My Garden Acquaintance | Page 5

weather, as it were, in our power, by betraying its ambushes before it is
ready to give the assault. At first sight, nothing seems more drolly
trivial than the lives of those whose single achievement is to record the
wind and the temperature three times a day. Yet such men are doubtless
sent into the world for this special end, and perhaps there is no kind of
accurate observation, whatever its object, that has not its final use and
value for some one or other. It is even to be hoped that the speculations
of our newspaper editors and their myriad correspondence upon the
signs of the political atmosphere may also fill their appointed place in a
well-regulated universe, if it be only that of supplying so many more
jack-o'-lanterns to the future historian. Nay, the observations on finance
of an M.C. whose sole knowledge of the subject has been derived from
a life-long success in getting a living out of the public without paying
any equivalent therefor, will perhaps be of interest hereafter to some
explorer of our *cloaca maxima,* whenever it is cleansed.
For many years I have been in the habit of noting down some of the
leading events of my embowered solitude, such as the coming of
certain birds and the like,--a kind of *memoires pour servir,* after the
fashion of White, rather than properly digested natural history. I
thought it not impossible that a few simple stories of my winged
acquaintances might be found entertaining by persons of kindred taste.
There is a common notion that animals are better meteorologists than
men, and I have little doubt that in immediate weather-wisdom they
have the advantage of our sophisticated senses (though I suspect a
sailor or shepherd would be their match), but I have seen nothing that
leads me to believe their minds capable of erecting the horoscope of a
whole season, and letting us know beforehand whether the winter will
be severe or the summer rainless. I more than suspect that the clerk of
the weather himself does not always know very long in advance
whether he is to draw an order for hot or cold, dry or moist, and the

musquash is scarce likely to be wiser. I have noted but two days'
difference in the coming of the song- sparrow between a very early and
a very backward spring. This very year I saw the linnets at work
thatching, just before a snow- storm which covered the ground several
inches deep for a number of days. They struck work and left us for a
while, no doubt in search of food. Birds frequently perish from sudden
changes in our whimsical spring weather of which they had no
foreboding. More than thirty years ago, a cherry-tree, then in full bloom,
near my window, was covered with humming-birds benumbed by a fall
of mingled rain and snow, which probably killed many of them. It
should seem that their coming was dated by the height of the sun,
which betrays them into unthrifty matrimony;
"So priketh hem Nature in hir corages;"(1)
but their going is another matter. The chimney swallows leave us early,
for example, apparently so soon as their latest fledglings are firm
enough of wing to attempt the long rowing-match that is before them.
On the other hand the wild-geese probably do not leave the North till
they are frozen out, for I have heard their bugles sounding southward so
late as the middle of December. What may be called local migrations
are doubtless dictated by the chances of food. I have once been visited
by large flights of cross-bills; and whenever the snow lies long and
deep on the ground, a flock of cedar-birds comes in mid-winter to eat
the berries on my hawthorns. I have never been quite able to fathom the
local, or rather geographical partialities of birds. never before this
summer (1870) have the king-birds, handsomest of flycatchers, built in
my orchard; though I always know where to find them within half a
mile. The rose-breasted grosbeak has been a familiar bird in Brookline
(three miles away), yet I never saw one here till last July, when I found
a female busy among my raspberries and surprisingly bold. I hope she
was *prospecting* with a view to settlement in our garden. She seemed,
on the whole, to think well of my fruit, and I would gladly plant
another bed if it would help to win over so delightful a neighbor.
(1) Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales, Prologue,* line 11.
The return of the robin is commonly announced by the newspapers, like

that of eminent or notorious people to a watering- place, as the first
authentic notification of spring. And such his appearance in the orchard
and garden undoubtedly is. But, in spite of his