218 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



pages. Some few birds always nest in February. The 

 earliest of all is the crossbill, which in these later days has 

 settled itself in many parts of England, and is no longer a 

 rather rare visitor. In certain Norfolk and Surrey pine- 

 woods you may invariably find nests with eggs in the third 

 week of February. The birds begin to build in January, 

 thus anticipating that hoary pioneer of spring the raven, 

 which with this exception is the earliest builder. 



Now again we see in February the very first of our so- 

 called summer migrants, though many suspect that the very 

 early chiff-chaffs, often recorded, come not from overseas 

 but from the warm counties of perpetual spring in south- 

 west England. In Cornwall one might lay it down, with no 

 more qualification than ' once in a blue-moon/ that winter is 

 unknown. 



This absence of winter during winter has this drawback, 

 that the season, having missed its cue, tries, as it were, to 

 make all sorts of ill-timed and belated appearances. It is 

 quickly warned off the stage ; but often not before it has 

 interfered with the piece in a lamentable manner. The only 

 really evil thing of regular recurrence in the English climate 

 is the late frost ; and the very rapidity of its ejectment 

 increases the damage. One would be as confident in 

 prophesying that there would be a frost on, say, May nth 

 as on December 25th. 



So it is that we never prepare for winter as they do in 

 other northern countries. In London are no arrangements 

 whatever for getting rid of snow, which always surprises the 

 authorities. When our poets deal with winter, which is 

 seldom, they dwell on its breaking up rather than its lasting 

 rigour. So Matthew Arnold : 



' And as in winter when the frost breaks up 

 At winter's end, before the spring begins 



