Norwich bulletin., 1919-06-06

He uISdppOlHtlIlS lLulS dDOul dll the signs which we swear by is that, | of four, or perhaps nine times out of ten they fail utterly the fourth or tenth time. Which sets some of us guessing and some to wondering and some to a serious attempt to find out the why and wherefore of them.
 Now a sign is just a symptom. It isn't the weather any more than symptom is the disease. The disease is the cause of the symptom; the weather, actual or prospective, is the cause of the sign. If the doctor knows the why of the symptom he can usual ly get straight line on the real dis ease. If the farmer knows the why of his weather signs, he might get straighter line than now on the weather.
 In other words, why shouldn't the farmer substitute knowing for guess ing about his favorite weather signs?
 Take that oldest and best known rhyme:
 Evening red and morning gray Will speed the traveller on his way; But evening gray and morning red. Will bring down rain on the pilgrims head"
 Now no one in his sober senses sup poses that God squirts a little extra red dye on to the morning sky just as a warning to the early farmer that it is likely to rain that day. It is the impending rain which causes that ex- tra redness. But how, and why? Let's stop guessing and try to find out. There's the rainbow. Its bright col OTIS are made simply by the sunshine falling obliquely on the raindrops of a retreating shower and being by { them refracted according to a we'll known law of light, so as to separate 1 the rays into their original colors. It I is the light on the rain which makes ] the rainbow. Now it has long been l known that moist air is lighter than l dry air. That is the weight of the air which overlies Connecticut is less ! when that air is charged with mois- ! turc than when it is e-dry Con- sequentlv. the thin vapor in the air rises higher. Being higher. the rising suns rays strike it earlier and. some i thing after the fashion of rainbow : making, are more or less refracted into 1 color Also we know that the upper 1 air is colder than the lower air and 1 that it is the condensation Of atnlos- pheric vapor by this cold which pro- ! duces rain. There you have it; an at | mosphere overcharged with moisture that moisture lifted higher than nor nal by the unusually light air; the very conditions of rain indicated be- fore your eyes.
 The redness of the morning sky isn't a sign" set out by special order for our special benefit; it is just symp- tom showing the condition of the air Having observed the symptom it is up to the practitioner of agriculture tc diagnose the probable disturbance ii indicates.
 Then there's another old sign: When the swallows fly low, look our for rain" That's one of my particular favorites. But why should the swal. lows know when it is going to rain The answer is that they don't. The, don't know anything about it. The5 are flying after bugs to eat, snappins them up on the wing. When the at. mospheric pressure is such as to in. duct precipitation the bugs which tn, 1 birds are after fly low, close to tn, surface of the ground, and the swal lows chase 'em there where they hap pen to be. That's all there is to it. Then there's the famous trough sign. When the sun rises like a du1 red bah. shining dimly through uni versal smoky haze. we look for a dr time. Why? We'll, frankly con fess l don't know. Do you? But tn ] fact that I don't know and that per haps you don't. either. is no evidenc that there isn't reason for tiff " only had gumption enough to find out. When we do find it out, it wi prove to be, like all others, a simpl natural result of the workings of nat ural law. There won't be anythin . mysterious about it, once we know tn why and wherefore.
 There are other "sisns" howeve which have no explanation becaus they are really neither signs nc symptoms, but just vagaries of ere = dulity or ignorance.
 1 have one neighbor who clings ar always will cling to an absurd ide that "As many fogs as there are February, so many frosts there will l in May" I have others who actua
 ly believe that the last three days
 any given month are weather indics - tors for the succeeding month. R,
 membering that our division of u
 year into months is purely an arb
 trary one. made solely for convenien,
 in reckoning dates. and that it is jul
 human makeshift invention. wh | IOuI
 for supposing that Nature goes O Is of her way to humor our almanacs |?
 Year after year my neighbor chall
 down on his barn door the dates
 February fogs. When May fro = chances to coincide with one of thel - he boasts thereof with much satisfa r tion. When the coincidence does1
 coincide, he keeps as still as a dunn
 bell.
 When three final wet days in Ap
 are followed by wet May am le
 tured about my skepticism at half
 dozen houses. But when they a - followed by May drought and I u
 dertake to poke few sticks at t
 wiseacres, they jauntily turn me doy
 with the trite remark "Oh, we'll,
 signs fail in a dry time. Never sto
 ping to realize that they wouldn't f
 and couldn't fail if they were real
 signs
 Then there are animal signs. If t
 woodchuck comey out and sees
 shadow on Candlemas day there is
 be another winter. If the squirrels 1
 up unusual stores of nuts in the f
 there is going to be long, hard wi
 ter. Etc, etc. Last fall my ches
 nut and butternut trees were actual
 stripped of their nuts by the saul
 rels who couldn't wait for them to f
 but took them off the trees in in,
 eagerness to fill up their winter gr
 naries. And we had the mildest wi 70 ter known in a century! Last Cand] mas day my woodchucks couldn't ha
 helped seeing their shadows. if tn
 were looking. and we hadn't any wi
 ter at all. to speak of.
 The point I'm trying to make is tf
 no weather sign is worth giving mu