"If the grass grows green in Janiveer, It will grow the worse for it all the year." This is emphatically true, for the season which commences irregularly will be likely to continue to be irregular in other respects. Another of the same tenor: "If Janiveer Calends be summerly gay, It will be winterly weather till Calends of May." Janiveer is an alteration of the French name for January, and the proverb is very old. So March should be normally dry and windy. This, too, they understood, and hence the strong proverb: "A bushel of March _dust_ Is worth a king's ransom." And another: "March hack ham, Come in like a lion, go out like a lamb." So April and May should be cool and moist. It is their normal condition in regular, healthy, and productive seasons. The grass and grain require such conditions; and the spring rains are needed to supply the excessive summer evaporation. This, too, they well understood. And hence the proverbs: "A cold April the barn will fill." "A cool May, and a windy, Makes a full barn and a findy." And-- "April and May are the keys of the year." This was not very favorable, to be sure, for corn; but their consolation was found, as we find it, in the truth of another proverb: "Look at your corn in May, and you'll come sorrowing away; Look again in June, and you'll come singing in another tune." This difference in the character of the seasons occasioned the adoption of a great variety of "Almanac days;" and they are still very much regarded. Candlemas-day (2d of February) was one of them. Says Hone, in his "Every-Day Book": "Bishop Hall, in a sermon, on Candlemas-day, remarks, that 'it has been (I say not how true) an old note, that hath been wont to be set on this day, that if it be clear and sunshiny, it portends hard weather to come; if cloudy and lowering, a mild and gentle season ensuing.'" To the same effect is one of Ray's proverbs: "The hind had as lief see His wife on her bier, As that Candlemas-day Should be pleasant and clear." St. Paul's day, or the 25th of January, was another great "Almanac day," and so the verse: "If Saint Paul's day be fair and clear, It does betide a happy year; But if it chance to snow or rain, Then will be dear all kinds of grain. If clouds or mists do dark the sky, Great store of birds and beasts shall die; And if the winds do fly aloft, Then war shall vex the kingdom oft." St. Swithin's day was another of these "Almanac days." Gay said truly, "Let no such vulgar tales debase thy mind; Nor Paul, nor Swithin, rule the clouds or wind."