COUNTRY LIFE
It is a general theory .throughout rural England that hard weather in November portends an open winter, and it is embalmed, as I am reminded, in a doggerel couplet of wide circulation.
If ice in November will bear a duck The winter will all be mire and muck, or words to that effect. The scientific forecasters, however, reject almost all the popular beliefs. March doesn't go out like a lamb if it enters as a lion. Gales do not synchronise with the equinoxes. St. Swithun is quite without a five or six weeks' influence. The moon may affect the tides, but not the clouds. In brief, scarcely any long-distance prognostic is accepted. The most credit, perhaps, or the least dogmatic denial concerns some of Buchan's periods, such as a warm Martinmas or the frosty festival of St. 13onifacius in May. We must bow to science ; but the rhyming prophets keep their votaries and win occasional triumphs that are remembered when the failures are forgotten.
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