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NATURE NOTES. 
“ All the months of the year curse a fair Februeer ; ” hence 
the agriculturist regards with much equanimity the downfall, be 
it either black or white, rain or snow. To dwellers in towns a 
fall of snow is but a nuisance, to be as quickly removed as may 
be, but in rural districts its softly-falling flakes clothe the whole 
country side with a mantle of exquisite purity. There is 
scarcely a more charming object in nature than the beautiful 
modelling and light and shade of a great snowdrift seen in the 
clear frosty air, with its play of surface lighted up in the sun- 
shine, and over all the blue sky that even February can often 
show in the great downlands far remote from the contaminations 
of towns. While the Londoner is sitting poisoning himself all 
day in his gas-lighted office or groping his way through dense 
fog, twenty miles away the keen bracing air is exhilaration and 
life, and the clear atmosphere reveals the wide-spreading 
prospect robed in dazzling brightness, while at night in the 
frosty atmosphere the starry dome has a brilliancy, beauty and 
clearness that no other season can afford. 
It would not be fair, however, to omit to point out that the 
question has another side. Long-continued frost means acute 
distress to the poor, and “ lovely skating weather ” is enforced 
idleness to thousands to whom work is life. In the country 
too we may well exclaim with Kirke White : — 
“ God help thee, traveller, on this journey far ; 
The wind is bitter keen, the snow o’erlays 
The hidden pits, and dangerous hollow ways,” 
as we recall how, within a radius of a few miles of our home on 
the Wiltshire downs, over twenty shepherds and others perished 
in one night beneath the shrouding snow, or how a waggon, 
four horses, and three men in the blinding storm got off the 
track, and though searched for by scores of willing helpers, were 
not discovered for many days in the gently falling snow that had 
hour by hour more deeply buried them. In the same way long 
protracted rain or too speedy thaw may lead to floods that may 
cause immense injury and loss of life and property, another of our 
painful experiences consisting of standing helplessly watching the 
rushing waters that surrounded cottages, to the inhabitants 
of whom the flood might mean destruction, the loss of pig and 
chickens, the floating away of woodstack and furniture, and 
the imminent risk that the cottage itself might be undermined 
and sink to rnin in the swirling torrent. 
We notice from observations before us that in 1880 rain fell 
in greater or less degree on twenty-six days of the twenty-eight 
of the February of that year — an amount that would surely satisfy 
even the most exacting. “ If in February there be no rain, ’Tis 
good for neither hay nor grain but whether the hay and grain 
of 1880 were above average we cannot recall. We note, too, 
that in February, 1883, one-sixth of the total of the rainfall for 
the whole year fell iff three weeks, necessitating the entire sus- 
pension of all farming operations, and causing very serious 
