CHAPTEE XL. 



Sea-Fowl — Weather Prognostics— Goosander {Mergyis Merganser, Linn.) — Gales of Wind — 

 January Primroses— ZacA/aw Gorach, the Mull " Natural " — A Dancing Rhyme. 



When a prophet's vaticinations are verified, by the event, the 

 world rarely fails to he reminded of it ; when it is otherwise, 

 however ; when the vaticinations turn out to be the very reverse 

 of true, people are rarely ever troubled with a note on the 

 matter, least of all on the part of the disappointed vaticinator 

 himself. The fact is that everything like vaticination had better, 

 as a rule, be let alone ; sooner or later, and in nine cases out of ten, 

 or oftener, the prophet never fails to come to grief. So convinced, 

 for our own part, are we of this, that while reserving our right to 

 vaticinate and predict as much and as recklessly as anybody else, 

 when it so pleased us, yet, as a matter of fact, we never do venture 

 further into the treacherous territories of vaticination than the 

 mere outskirts, so to speak, of what may well be called the 

 debateable land of weather prognostics ; and even there we tread as 

 gingerly and cautiously as if at this moment we were on the banks 

 of the Prah, in constant dread of a lurking ambuscade of fierce and 

 fetish-valorous Ashantees. Our weather prophecies from time to 

 time have often, as the courteous reader may remember, been fully 

 justified by the event ; but if the whole truth is to be told, we fear 

 we must confess that they have almost as frequently turned out to 

 be wrong, and it is not every weather prophet who will confess so 

 much. It requires a larger share of magnanimity than the reader 

 is perhaps aware of, to be able to confess one's errors with anything 



