AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR 



from a fox in the park with the last stroke of midnight. 

 " Bad cess to *e," muttered an old farmer, but we did 

 not know if he cursed the fox, or the year that was dead. 



ON New Year's Day, the old story goes, the ravens 

 choose the sites of their nests, first token 

 The Lane that we have set foot on the long lane to 

 to Spring April. There are other tokens on all hands, 

 for all to see: fern-like sprays of parsley 

 making delicate greenery in the hedge-banks, new prim- 

 rose leaves, buds swelling on the sallows, and, in a 

 warm corner, a hazel-bush lighting the sombre hedge 

 with greenish-yellow catkins, already beginning to 

 shake loose. The new year's curtain goes up to the 

 hearty singing of thrushes. A pair of partridges is 

 seen, feeding apart from the covey ; two cock pheasants 

 are disturbed at a duel; and two jackdaws fly together, 

 like lovers, to a promising, ivy-mantled hollow tree. Even 

 the cock sparrow's vulgar chirp has an amorous ring. 



" RAVEN trees," no doubt, were so called from the 

 faithful way ravens return to the same nest 

 The year after year; the old names cling to the 



Raven's trees, as in the New Forest, though now the 

 Eyrie doves and starlings reign in the ravens' 



stead. Where, in Highland fastnesses, rem- 

 nants of the sable brotherhood survive, the hardy birds 

 will be sitting on their green eggs next month, undis- 

 mayed though snow blizzards rage. Lord Lilford's story 

 of his pet raven, Grip, comes to mind how Grip was 

 deserted by his bride before she laid eggs in the nest 

 they had built, and how he then carried many stones 

 up to the nest an expression of despair, or else a hint 



