On a frosty day, when things have been going badly, the guns may be congratulating themselves as they reach some big turnip-fields for which the birds have been making. A turnip-field may be expected to steady and control the departure and the direction of birds; but in the grip of frost turnips are only a little better than the bare, frozen field. For the leaves, that yesterday made luxuriant cover, to-day are flattened to the ground by the frost. Even the charlock, which may have done so much to make up for the thinness of the turnips, has been shrivelled to a few brown stems. Why the farmer leaves the late-grown charlock untouched is because he knows that before it reaches seed-time the frost will have killed every plant. On a small shoot, frost-flattened turnips may ruin the hope of a full day's partridge-driving. On big shoots frost counts for less, for long drives can be taken. Short drives in winter partridge-driving are seldom profitable--whether a shoot be small or big. * * * * * [Illustration: PEEWITS IN WINTER. LONDON, EDWARD ARNOLD.] The Fear of Snow By the very poor snow is regarded as among the most terrible calamities of life. Many types of countrymen, rural publicans, postmen, outdoor labourers, and small traders, speak of snow as the worst of all possible weather, leaving the most serious after-effects. And snow means calamity to many wild things. Lucky are the robins of a garden who have a friend to stir the old hot-bed, and turn up the worms from beneath the frozen top-soil; happy the grain-feeding birds who find a rick that has been threshed. Thousands flock to the corn-ricks, and there is food for all--pheasants, partridges, rooks, jackdaws, starlings, sparrows, greenfinches, chaffinches, yellow-hammers, and the bramble-finches, orange, white, and black in plumage. To the holly-trees come the starving thrushes, and in hard weather even the fieldfares will lose their extreme shyness to besiege a holly-tree beside a door. The more delicate redwings die in thousands, though the dying and dead are seldom seen. To a few the snow means profit--for the hawks there is a carnival of feasting, and the fox finds weak and hungry hares and rabbits an easy prey, if ill-nourished on a diet of tree-bark and withered herbage. As to the pheasants, they are well cared for--and the keeper, in snowy weather, scatters his maize with a liberal hand. * * * * * Hard-Weather Prophets