Prognostications and signs, a great amusement, and the ground-work of belief to our forefathers, have, in general, pretty much declined with us; the repeated falsity of most of them having destroyed their reputation. We know so little, if any thing, of the actuating causes of seasons and their change, or the combinations effecting results, that no safe conclusion can be formed of any present events influencing the future. Whatever our almanacs may do, few persons of credit will venture now to predict, from what we call natural causes, a hot summer, or a severe winter; yet that very ancient idea, amongst country people, that “years of store of haws and heps do commonly portend cold winters,” still lingers with us. However warmly we assent to the fundamental truth, the merciful consideration of Providence, in providing food for the necessities of the little fowls of the air, which, perhaps, piously gave rise to the observation, almost every year proves, that any conclusions drawn from these “stores of haws and heps” are perfectly fallacious. The birds that feed chiefly upon the fruit of the white thorn, and the wild rose, are the fieldfare (turdus pilaris), and the redwing (turdus iliacus); and that they do so, every sportsman has had the most manifest conviction: yet it has been said recently, that these creatures do not eat these fruits; and said too by an eminent and amiable man, with whom I have frequently had the honor of conversing, and always with profit.[55] Were he living, his love of science would encourage my observations, though not in unison with his opinion: my breath shall not agitate his ashes, nor will his spirit, I am certain, frown in anger at my lines. It must be premised, that these birds, generally speaking, give the preference to insect food and worms; and when flights of them have taken their station near the banks of large rivers, margined by lowlands, we shall find, that the bulk of them will remain there, and feed in those places; and, in the uplands, we shall observe small restless parties only. But in the midland and some other counties, the flocks that are resident have not always these meadows to resort to, and they then feed on the haws as long as they remain. In this county, the extensive lowlands of the river Severn in open weather are visited by prodigious flocks of these birds; but as soon as snow falls, or hard weather comes on, they leave these marshy lands, because their insect food is covered or become scarce, visit the uplands, to feed on the produce of the hedges, and we see them all day long passing over our heads in large flights on some distant progress, in the same manner as our larks, at the commencement of a snowy season, repair to the turnip fields of Somerset and Wiltshire. They remain absent during the continuance of those causes which incited their migration; but, as the frost breaks up, and even before the thaw has actually commenced, we