128 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



Fergusson's Farmer's Ingle, upon which Burns 's 

 famous poem is partly modeled, names no partic- 

 ular month, but the poet calls upon his muse to 

 * ^ chaunt in hamely strain, ' ' 



What bangs fu' leal the e'enin's coming cauld, 

 An' gars snaw-tappit Winter freeze in vain. 



In The Natural History of Selhorne the refer- 

 ences to individual months are somewhat inci- 

 dental. The snows recorded are all or nearly all 

 in December or January. On November twenty- 

 sixth, 1768, White mentions a martin seen by a 

 neighbor busily ^4iawking for flies." Under date 

 of April twelfth, 1772, he writes that the preced- 

 ing November, the old Sussex tortoise was at work 

 from the first to the thirteenth, ^^ forming its hy- 

 bernaculum," and as the weather was warm at the 

 end of that period the work remained unfinished.^^ 

 In 1773 he records that the tortoise ' ' retired under 

 ground about the twentieth of November, and 

 came out again for one day on the thirtieth. ' ' ^" 

 Once he writes of the house martins, ''considerable 

 flocks have discovered themselves again in the first 

 week of November, and often on the fourth day of 

 that month only for one day. ' ' -^ 



21 Letter XIII. 



22 Letter XVII. 



23 Letter XXXVI. 



