What of the birds? For of these and blossoms is a naturalist’s year made up. The woodland almanac goes for little so far as they are concerned—unless, indeed, you have a trained ear for varying twitters. Bird music is never lacking, and I have long held it an open question if we may not spare the thrush, when there are foxy-sparrows among the briers. So far as weather is concerned, we can not build upon our birds, and no one of our seasons lacks them. It is the whim of closet ornithologists and petty critics to assert that winter is comparatively birdless, but even this is not true. There are not so many species, but often quite as many individuals, and oftener more. Birdless, indeed! Redbirds, meadow-larks, song-sparrows, and blue jays at this moment are making merry in my garden. Notwithstanding all this, there will always be those who will strive to the end to decipher the woodland almanac, and where is he who claims not to have solved its meaning? It were well if every one spelled over a few pages of it every day. It is healthy exercise, fitting one to duties of all kinds, and never tending to sour the temper of a sane person if, at the close of threescore years and ten, he finds that he is sure of but the first lesson—there are four seasons. Weather wisdom, as we all know, meets us at every turn, and while usually irritating, occasionally proves a source of amusement. Some such experience as the following, may have been the fate of many more than I suppose. John Blank is one of those unfortunates who desire to be thought a genius. To float with the current is beneath his dignity. Uz Gaunt described him well as one who persists in looking toward the west to see the sun rise. Knowing my love for the open fields, this would-be genius has kindly treated me, of late, to innumerable accounts of recent observations of beasts, birds, reptiles, and wild life’s less noble forms, and certainly the man has remarkable powers in one direction—he can misinterpret admirably. “Think of it!” he exclaimed excitedly; “here it is December, and I have heard a frog croak! It was not a springtime croak, of course, but a cry of pain, and I believe a musk-rat dug it out of its winter quarters, and the sound I heard was a cry of pain.” It is a wonder that he did not hear the musk-rat’s chuckle over a good dinner, also. Here we have three assumptions—that frogs never sing in winter; that they habitually hibernate; and that musk-rats dig them out of the mud. The aforesaid John Blank had lived forty-odd years on a farm, and did not know that frogs voluntarily sang or croaked during mild winter days. Like many another, finding that it is cold in December, he turns his back on winter sunshine.