NOVEMBER 



* Torn and shattered the trees, their branches again reset, 

 They trim afresh the fair 



Few green and golden leaves withheld from the storm ; 

 And awhile will be handsome yet 

 To-morrow's sun shall caress 

 Their remnant of loveliness : 

 To quiet days for a time 

 Sad autumn, lingering warm, 

 Shall humour their faded prime.' 



ROBERT BRIDGES. 



THE COUNTRY CALENDAR 



NOVEMBER is perhaps the least distinctive of all the months. You 

 will scarcely find it mentioned in all the corpus poetarum. Those 

 who write of autumn prefer October, and those who write of winter 

 begin with December. In the gardener's calendar it is often put 

 down as the first of the gardening months, but it may more properly 

 be called the first of the idle months, varying sharply between 

 autumn and winter. The elms may be leafy, but the chestnuts are 

 bare. Hunting and pheasant-shooting, legal in October, now become 

 active. It is established in statistics that a cold spell, corresponding 

 to the festival of the three ice saints in May, is commonly experi- 

 enced between November 6th and I2th, and its results are usually 

 to clear the woods and hedges of their relic leaves. There is no 

 better month for observing the heavens ; and it is the month of 

 shooting stars. 



In that remarkable list of earliest and latest events in natural 

 history, kept for a hundred years by the Marsham family in Norfolk, 

 the first ' indication of spring ' is put down to this month. On 



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