minutes we had passed from a clear, calm atmosphere (and which still
remained so), into a cloudy, damp air, and brisk wind blowing in the same
direction we were traveling, and toward a heavy storm. My friend passed
on, and met the southern edge of the rain at Deerfield, and had a most
unpleasant journey during the forenoon of the next day. Taking the cars
soon afterwards, in the afternoon, for the south, I found him on his
return.

"Shall I have fair weather now till I get home?" said he.

"There are no indications of a storm here, or at present," I replied, "but
we may observe them elsewhere, and at nightfall."

He kept a sharp look-out, and, as we neared New Haven, discovered faint
lines of cirrus cloud low down in the west, extending in parallel bars,
contracting into threads, up from the western horizon, in an E. N. E.
direction toward the zenith.

"Now, what is that?" said he.

"The eastern outlying edge of a N. E. storm, approaching from the W. S. W.
It is now raining from 150 to 200 miles to the westward of the eastern
extremity of those bars of cirrus-condensation; perhaps more, perhaps
less; and under those bars of condensation the wind is attracted, and is
blowing from the N. E. toward the body of the storm, and where the
condensation is sufficiently dense to drop rain. That dense portion will
reach here, and it will rain from twelve to fifteen hours hence. As we
pass along the shore, and run under that out-lying advance
cirrus-condensation, we shall see that the vessels in the Sound have the
wind from the N. E., freshening, but we shall continue to have this light
and scarcely-perceptible air from the northward for a time--_the N. E.
wind always setting in toward an approaching storm, out on the Sound, much
sooner than upon the land_."

As we approached the storm, and the storm us, the evidence of denser
condensation at the west, and of wind from the east, blowing toward it,
became more apparent. The fore and aft vessels were running "up Sound"
with "sheet out and boom off," before a fresh N. E. breeze, and my friend
was astonished.

"I must understand this," said he; "how is it?"

"All very simple. The page of nature spread out above us is intelligible
to him who will attentively study it. The laws which produce the
impressions and changes upon that page, are few and comprehensible.
Although there is great variety, even upon the limited portion which is
bounded by our horizon, there is also substan