ARCTIC SEA-FOWL. 245 



like complaisance, even in such a matter as weather prognostics, 

 and we therefore trust that the following confession will be valued 

 as it ought. Some time ago the number of Arctic sea-fowl in our 

 creeks and bays, and the near approach of a rather early fall of 

 snow to the sea line, justified us, as we thought, in predicting an 

 early and severe winter, meaning by " severe " for we scorn to be 

 disingenuous in the matter that it was likely to be excessively cold 

 as well as unusually stormy. The experience of upwards of twenty 

 years, during which we have been a keen and close student of mete- 

 orological phenomena and wild-bird life, seemed to us to warrant 

 the conclusion at which we had arrived. But how at mid- winter 

 stands the fact 1 ? Why, thus : that up to this date [January 1874], 

 it has been, upon the whole, the " openest " and mildest season for 

 at least a quarter of a century ! How, then, about your Arctic sea- 

 birds ] the reader may exclaim, and we can only answer that their 

 presence so early and in such numbers is to be accounted for by 

 the almost incessant gales that have been sweeping over the Atlantic 

 and northern seas, with such disastrous effects, for nearly two 

 months past. Feeling the first blast of the approaching tempest, 

 and assured of its prolonged continuance by a marvellous instinct, 

 further and more correctly prescient of such matters than man, 

 with all his boasted science, they fled to the shelter of our, to them 

 in such cases, Friendly Islands ; for an Arctic web-foot dreads an 

 unusual severity of hyperborean storms, long continued, quite as 

 much as it dreads an excessive intensity of hyperborean cold, and 

 for the same reason both equally interfere with the allotted com- 

 forts of its economy and due supply of food. The winter, besides, 

 is not yet past ; whistling before one is fairly out of the wood is 

 proverbially foolish, and there is, after all, time enough yet betwixt 

 this and the vernal equinox for the advent of any amount of cold, 

 so that there is still a chance for our wild-bird friends and ourselves 

 standing higher in the reader's estimation as weather prophets, ere 



