Norwich bulletin., 1916-08-19
THE WEATHER AS A FACTOR IN FARMING

| failed in his observation. It has proven true innumera-bIe times. Why shouldn't it?
 Like everything else there is a cause for the swallows flying low. It is simply this: the birds are insect is thickest and easiest to fill up on. When the air is heavy, as it usually is before a storm, the sensitive small in sects feel the difference and fly nearer the ground. Therefore the swifts which feed on them follow them down ward and skim just over the sur face, picking them up on the wing. When the air is lighter and clearer the insects fly higher, and the birds follow them up.
 In other words, the swallows are just a natural barometer, telling the heaviness or Iightness of the air as the case may be. If one will take the trouble to compare their flying with the rising or sinking of a mercury barometer, he will find that they cor roborate each ether almost invariably
 Other farmers have other signs Some of them may be mere supersti- uons. But many, probably most of them, will be found. on reflection and study, to have their foundation in some natural law and be based on the action of some natural force, hidden to us ex- cept as we see it affect more sensitive forms of life. None of our senses are acute enough to tell us when the barometric pressure falls half an inch. But many insects feel the difference and show it in their higher or lower flight We cannot see the tiny bugs. either but the swallows who live on them can. Therefore we watch the swallows which follow the bugs, whic:. fly low when the air is heavy.
 So with scores of other signs" Those which nave any real value in Nariably have a reason behind them, and the outdoors man who wants to know the why and the wherefore can usually find it if he looks long enough and close enough.
 Another of our local indications is the whip pOorWilI. For three long enerauOnS,-since the original John Farmer came over the mountain from house on a clearing in this village for three long generations the John Farmer family has planted corn as early as it heard the whip poor-wiIl sing. e Nc matter though the ground seemed still @ little cold; no matter though other indications were ad- verse, if MT. Whip -pOOr-Wil piped up lour and clear from his covert on the back knOlls,-especiall if ne f1uttered down among the raspberry vines near the barn and mentioned his name from there a few times, we have planted our corn just as soon as we could get it in.
 Tn q hundred and twenty-five years noc once has the John Farmer corn been injured hy spring frost, when thus planted Twice, in the cold summers" of 1916 and 1856 it was killed by mid-Juiy freezes. But SC was every other farmers corn, though not planted till weeks after our was up. Such freaks don't count and can't be explained, yet.
 There is something strangely fas- cinating about the habits of the mi gTatOTy birds. They winter somewhere to the south where the teJnDerature keeps high enough to supply them with their proper food. Then, as the sun arises northward, they migrate nOrthWardS, too, evidently trying to That the seasons are really more reg ular than we sometimes think they are IS shown by the surprising close ness with which most migratory birds maintain their schedule time
 4 new record kept of the arrival of the chimney cy-sWauoWs at New Mark ct, Va, for twenty-five years shows that Cn twelve of those years they ar rived either April II, 15 or Is. No year did they appear earlier than April ' LIlIt no year laLGl Indn ApIlI 2l. Iher average date was April 13 and their average variation from this only two days. With other species, observed in other places, the variation rarely ex- ceeds fourteen days and averages only about three.
 We all know that animals and birds and other flower" forms oE life usually have keener senses than we humans The dog can hear sounds too faint or distant to impress our car drums: the hound can smell a trail that suggests no Odor to us: the squirrel can tell whether there is good meat or not in nut without having to resort to our clumsy test of cracking it: the wasp knows which IS the best pear on the tree, without having to taste all the others before scinging it: the average cat will see q mouse and gobbIe it where it is too dark for US even to see the cat
 So it may well be that they sense changes in the air,-in it's weight, it's humidity, it's "cIoseness, ,"'-which are scarely appreciable by our duIer senses. We can see their movements and, when their conduct is induced by such causes, it naturally might be