MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 5 



had a true country-gentleman s interest in the weathercock ; 

 that his first question on coming down of a morning was, 

 like Barabas s 



11 Into what quarter peers my halcyon s bill ? &quot; 



It is an innocent and healthful employment of the mind, 

 distracting one from too continual study of himself, and 

 leading him to dwell rather upon the indigestions of the 

 elements than his own. &quot; Did the wind back round, or go 

 about with the sun?&quot; is a rational question that bears not 

 remotely on the making of hay and the prosperity of crops. 

 I have little doubt that the regulated observation of the 

 vane in many different places, and the interchange of results 

 by telegraph, would put the weather, as it were, in our 

 power, by betraying its ambushes before it is ready to give 

 the assault. At first sight, nothing seems more drolly 

 trivial than the lives of those whose single achievement is 

 to record the wind and the temperature three times a day. 

 Yet such men are doubtless sent into the world for this 

 special end, and perhaps there is no kind of accurate obser 

 vation, whatever its object, that has not its final use and 

 value for some one or other. It is even to be hoped that 

 the speculations of our newspaper editors and their myriad 

 correspondents upon the signs of the political 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 observa 

 tions 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 acquaint- 



