Their singing was always a pleasure to him; and he writes to my sister, 10 March 1852:--“I have often fancied that the thrushes know that I am pleased, when I am listening to them, from the cast of their little sharp eye down on me.” But he liked birds better in the spring, when they were singing, than in the autumn, when they were eating up his fruit. Even in the spring he writes to my father, 29 April 1849:--“I certainly do like to hear them sing, but it is vexing to lose all the fruit.... I loaded my gun; but, when I came out, one of them struck up such a merry note that I could not do it--so I suppose the fruit must be sacrificed to my cowardice, humanity, or what you may call it.” The crops were sacrificed as well. He writes, 21 June 1846:--“There are two nests of wood-pigeons here, and they daily visit me. I have taken the gun twice to shoot them, but my heart failed me.” He welcomed the prospect of a rookery here, and wrote to my father, 23 March 1861:--“We have one rooks’-nest in a tall elm in the village, a pleasant look-out from this window to see how busy they are in building. If this saves itself, there will be more next year.” And on 23 February 1862:--“Rooks plentiful here about the trees, but not building yet.” And then on 2 December 1863:--“Six large elms blown up in the village to-day quite across the path, those that the rooks built on, six in a row; so no rooks’-nests in future.” This row of elms was at the west end of the Hall House garden. He says they were blown up; and that is the usual phrase here. Trees are not blown down, nor are rocks blown up. They say:--“Us put in charges, and bursted ’n abroad.” Although he noted the barometer in that record every day, he knew by experience that there were safer guides. And he writes to my father, 28 March 1847:--“Yet at Moreton, if the sign-board of the Punch Bowl creaked upon its hinges, and the smoke blew down at Treleaven’s corner, rain was sure to follow, let the quicksilver be high or low.” I find little need of a barometer here. If the wind blows down the valley, the weather is going to be fine. If it blows up the valley, there is going to be wet. And there is going to be a spell of wet, if there is damp upon the hearthstones in the Inner Parlour. When I hear *****’s leg be achin’ dreadful, then I know it will be rainin’ streams. Sometimes, to make quite sure, I inquire of people who are weather-wise. After surveying every quarter of the sky, an old man told me:--“No, I don’t think it _will_ rain, aless it _do_ rain.” I interpreted the oracle as meaning that there would be heavy rain or none. Another wise one told me that, “when the weather do change, it do generally change upon a Friday.”