6 MY GARDEN A CQ UAINTANCE. 



ances might be found entertaining by persons of kindred 

 taste. 



There is a common notion that animals are better 

 meteorologists 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 frequently 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 comiiig was dated by the height of 

 the sun, which betrays them into unthrifty matrimony ; 



&quot; So nature pricketh them in their corages ; &quot; 



but their going is another matter. The chimney-swallows 

 leave us early, for example, apparently so soon as their 

 latest fledglings are firm enough of wing to attempt the 

 long rowing-match that is before them. On the other 

 hand, the wild-geese probably do not leave the North till 

 they are frozen out, for I have heard their bugles sounding 

 southward so late as the middle of December. What may 

 be called local migrations are doubtless dictated by the 



