MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 5 



tical atmosphere may also fill their appointed place in a well- 

 regulated universe, if it be only that of supplying so many 

 more jack-o -lanterns to the future historian. Nay, the ob 

 servations on finance of an M. C. whose sole knowledge of 

 the subject has been derived from a lifelong success in getting 

 a living out of the public without paying any equivalent 

 therefor, will perhaps be of interest hereafter to some explorer 

 of our cloaca maxima, whenever it is cleansed. 



For many years I have been in the habit of noting down 

 some of the leading events of my embowered solitude, such 

 as the coming of certain birds and the like, a kind of 

 memoires pour servir, after the fashion of White, rather than 

 properly digested natural history. I- thought it not impossible 

 that a few simple stories of my winged acquaintances might 

 be found entertaining by persons of kindred taste. 



There is a common notion that animals are better meteoro 

 logists than men, and I have little doubt that in immediate 

 weather-wisdom they have the advantage of our sophisticated 

 senses (though I suspect a sailor or shepherd would be their 

 match), but I have seen nothing that leads me to believe 

 their minds capable of erecting the horoscope of a whole 

 season, and letting us know beforehand whether the winter 

 will be severe or the summer rainless. I more than suspect 

 that the clerk of the weather himself does not always know 

 very long in advance whether he is to draw an order for hot 

 or cold, dry or moist, and the musquash is scarce likely to be 

 wiser. I have noted but two days difference in the coming of 

 the song-sparrow between a very early and a very backward 

 spring. This very year I saw the linnets at work thatching, 

 just before a snow-storm which covered the ground several 

 inches deep for a number of days. They struck work and 

 left us for a while, no doubt in search of food. Birds fre 

 quently perish from sudden changes in our whimsical spring 

 weather of which they had no foreboding. More than thirty 

 years ago, a cherry-tree, then in full bloom, near my window, 

 was covered with humming-birds benumbed by a fall of 

 mingled rain and snow, which probably killed many of them. 

 It should seem that their coming was dated by the height of 

 the sun, which betrays them into unthrifty matrimony; 



So nature pricketh them. in their corages ; 



but their going is another matter. The chimney-swallows 



