, 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 b