COUNTRY LIFE
"SNAIL, snail, put out your horns and I'll give you bread and butter the morn," I was taught to recite to the " black snail " when I encountered it on the road as a child—generally on a Sunday evening in summer as I walked back from what used to be known in that pad of the world as " a preaching." When the horns of the snail cant out, he was happy and it was supposed to be a good omen. I w01 always a little astonished that the thing happened after one or tV' repetitions of the line. To find snails on the road was said to be a sign of rain, but whether it was or not I could never be sure. On reflection I think that a change in atmosphere may attract a snail from the hedge' bottom, but like many other old weather signs, the fact that rain followed may have been chance or coincidence. .Last week a gardener assured me that we are to have a wet summer because he has found three wasp nests under cover of a roof. All I can say was that have waited in vain for the hard winters that are forecast every year when someone sees a fine tree of holly berries. I am sure there are as many wasp nests along the hedgeside as in any other normal yea', although 1 too have found one under cover.
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