lighter in any quarter, expect the wind from that quarter. I found the following table of the state of the weather among my father's papers: it appears to me worthy of attention. THE GENERAL STATE OF THE WEATHER WHEN THE MERCURY IN THE BAROMETER REMAINS STATIONARY ON ANY OF THE UNDERMENTIONED DEGREES, 12 OF WHICH ARE EQUAL TO AN ENGLISH INCH. The outer numbers are the corresponding inches and parts. Inch. parts. 30 31 116. Settled, fine clear sky. .9215. Summer, very warm; winter, hard froft. .83 14. Great drought, 75 13. Pleafant ferene weather. .67 12. Settled. .5811. Summer, clofe and rainy; winter, fnow, and foggy. .50 10. Clear. 42 9. Rain or wind; winter, fnow or mist. 33 8. Fine weather. .25 7. Rain or wind. .17 6. Good but uncertain weather. .08 5. Generally mifty when the thermometer is under 60 deg.: otherwife, thick, rain or wind; but in fummer with an easterly-wind, clear. 4. Good weather. .92 3. Stormy with a north-westerly wind; otherwife, raw, hazy, cloudy weather; in fummer, thunder. .8 2. Moderate weather. Inch. parts. .29 -75 .67 .58 .50 .42 .33 .25 .17 .08 1. Rain, thunder, wind; in winter, with a northerly wind, raw, cold, fnow, or mist. o. Virable. 1. Moderate; if the wind be foutherly, rain. 2. Rain, wind, thunder, hail, fnow, &c. 4. Rain, wind, thunder, hail, fnow. 6. Heavy rain, or wind, thunder, hail, 7. Serene, though fometimes fogs or mift. 8. Stormy; in winter, mift. .92 9. Calm; in winter, thick fog. 75 11. Calm. .67 12. Stormy. .58 13. Calm, but heavy clouds. •50 14. Half a hurricane. .42 15. Calm, with a great drift of fcudding clouds. 28.33 16. Violent hurricane. 1747. Thus the barometer flood, the 12th December, Thefe obfervations were made when the barometer was placed 25 feet above the level of the fea or river waters. When the mercury refts at a degree, expect variable, or a mixture of that weather expreiled by the degree above and below it. OF OF THE SUPERIORITY OF THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE OVER THE SOUTHERN, FROM THE REV. MR. JONES'S PHYSIOLOGICAL DISQUISITIONS. The fuperiority of the northern hemifphere of the world, above the fouthern, is very manifeft. It has more land, more fun, more heat, more light, more arts, more sense, more learning, more truth, more religion. The land of the fouthern hemifphere, that is, the land which lies on the other fide of the equinoctial line, does not amount to one fourth part of what is found on the north fide. The fun, by reafon of the excentricity of the earth's orbit, and the fituation of the aphelion, makes our fummer eight days longer than the fummer of the other hemifphere; which, in the fpace of four thousand years, (for fo long it is fince any univerfal change has taken place in the earth) amounts to upwards of eighty feven years; and fo much more fun has this hemifphere enjoyed than the other. What effects may have been arifing gradually in all that time, we cannot afcertain; but fuch a caufe cannot have been without it's effect: and I think it is allowed, that the temperature of the earth and atmofphere, in the highest latitudes of the north, is much more mild and moderate than in the correspondent latitudes of the fouth. The dreary face of Statenland, with the weather-beaten Cape of South-America, a climate fo fevere as fcarcely to admit of any human inhabitants, is no nearer to the pole than the northern counties of England: but the difference in the atmosphere, and in the afpect of the earth, is almoft incredible; and this is the more remarkable, because there is no mountainous country betwixt that and the pole to account for the icy blafts that prevail there. 004. But But it is alfo further obfervable, that the northern hemifphere is better provided for by night as well as by day. The ftars of fuperior magnitudes are much more numerous on this fide the equinoctial than on the other: we have nine ftars of the first magnitude, and they but four; and the stars of the Great Bear, fo confpicuous in this hemifphere, have nothing to equal them about the other pole. When the fun is remote from us in the winter, our longest nights are illuminated by the principal stars of the firmament; when the fun enters Capricorn, there comes to the meridian, about midnight, the whole constellation of Orion, the brightest in the heavens, containing two stars of the first magnitude, four of the second, and many others of inferior fizes; and upon the meridian, or near it, there are four more stars of the first magnitude, Capella, Sirius, Procyon, and Aldebaran. No other portion of the heavens affords half so much illumination; and it is exactly accommodated to our midnight, when the nights are longeft and darkeft. If the mid-winter of the fouthern hemisphere be compared, the inferiority of the nocturnal illumination is wonderful. Though it will carry us a little beyond the bounds of phyfics, the parallel is fo glaring between the natural and intellectual fuperiority of this part of the world, that your time will not be loft while we reflect upon it. Here the arts of war and of peace have always flourished; as if this part of the globe had been allotted to a fuperior race of beings. Afia and Europe, from the remoteft times, have been the feats of fcience, literature, eloquence, and military power; compared with which, the fouthern regions have ever been, as we now find them, beggarly and barbarous ; poffeffed by people ftupid and infenfible, illiterate, and incapable of learning. Where are the poets, the the hiftorians, the orators, the philofophers, of the fouthern world? We may as well fearch for the fciences amongst the beafts of the wilderness. All the inventions, by which mankind have done honour to themselves in every age, have been confined to this fide of the world. Here the mathematical sciences have flourished; printing has been found out; gun-powder and fire-arms invented; navigation perfected; magnetism and electricity cultivated to the aftonishment of the wifeft; and philofophy extended by experimental inquiries of every kind. There would be no end, if we were to trace this comparison through every improvement; for here we have every thing that can adorn human life, and there they have nothing. But the difference is moft confpicuous, when we compare the north and fouth in point of religion; to which, indeed, that pre-eminence is owing on our fide, which has extended to every branch of focial civilization and intellectual improvement. It is notorious at this day, that arts and learning flourish to the highest degree, in those countries only that are enlightened by chriftianity, and no where fo much as in this kingdom, where that religion is established in it's pureft form. May it long continue! and may we know our own felicity in the enjoyment of it! for religion is undoubtedly the fun that gives light to the mind; the vital fpirit that animates the human understanding to it's highest atchievements; though many have been indebted to it, without being fenfible of their obligation, or without confeffing it; and others have turned against it that light which they borrowed from itself. The northern hemifphere then, whatever preference it may have in a phyfical capacity, has been much more honoured by the fuperior advantages of learning and religion: here knowledge t |