| "Every wind," wrote Francis Bacon, "has its | | | | momentarily to see its wings go flap-flap and to |
| weather," and many proverbial sayings about the | | | | hear a stentorian crow. All your life you have |
| relations of wind direction to weather were | | | | beheld this glorious, bellicose bird on the spire, and |
| current long before modern meteorology, with its | | | | perhaps never until this moment have you asked |
| synoptic charts, made clear the reasons for these | | | | yourself why he is there! Why a weathercock, |
| relationships. Such sayings indicate some of the | | | | rather than a weather dove, for example? Why, |
| reasons why men have always been interested in | | | | indeed, any bird or beast? |
| knowing which way the wind blew, even if they | | | | Here is a mystery that demands elucidation. |
| were not sailors, dependent upon its favorable | | | | About town we find an astonishing variety of |
| course to get them speedily to the havens where | | | | vanes; astonishing, at least, to those who have |
| they would be. | | | | always taken weather vanes for granted and |
| Man's interest in this subject is evinced in a | | | | never given one of them a second look. |
| bewildering diversity of weather vanes. No other | | | | Apparently there are vanes for every taste-or |
| weather instrument has assumed a thousandth | | | | lack of it-and the householder has almost as much |
| part as many shapes as has the one originally | | | | latitude in the choice of a vane as the merchant |
| designed for the mere practical object of pointing | | | | has in the choice of a trademark or the bibliophile |
| out the direction of the wind, and no other has | | | | in that of a bookplate. |
| become the embodiment of so many ideas that | | | | As we proceed we see that, in many cases, the |
| have nothing to do with meteorology. | | | | design of a vane bears some relation to the |
| Let us take a little walk about the neighborhood | | | | character of the building on which it is placed. |
| for the purpose of observing some of the forms | | | | Sometimes this relation is merely esthetic; the |
| affected by this familiar contrivance. Later we | | | | vane harmonizes with the architecture of the |
| shall try to find out whether any of these forms | | | | building, and that is all. Very often, however, an |
| have particular meanings, or whether they | | | | attempt has been made to give expression, in the |
| represent merely the haphazard fancies of the | | | | vane, to some function the building performs; or, |
| craftsman. We shall begin with that most aspiring | | | | in the case of a dwelling, to make it emblematic |
| of vanes, at the tip-top of the church steeple. It | | | | of the owner's tastes or habits. Some vanes |
| gleams in the sunshine, holds its head erect and | | | | offend our eyes by an excess of realism. Instead |
| proudly surveys the landscape. One expects | | | | of being subtly symbolic, they are mere effigies. |