[This Chapter contains a variety of matter not apposite to Wiltshire. Besides the passages here quoted, there are accounts of several remarkable hurricanes, hail storms, &c., in different parts of England, as well as in Italy. The damage done by “Oliver’s wind “(the storm said to have occurred on the death of the Protector Cromwell) is particularly noticed: though it may be desirable to state on the authority of Mr. Carlyle, the eloquent editor of “Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches” (8vo. 1846), that the great tempest which Clarendon asserts to have raged “for some hours before and after the Protector’s death”, really occurred four days previous to that event. Aubrey no doubt readily adopted the general belief upon the subject. He quotes, without expressly dissenting from it, the opinion of Chief Justice Hale, that “whirlewinds and all winds of an extraordinary nature are agitated by the spirits of air”. Lunar rainbows, and meteors of various kinds, are described in this chapter; together with prognostics of the seasons from the habits of animals, and some observations made with the barometer; and under the head of Echoes, “for want of good ones in this county”, there is a long description by Sir Robert Moray of a remarkable natural echo at Roseneath, about seventeen miles from Glasgow. On sounds and echoes there are some curious notes by Evelyn, but these are irrelevant to the subject of the work.- J. B.]
Before I enter upon the discourse of the air of this countie, it would not be amiss that I gave an account of the winds that most commonly blow in the western parts of England.
I shall first allege the testimony of Julius Cæsar,
who delivers to us thus: “Corns ventus,
qui magnam partem omnis temporis in his locis flare
consuevit”. — (Commentaries, lib. v.) To
which I will subjoine this of Mr. Th. Ax, of
Somersetshire, who hath made dayly observations of
the weather for these twenty-five years past, since
1661, and finds that, one yeare with another, the
westerly winds, which doe come from the Atlantick
sea, doe blowe ten moneths of the twelve. Besides,
he hath made observations for thirty years, that the
mannours in the easterne parts of the netherlands
of Somersetshire doe yield six or eight per centum
of their value; whereas those in the westerne parts
doe yield but three, seldome four per centum, and in
some mannours but two per centum. Hence he argues
that the winds carrying these unwholesome vapours
of the low country from one to the other, doe make
the one more, the other less, healthy.
___________________________________
This shire may be divided as it were into three stories
or stages. Chippenham vale is the lowest.
The first elevation, or next storie, is from the Derry
Hill, or Bowdon Lodge, to the hill beyond the Devises,
called Red-hone, which is the limbe or beginning of
Salisbury plaines. From the top of this hill
one may discerne Our Lady Church Steeple at Sarum,
like a fine Spanish needle. I would have the height
of these hills, as also Hackpen, and those toward
Lambourn, which are the highest, to he taken with
the quicksilver barometer, according to the method
of Mr. Edmund Halley in Philosophical Transactions,
No. 181.
___________________________________