The subject of bringing down rain by the firing of artillery has again been revived, owing to the long droughts that have lately prevailed.

Some queer stories might be told of the contrivances for economy in suds and dishwaters that are absolutely necessitated in upland habitations during the droughts of summer.

And most distinctly does the Bible say that these droughts came at times when the Jews had fallen into idolatry, and profligacy therewith.

What special means God used to bring about these great droughts we cannot know, any more than we can know why a storm or a shower should come one week and not another.

Not only were crime and idolatry rampant, but the death of Josiah was followed by droughts and famine.

But Care again his steps pursues; Warns him of blasts, of blighting dews, Of plund'ring insects, snails, and rains, And droughts that starved the laboured plains.

He had done his life's work amid all extreme fiercenesses of heat and cold, in burning droughts, in simoons and in icy wildernesses, and a ray or two more of the pale sun or a flake or two more of the gentle snow of England mattered to him but little.

Since then the prefix "Bleeding" has again been used repeatedly in connection with the State, because of the succession of droughts and plagues of grasshoppers and chinch bugs, which have imperiled its credit and fair name.

As the refreshing rain which accompanies the thunder gust instills new life into vegetation, and covers the ground parched by summer droughts with leaves and grass, so the statement in the myth that the fragments of the flint-stone grew into fruitful vines is an obvious figure of speech which at first expressed the fertilizing effects of the summer showers.

In the South of Europe a great part of the territory is barren of woods, and the climate has suffered from this cause, which has diminished the bulk of the streams and increased the severity of droughts.

The first time I entered one of these Pine-Barrens was some years since, in the month of June, when vegetation was in its prime, before the summer droughts had seared the green herbage, and when the flowering trees and shrubs were in all their glory.

Since emancipation, the agricultural laborer has had to contend with two of the most obstinate droughts experienced for many years in the island, which has decreased the supply of his accustomed vegetables and ground provisions, and consequently subjected him and family to very great privations; but this even, I think, has been submitted to with becoming resignation.

He had been in Antigua since the year 1800, and he had never known so long a continuance of dry weather, although the island is subject to severe droughts.

Although I have no proof that this is so, I am inclined to believe that the burrowing crayfishes retire to the stream in winter and remain there until early spring, when they construct their burrows for the purpose of rearing their young and escaping the summer droughts.

" "O, Being, great, beneficent and kind, Pardon the fear that overspreads my mind; On me, great God, a little brook bestow, That winter rains may never overflow, And when the summer droughts commence their reign, Stretch forth thy hand and let the brook remain.

It is true that, just at that moment, there was a shower every day, and sometimes two or three of them; but it was then spring, and there could be little reason to doubt that droughts would come in the hot and dry season.

But for droughts or blights, we should never be provided: any intemperature of seasons would reduce us to distress, which we now only read of in our histories; what is now scarcity would then be famine.

Rains are also rare in the summer season, and long droughts banish vegetation, and attract numberless columns of locusts, which destroy the plants and fruits.

The village was situated on the side of a small, picturesque stream, one of the branches of the Hokianga, but continued droughts had at this time reduced it to a trifling brook.

We were quite free from those oppressive, feverish heats which invariably prevail in the middle of the day at Sydney, and from those hot pestilential winds which are the terror of the inhabitants of New South Wales; nor were we subject to those long droughts, which are often the ruin of the Australian farmer.

The forest had to be felled, droughts, deep snows, freshets, cloudbursts, forest fires, and all the other dangers of a wilderness life faced.

On the south coast excessive droughts often parch the grass, in which case the cattle are fed on cane-tops at harvest time.

Happy he who, like the palm tree in the desert, can strike his roots below the arid surface of the world into fresh and living waters, and thus keep life green amid the droughts of earth.

Hungary lies under the so-called temperate zone, but there does not seem much temperance in the climate when we think of the terrible, almost Siberian winters that come often enough and the heat waves occasioning frequent droughts in the lowlands.

DROUGHTS Governor Glasscock of West Virginia, while traveling through Arizona, noticed the dry, dusty appearance of the country.