often in the woodlands when it
rains no where else; and it is thus that trees and woods modify the
hygrometric character of a country; and I doubt not but, by a judicious
disposal of trees of particular kinds, many lands now parched up with
drought--as, for example, in some of the Leeward Islands--might be
reclaimed from that sterility to which they are unhappily doomed.

In Glass' _History of the Canary Islands_ we have the description
of a peculiar tree in the Island of Hierro, which is the means of
supplying the inhabitants, man as well as inferior animals, with water;
an island which, but for this marvellous adjunct, would be uninhabitable
and abandoned. The tree is called _Til_ by the people of the island,
and has attached to it the epithet _garse_, or _sacred_. It is situated
on the top of a rock, terminating the district called _Tigulatre_,
which leads from the shore. A cloud of vapour, which seems to rise from
the sea, is impelled towards it; and being condensed by the foliage of
the tree, the rain falls into a large tank, from which it is measured
out by individuals set apart for that purpose by the authorities of
the island.

In confirmation of a circumstance _prima facie_ so incredible,
I have here to record a phenomenon, witnessed by myself, equally
extraordinary. I had frequently observed, in avenues of trees, that the
entire ground engrossed by their shady foliage was completely saturated
with moisture; and that during the prevalence of a fog, when the ground
without their pale was completely parched, the wet which fell from their
branches more resembled a gentle shower than anything else; and in
investigating the phenomenon which I am disposed to consider entirely
_electrical_, I think the _elm_ exhibits this feature more
remarkably than any other tree of the forest. I never, however, was more
astonished than I was in the month of September last, on witnessing a
very striking example of this description. I had taken an early walk, on
the road leading from Stafford to Lichfield: a dense fog prevailed, but
the _road was dry and dusty_, while it was quite otherwise with
the line of a few _Lombardy poplars_; for from them it rained so
plentifully, and so fast, that any one of them might have been used as
an admirable shower bath, and the constant stream of water supplied by
the aggregate would (had it been directed into a proper channel) have
been found quite sufficient to turn an ordinary mill.--_Mag. Nat.