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sessions: And the form of the conviction may be

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for

and forfeit the sum of

and I do adjudge him to pay Given under my hand and seal the day and year abovesaid. S. 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.

4. No person shall fasten any nets over rivers, to stand continually day and night, on pain of an hundred shillings to the king. 2 H. 6. c. 15.

Our plenteous streams a various race supply,
The bright-ey'd perch, with fins of Tyrian-dye,
The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd,

The yellow carp, in scales be-dropp'd with gold,
Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains,
And pikes, the tyrants of the wat❜ry plains.

POPE'S WINDSOR FOREST.

CHAP. VIII.

Prognostics of the Weather, independent of the Barometer, extracted from the best Authorities.

AS it is highly necessary that an angler should

be able to form a judgment of the change of weather, on which his sport entirely depends; if

he

he observes the following signs, it will soon become familiar to him.

Signs from Vapours.

If a white mist in an evening or night is spread over a meadow, wherein there is a river, it will be drawn up by the next morning's sun, and the day will be bright afterwards.

Where there are high hills, and the mist which hangs over the lower lands draw towards the hills in a morning, and rolls up their sides till it covers the top, there will be no rain.

In some places, if the mist hangs upon the hills, and drags along the woods, instead of overspreading the level grounds, in a morning, it will turn to rain; therefore, to judge rightly of the appearances of a fog, it is in some degree necessary to be acquainted with the nature of the country.

Signs from the Clouds.

It is a very considerable symptom of fair weather, when the clouds decay, and dissolve themselve into air; but it is otherwise when they are collected out of it.

In nubem cogiter aer.

VIRGIL.

Against heavy rain, every cloud rises bigger than the former, and all the clouds are in a growing

state.

This is most remarkable on the approach of a thunder storm, after the vapours have been copiously elevated, suspended in the sky by the heat, and are highly charged with electrical fire; small fragments of flying clouds increase and assemble

together,

together, till in a short space of time they cover the sky.

When the clouds are forined like fleeces, deep, and dense toward the middle, and very white at the edges, with the sky very bright and blue about them, they are of a frosty coldness, and will soon fall either in hail, snow, or in hasty showers of

rain.

If clouds are seen to breed high in the air, in thin white trains, like locks of wool, or the tails of horses, they shew that the vapour, as it is collected, is irregularly spread and scattered by contrary winds above; the consequence of which will soon be a wind below, and probably a rain with it.

If the clouds, as they come forward, seem to diverge from a point in the horizon, a wind may be expected from that quarter or the opposite.

When a general cloudiness covers the sky above, and there are small black fragments of clouds, like smoke, flying underneath, which some call messengers, and others Noah's Ark, because they sail over the other clouds, like the ark upon the waters, rain is not far off, and it will probably be lasting.

There is no surer sign of rain than two different currents of clouds, especially if the undermost flies fast before the wind; and if two such currents appear in the hot weather of the summer, they shew that a thunder storm is gathering: but the preparation which precedes a storm of thunder, is so generally understood, that it is needless to insist upon it minutely.

Signs from the Dew.

If the dew lies plentifully upon the grass after a fair day, another fair day may be expected to

succeed

succeed it; but if after such a day there is no dew upon the ground, and no wind stirring, it is a sign that the vapours go upwards, and that there will be an accumulation above, which must terminate in rain.

Signs from the Face of the Sky.

If those vapours which the heat of the day raises from the earth, are precipitated by the cold air of the night, then the sky is clear in the morning; but if this does not happen, and they remain still in the air, the light of the morning will be coloured as it was in the evening, and rain will be the consequence.

There is commonly either a strong dew, or a mist over the ground, between a red evening and a grey morning; but if a red morning succeeds, there is no dew.

It is a bad symptom when a lowering redness is spread too far upwards from the horizon, either in the morning or in the evening; it is succeeded either by rain or wind, and frequently both.

When such a fiery redness, together with a raggednefs of the clouds, extends towards the zenith in an evening, the wind will be high from the west or south-west, attended with rain, sometimes with a flood: before the late dreadful hurricane of 1780, at Barbadoes and the other West-India Islands, a redness like fire was observed all over the sky. When the sky, in a rainy season, is tinged with a sea-green colour, near the horizon, when it ought to be blue, the rain will continue and increase; if it is of a deep dead blue, it is abundantly loaded with vapours, and the weather will be showery..

Signs from the Sun, Moon, and Stars.

When there is a haziness aloft in the air, so that the sun's light fades by degrees, and his orb looks whitish and ill-defined, it is one of the most certain signs of rain.

If the moon and stars grow dim in the night, with the like haziness in the air, and a ring or halo appears round the moon, rain will be the consequence.

If the rays of the sun, breaking through the clouds, are visible in the air, and appear like those horns of irradiation which painters usually place upon the head of Moses, the air is sensibly filled with vapours, which reflect the rays to the sight, and these vapours will soon produce rain.

If the sun appears white at his setting, or shorn of his rays, or goes down into a bank of clouds, which lie in the horizon; all these are signs of approaching or continuing bad weather.

If the moon looks pale and dim, we are to expect rain; if red, it is a sign of wind; and if white, and of her natural color, and the sky clear, it will be fair, weather, according to a poetical adage,

Pallida Luna pluit, rubicunda flat, alba serenat.

If the moon is rainy throughout her course, it will clear up at the ensuing change, and the rain. will probably commence again in a few days after, and continue; if, on the contrary, the moon has been fair throughout, and it rains at the change, the fair weather will probably be restored about the fourth or fifth day of the moon, and continue as before.

Sin

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