CLIMATE, SEASONS, ETC. 



1818. 



April 10. Judge, then, of the cleanness and convenience of 

 this soil ! 



11. Fine and warm. 



12. Warm and fair. 



13. Warm and fair. 



14. Drying wind and miserably cold. Fires again in 

 day-time, which I have not had for some days past. 



15. Warm, like a fine May-day in England. We are 

 planting out selected roots for seed. 



1 6. Rain all last night. Warm. Very fine indeed. 



17. Fine warm day. Heavy thunder and rain at night. 

 The Martins (not swallows) are come into the barn 

 and are looking out sites for the habitations of 

 their future young ones. 



18. Cold and raw. Damp, too, which is extremely 

 rare. The worst day I have yet seen during the 

 year. Stops the grass, stops the swelling of the 

 buds. The young chickens hardly peep out from 

 under the wings of the hens. The lambs don t 

 play, but stand knit up. The pigs growl and squeak ; 

 and the birds are gone away to the woods again. 



19. Same weather with an Easterly wind. Just such a 

 wind as that, which, in March, brushes round the 

 corners of the streets of London, and makes the old, 

 muffled-up debauchees hurry home with acking 

 joints. Some hail to-day. 



20. Same weather. Just the weather to give drunkards 

 the &quot; blue devils.&quot; 



21. Frost this morning. Ice as thick as a dollar. 

 Snow three times. Once to cover the ground. 

 Went off again directly. 



22. Frost and ice in the morning, A very fine day, but 

 not warm. Dandelions blow. 



23. Sharp white frost in morning. Warm and fine 

 day. 



24. Warm night, warm and fair day. And here I close 

 my Journal : for, I am in haste to get my manu 

 script away ; and there now wants only ten days 

 to complete the year. I resume, now, the Numbering 

 of my Paragraphs, having begun my Journal at the 

 close of PARAGRAPH No. 20. 



21. Let us, now, take a survey, or rather glance, at the face, 

 which nature now wears. The grass begins to afford a good deal tj) \\ 

 for sheep and for my grazing English pigs, and the cows and oxen 

 get a little food from it. The pears, apples, and other fruit trees, 

 have not made much progress in the swelling or bursting of their 

 buds. The buds of the weeping-willow have bursted (for, in spite 



37 



