,' I retorted.

never see such a thing.'

'Shall we read now?' asked the mother.

ought to read this morning.'

'And pray,' added the eldest daughter.

'In my house we

'I think Meester

A good-sized family Bible was handed me, and on placing it on the table and opening it at random, what should crawl out but a specimen of my nightly visitors! I recoiled from the holy book, but one of the boys, noticing my embarrassment, calmly removed the insect, and either gave it its liberty or kept it in his hand till after prayers.

Prayers over, I had breakfast alone, the family repairing to the kitchen for their meal. The sun had meanwhile broken through the morning clouds, and was doing his best to make good to the earth his absence on the previous day.

Mr. Du Plessis joined me after a little while, and seating himself next to me, and drawing great clouds from his pipe, enlarged on his act of generosity with regard to my horses, of which Jakob had apprised me in the evening. I was truly thankful to him and told him so, and my words seemed to satisfy him.

When I asked him for my bill, he was generous again. He had lodged and fed my horses, my driver, and myself, and would only allow me to pay what he was actually out of pocket for forage consumed.

Then he took me over the cultivated portions of his farm, showed me his sheep and goats in their pens, gave me minute directions regarding the road to Pretoria, and finally sent me off amid loud protestations of friendship and hopes of seeing me again.

I went on my way rejoicing, and never spent another night on that farm. FREIHERR VON ELFT.

SIGNS AND SEASONS.

BY THE REV. JOHN M. BACON.

A GLOBE of thistledown, which has been shifting round the flowerbeds uneasily, as though ashamed of being found in a wellordered garden, has suddenly changed its mood and started away upwards towards the clouds, so determinedly that one might almost credit it with having some honest business on hand. It is followed, too, almost immediately by a companion that has evidently been lurking in the road outside, after the manner of wayside loafers. Their habit is to wander until they find good resting-ground, no matter how far away; but in my opinion the pair of them will get themselves into trouble this time; for if they reach the strong cross current which the clouds show me to be travelling not far overhead and very rapidly, they are likely, judging from personal experience of aërial travelling, to find themselves out at sea before nightfall.

To trace the ultimate destination of many of these wind-sown seeds would be a most interesting inquiry. I have on several occasions observed them passing a balloon riding at two or three thousand feet altitude, and still mounting upwards, while at the same time I have had proof that light bodies, even when steadily falling, may sometimes occupy an incredible time in reaching the earth. In an extraordinary journey undertaken to view the Leonid showers my companions and myself were drifting helplessly for many hours up above a dense cloud-screen which hid the earth, and, being in much peril of wandering out to sea, we dropped a large number of folded notes, praying the finders to telegraph to the coast to bespeak any available succour. Our course that day has since been determined and the fact proved that these express messages must have been thrown down somewhere over Bath or even east of Bath. Yet it is now clear that the majority must have dropped in the Bristol Channel, while one was picked up far away on a mountain in Glamorganshire. This would show that the papers-folded in compact three-cornered notes-occupied from one to two and a half hours (judging from the behaviour of the balloon) to fall from the point of their despatch, which, in

altitude, was never beyond 9,000 feet. Regarding then the travel of the feathery form of wind-seeds whose nature is to float rather than fall, and granting the theory insisted on by meteorologists, that a strong and general high current is always flowing aloft in the same direction as the earth's rotation, it is very conceivable that a lusty thistle flourishing somewhere away in the American prairies may by good luck, yet simply by the agency that its nature employs, sow one of its seeds in a British ploughed field. The method of the impulsive air currents so often made evident to us will repay examination. The upward draught that carries the seeds skyward has doubtless a double cause. The air will be lying warm over some sheltered patch of ground, and on the other hand the higher current may be setting from a cold quarter; in which case there are present just the conditions that exist in a tall chimney shaft, and thus an eddy presently forms and breaks away, sloping up the sky.

A little thought will show that in late autumn we may expect to find the lower air in a critical state of unstable equilibrium, as far as British soil is concerned. It is one necessary consequence of our insular position. The land, together with the air lying over it, especially at night, begins at this season to cool considerably, but not so our ocean waters. The frequenters of our seaside places do not duly appreciate this, for, after September has well advanced, the bathing machines begin to be drawn off the beach, and the morning dip' is left only for the hardier among the visitors. Yet any one who will put out in a boat beyond low water mark and well in deep water, will, even at this late date, be rewarded by a plunge in sea as warm as it was weeks ago.

Conceive the consequence. England is but a little plot of ground; its average width not more than 200 miles, and the air is now lying chill over its surface, but many degrees warmer over ocean tracts around its margin.

This state of things while it lasts must be highly conducive to atmospheric disturbance and to the creation of transient air currents of much complexity. But there is deeper significance in the lordly march past of the grand high-flying clouds that are heading away eastward, or there is no truth in weather lore. One of the oldest and best trusted rules relating to wind and weather is that if, in our latitudes at least, you stand with your back to the wind, then the low glass, or the bad weather, is on

your left hand. Now, the present wind on the ground is from the south, and thus the upper current going east is clearly blowing up from the foul quarter. Were the chances of weather admitted into betting circles, a speedy change at this period would probably be called a 'dead cert.' Rain is coming up behind the flying scuds, though it may yet be a hundred miles away.

6

But weather lore belongs to a science that is many-sided, and there are local signs and sayings, of another order truly, but which for mere old association's sake we should be sorry to dismiss. So that if the sun has been drawing water,' or even a German band has been round the village, we like to hear the country folk point to these as foreboding rain. Anyway, this afternoon other tokens have not been wanting; the swallows are flying low and gnats are troublesome, moreover the cat has been washing her face, and what need we more?

That there is reason in much of this weather wisdom there is no disputing, and the most obvious cause of many of the popular signs of coming wet is to be found in a growing moisture in the air. Estimates show that the average amount of watery vapour in the air, take England over, is only about 1 per cent., but, according to circumstances, this may be enormously increased, and the quantity of water that may be sucked up by the great atmospheric sponge and squeezed out over certain regions may be best grasped by a little very simple arithmetic.

The average rainfall in London is about twenty-four inches; it is less on the east coast, but grows ever greater as we go west, till it reaches seventy or eighty inches on our extreme west coast. Then picture these measurements in this way. Let the area of the British Isles be made into one gigantic swimming bath, after the fashion of those to which we are accustomed; let the east side be that reserved for young children, beginning with the suitable depth of scarcely two feet, and let the depth increase constantly up to six feet or more on the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland. Then the water required to fill the huge bath would be fairly well supplied from the clouds in a single year.

Calculations have been made of the whole amount of the aerial watery ocean at any time present over the globe, the result running into a row of figures which convey no idea to the mind; but the sum will work out another way. The whole of the water supply of London gathered together from the first establishment of the New River Company in the time of James I. to the present