Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/97

 it must be an ill wind. It has little or no effect in cooling a tattie. Convalescence is retarded by it,putrefaction hastened by it, and animals as well as vegetables are acutely sensitive to its baneful influence. A horse perspires in half the time when at work in an east wind than he would do in any other wind, and the leaves hang flaccid on their stems as if heated by steam. The electric state of the atmosphere has no doubt a great effect upon the constitution, though its mode of action may not be well ascertained. The moon in all countries is blamed for her evil eye, but heat and electricity must exert an equal influence, and the moon is blamed for all; predictions of the weather founded upon the phases of the moon are vague and uncertain,and I think that her effects upon public health are equally difficult to be anticipated.

During the months of May and June there is seldom a fleecy cloud upon the sky to screen the inhabitants from the intensity of the solar ray. A tide of flickering exhalations is seen streaming from the plains, assuming the fantastic forms of the mirage; resembling lakes where no water exists, and trees and forests where no vegetation exists. The earth is parched up, rent and riven as if baked over a volcano; the luxuriant leaves and gigantic flowers upon the trees are collapsed and suspended from the branches, as if they had been some hours lopped from the parent stem. Not a