THE FEAR OF SNOW 281 



By the very poor snow is regarded as among the 

 most terrible calamities of life. Many types of 



countrymen, rural publicans, postmen, out- 

 TheFear door labourers, and small traders, speak of 

 Snow snow as the worst of all possible weather, 



leaving the most serious after-effects. And 

 snow means calamity to many wild things. Lucky 

 are the robins of a garden who have a friend to stir 

 the old hot -bed, and turn up the worms from beneath 

 the frozen top-soil ; happy the grain-feeding birds 

 who find a rick that has been threshed. Thousands 

 flock to the corn -ricks, and there is food for all 

 pheasants, partridges, rooks, jackdaws, starlings, 

 sparrows, greenfinches, chaffinches, yellow-hammers, 

 and the bramble-finches, orange, white, and black 

 in plumage. To the holly-trees come the starving 

 thrushes, and in hard weather even the fieldfares 

 will lose their extreme shyness to besiege a holly- 

 tree beside a door. The more delicate redwings 

 die in thousands, though the dying and dead are 

 seldom seen. 



To a few the snow means profit for the hawks there 

 is a carnival of feasting, and the fox finds weak and 

 hungry hares and rabbits an easy prey, if ill-nourished 

 on a diet of tree -bark and withered herbage. As to 

 the pheasants, they are well cared for and the 

 keeper, in snowy weather, scatters his maize with a 

 liberal hand. 



