The Happy Prophet
The absence of reports on the weather both in newspapers and the B.B.C. has begun to restore to the aged countryman control of his favourite subject. Some while ago, as I =Dolled at the time, a labourer who looked full of local lore, reVied to a questioner who hoped for local wisdom, with the detest- able answer, " The six o'clock do say —! " He has now resumed his old wisdom. The movements of birds, the amount of berry, the redness of the sun, the stages of the moon, are all quoted once again as prophetic. Of them all the only one that has won some support among the semi-scientific is the passage of migrants. This winter, though many species (field- fare and golden plover for example) arrived rather later than usual in the south, great flocks of gulls moved south, and inland well before the usual date ; and the hordes of Scandi- navian pigeons, and starlings and larks are immense. The difficulty is to discover whether they foretasted the cold and fled from its presence in the north. Our island frosts came late in the general scheme. High-flying birds, of course, possess actual evidence forbidden to the groundlings.
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