Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-04-20
SIGNALS NATURE HANGS OUT.
Always Gives Warning of Catastro.
 phe That is Coming.

An experienced farmer on the look out for a farm shies at the sight of a fallow covered with the reddish spikes of the sorrel. He knows at once that the soil is poor and thin and will cost more than its crops will be ever worth in fertilizers of various kinds. l Weeds tell him whole story at single glance. If the leaves of the | colts foot rear their heavy heads, he at once suspects the presence of thick sticky, blue clay, hard to drain and | cultivate.
 Sandwort and thyme proclaim a hungry, sandy soil; myrtle, the heaths and tormentilla tell of peaty land val uable only for summer grazing; and sheep's sorrel speaks of iron, the val- erian and ranunculous of marsh, while veronica, silene, the hybrid pop l py and other similar plants are sure signals of chalk and flint below the surface.
 For those who have eyes to see them kindly Nature hangs out signals or all kinds. She only asks that men will use their eyes, says Pearson $ l Weekly. If they can and do so sne will never betray them. She has both 1 good and bad signs which are as plain ] in their way as red or green lights to a railway engine driver.
 | For instance what is called the low | country of the northern Transvaal IS l partly healthy. partly feverish. Tn one spot you may camp in safety TOT a month, in another not a mile away 1 the dreaded fever will seize you Ill d single night.
 1 To uneducated eyes there seems to be little or no difference in the out :. ward aspect of the two places but your old prospector is never caught camping on fever ground. He knows l the fever tree too well. The rever I tree is an odd and sinister looking piece of vegetation with twisted, greenish trunk and branches ana IL I grows only in those spots where feVef mist hangs at nightfall.
 | So. too, in Florida, when a hunter Is trayersing the immense swamps- "hammocks" as they are called. which cover huge tracts in the south J ern part of that state, he searches for I a spot where pine trees rear their l tall heads among the expresses and gums. There he can camp and sleep in safety though to spend a night but a few hundred yards away from the pines might mean bone rackins dose of ague.
 Many an Australian explorer has been saved from a horrible death by thirst because he has known the wa. fer malice. This tree. though it may stand in the midst of a burning des- l ert, invariably tells of water below fine surface. If the traveller be not | foo far gone to dig. he will find the I precious fluid below the malice 5 roots.
 The old shepherd crossing Dartmoor or one of the Scottish moors traveis with dry feet while the stranger IS perfectly certain to tumble knee, per haps waist deep into horrible black compound of water and mud. The shepherd avoids the bogs because he has learned to read natures danger signal. He does not walk on places where the sphagnum covers the sur face and so avoids the pitfalls hlu- den beneath its pale green fronds.
 Most of us know something or the weather signs, those warnings when arc hung out for all to read in the sky. and vet how many never nouce them at all. so that when there comes really great convulslon of nature they are caught unprepared.
 That awful cyclone which over whelmed the great seaport of Calves ton three years ago. drowning over thousands of people. was heralded by an immense groundswell which was seen forty-eight hours before the
 tempest broke.
 The Mississippi storm of 1874 which
 is generally supposed to have been the
 worst gale that has ever been record
 cd and the result of which was tc
 wine out nearly twenty settlements flood 10000 square miles of land ant
 permanently change the course of th'
 great river was preceded by strange
 and at the time inexplicable moanin,
 sound which went on for three days and seemed to come from the uppel
 air although below all was still. Th'
 Indians heard 1t and left for the higl
 ground: the whites heard it, stayet where they were and were drowned , Tn the winter British Columbia an' . all the western slopes of the Rockies ale at times visited by strong , easterly wind. which blowing oa th, , warm surface of the Japan current . will rapidly melt the mountain snow , and cause disastrous floods.
 But no inhabitant of the slope ' is ever caught unawares because fo . many hours before the warm gal l there appears over the heads of tn
 mountains long lines and bands Q . the so-called Chinook" clouds. Thes : are a certain sign of the hot wind . apd arc never known to fan.