STORM WARNINGS. 107 



diction on which we should be disposed to venture with so much 

 confidence and boldness as that within twelve or fifteen hours of a 

 bright auroral display there shall be a storm, and that that storm 

 shall be of heavy rain or sleet, as well as of high wind. We speak 

 principally of the West Highlands, but we have no doubt that 

 observation would prove the phenomena to be the same throughout 

 the kingdom. If we were in command of a ship at sea, we should 

 consider ourselves quite as justified in making all necessary pre- 

 parations for a coming storm on the back of a brilliant aurora, as 

 we should on observing a sudden fall in the barometer, the only 

 difference being that the " merry dancers " give you longer notice 

 of the approaching gale than does the mercury. The latter 

 exclaims, " Look out ! " and if you don't look out, and that 

 instantly, calling all hands and making everything snug, you come 

 to grief, while time enough generally elapses after the auroral 

 warning, to enable you to prepare at leisure for the coming storm, 

 and, if it catch you napping, the fault is all your own. The recent 

 auroral displays seem to have been very general over the whole of 

 Europe, and are said to have been unusually brilliant in Canada 

 and the Northern States of America. A more than ordinarily 

 severe and protracted winter may be expected after all these aerial 

 perturbations, which, when a French savant remarked the other 

 day to a compatriot, " Tant pis," replied the chassepot-bearing 

 moMle, with the invariable shoulder shrug and grin, " Tant pis 

 pour Messieurs les Prussiensl" — thinking, no doubt, of the dis- 

 astrous retreat from Moscow, and hoping to see it repeated in 

 a different direction at no distant day. Except the wren and 

 redbreast, whose pluck is indomitable, and who are never altogether 

 out of voice, our singing birds are now songless and silent, or if 

 they do utter a note, it is but a cheep and a chirp, not a song, 

 another sign that our winter is to be regarded as having fairly set 

 in. We notice, besides, that some of our winter visitors from 



