15 DECEMBER 1944, Page 14

Justified Weather Signs It is recorded in the latest issue

of The Countryman that an old farmer has been testing for a score of years the truth of one of the oldest weather prognostics embalmed in verses, best known being the popular couplet: "Beasts arise betimes, but then

They are beasts and we are men."

The old farmer found the prophecy from " orening red and morning grey" to be right nineteen time out of twenty, and the reverse twenty- three times out of twenty-four. Incidentally, can anyone give the date and authorship of the verses in which the couplet quoted above occurs? Again, is there any other popular tag about the weather that has any firm basis?