The woodchuck, like the bear, is a "meat-packer." People talk about him more or less in February. His other name is "ground-hog" and his shadow is quite as famous as he is. But is there anything in that old weather saw? Well, yes and no. You see, it's like this: Mr. Ground-Hog goes to bed very early in the Fall--long before the cold weather sets in--and so he is up very early the next Spring; long before the snow is all gone and, as it is with the other all-Winter sleepers, a little extra warmth may wake him up. Along toward morning, you know, we all begin to stir around in our beds and get half awake. So in addition to the fact that it is nearly daybreak for him--that is to say, Springtime--let there come along a bright, warm day in February--the second is as good as any other--and Mr. Ground-Hog is likely to come out of his hole. And, if he does, of course he will see his shadow, after which there is likely to be quite a lot of cold weather. HOW WEATHER AVERAGES UP Not that his shadow makes any difference, but the point is that if you have much warm weather _early_ in February you are likely to have colder weather _later_ and running on into March. It's just the law of averages, that's all. You see it running through the year--this averaging up of weather; it just sways back and forth like a pendulum. Take it in any storm of rain or snow; first the clear sky, then the clouds, then the downfall, and after that the clear sky again. Take any month as a whole, or a year as a whole, and it's the same way; you get about so much rain, so much sunshine, so much heat and cold. The United States Weather Bureau went to work once and, from the records, classified the storms for the last thirty years, and they found that about fifteen storms each year start over the region of the West Gulf States, twelve begin over the mountains of Colorado, forty cross the country from the North Pacific by way of Washington and Oregon; and so on, just about so many from each region each year. [Illustration: _The Last Snow, by Lippincott_]