MARCH. 53 



shine and a shelter from the winds. There lives no country 

 boy so unobservant as not to know this, yet such plants 

 are pointed at with great glee by the victims of the mania 

 for seasonal prophecy. And the unthinking audience 

 shout " Spring is coming," for they have seen with their 

 own eyes the evidence. Have they ? In January the same 

 plant life was equally prominent, but then the weather 

 prophets had not been moved to speak, so it all passed for 

 nothing. 



In localities of a higher grade of intelligence than 

 Crankville, the observant people, curious in such matters 

 but not bigotedly confident, generally watch the birds 

 more closely than any other form of life, and judge of an 

 early or late spring by their migratory movements. This 

 is not a safe guide by any means. A carefully kept record 

 covering a decade will show that birds are very frequently 

 deceived by premature spring-like weather. Jack Frost 

 is the only boy who has scattered salt on birds' tails and 

 so caught them. He it is who has dashed snow so freely 

 about in April that the summer birds have to admit them- 

 selves his prisoners. 



I have gathered a host of sayings referring to birds 

 and the weather, and have tested them all. Often they 

 hold good, frequently they do not; and the weather 

 prophet is always cunning enough to see with a blind eye 

 only when the facts contradict him. I well remember 

 pointing to a flock of wild geese as they wended their way 

 northward early in February. " Winter is about over," 

 my companion told me. But we happened to have five 

 weeks of arctic weather after that, and I twitted him about 

 his prediction. " They must have been goin' over without 

 honkin'," he said ; " that makes a difference, you know." 

 I did not know it, and do not know it now, and never will 

 know it, for it is not true ; but what are we to do ? If I 

 tell the average Crankville weather prophet he is a pre- 



