COUNTRY LIFE
Traditional Weather
The makers of this year's Christmas Cards may have had their justification after all. They had united—at least in my experience of their delicate art—in omitting any of the standard pictures of robins shivering in a world that sparkled with frost and snow. The most attractive card that reached me was a pattern of spring flowers ; and few of the birds which decorated most of the cards suggested mid-winter. Yet it seemed for a while as if we were to have a Christmas like the famous Decem- ber of x86o when the rivers bore on Christmas Day after a single night's frost. The promise, or threat, was not main- tained. A December of rare cold gave way with great sudden- ness to the common but not traditional weather of Christmas. After all it very rarely happens that weather interferes with the popular meets of fox-hounds that are celebrated in every county in England on Boxing Day. The " going " and the scent were both first rate—against all expectation—as Christ- mas approached. * * * *
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