The Dog Days

Dog-days is a term for which we are indebted to the ancient Thebans, who lirst cultivated astronomy in Egypt, and determined the length of the year by the number of risings of the dog-star, or Sirius. At the season of the year when this brilliant star rose with the sun their oombined influence was supposed to be productivo of pestilential heat and all manner of baleful influences. Therefore the Egyptians watched the conjunction of Sirius and the sun with mingled feelings of hope and fear, for it foretold to them the rising of the Nile, and was raniraiiw nf fruitful crops or ting droughts. Their dog-days extended fiom the 4tli of August to the 14th of September. Tlie rising of Sirius, however, has been so accelerated by the precession of the equinoxes during the passage of more than two thousand years, that the corresponding conditions for the ancient dog days would includc them within the 3d of July and the llth of August, Tt will readily be seen that our modern dog-days have no connection with the rising of Sirius or any other star, because no permanent data can he based upon stars whose positions are always changed by the falling back of the equinoctial points. The dog-days referto a particular kind of weather, which marka about forty days occurring a month after the Summer bo-i stice, and based entirely on that epoch. They simply retain an ancient name, as in many other instances, without retiüning its significance. It may seem strange that Sirius, which is seen overhead in mid-Winter, should be associated with the heat of Summer; but it must be remembered that this star is overhead in mid-isummer in the daytime, though, like the other stars, invisible on account of the sun. An interesting fact in breeding 18 mentioned by Mr. Kichardson, in bis late work of French agrieulture. He states tbat Mr. Colcumbet, an intelligent Freneb farmer, set to work to build up a herd of white Shorthorns, beginning by purchasing the entire twenty-two volumes of the Enghsh lierdbook, and every volume of the French. Then, with the patience of a Bénédictine monk, he traeed back from genera tion to generation the accidents of color in each f amily, vv ïtn the knowledge thus laboriously acquired, he was able to select his stock ■ -ith such certainty thatthe most perfect success rewarded his toil. He bas reared upwards of forty calves, each perfect] y white, without a single hair of red or roan appeaiing in any ot them.