Fahrenheit, and its velocity at fifty-four miles per
hour. But it attacks us just as unexpectedly as it did the apostle,
and brings disease and death to Naples or Palermo to-day just as
surely as it did to Cambyses. The popular verdict on the matter
would no doubt be that when meteorologists can not only describe the
sirocco, but give warning of its coming, their science will justify
its claim to consideration. The common sense of mankind always demands
as a royalty from every science daily practical benefits to the mass
of men and women. It is not enough for meteorologists to have proved
that the atmosphere varies in weight, in temperature or velocity of
motion according to fixed rules, or to be able to explain why no rain
falls on a certain portion of the coast of Portugal, while a like
coast-exposure in England is incessantly drenched; or to have
determined beyond a doubt that precisely as the ocean of water,
under the influence of the moon and wind, ebbs and flows and has
its succession of storms or calms, the ocean of air in which we
are enveloped answers to the influence of the sun in great tidal
movements, and has also its vast steadily moving waves of cold or heat
or moisture.
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