"Our forefathers probably paid more attention to the periodical
occurrences of Nature, as guides for direction in their domestic and
rural occupations, than we of the present day are accustomed to do.
They seem to have referred to the Book of Nature more frequently and
regularly than to the almanack. Whether it were, that the one being
always open before them, was ready for reference, and not the other,
certain it is, that they attended to the _signs of the seasons_, and
regarded certain natural occurrences as indicating, and reminding them
of, the proper time for commencing a variety of affairs in common life.
The time was (perhaps it is not yet gone by), when no good housewife
would think of brewing when the beans were in blossom. The bursting of
the alder-buds, it was believed, announced the period at which eels
begin to stir out of their winter quarters, and, therefore, marked the
season for the miller or fisherman to put down his traps, to catch them
at the wears and flood-gates. The angler considered the season at which
tench bite most freely to be indicated by the blooming of the wheat;
and when the mulberry-tree came into leaf, the gardener judged that he
might safely commit his tender exotics to the open air, without the
fear of injury from frosts and cold. Then there was a variety of old
sayings, or proverbs, in vogue, such as--
When the sloe-tree is white as a sheet,
Sow your barley, whether it be dry or wet.
When elder is white, brew and bake a peck;
When elder is black, brew and bake a sack.
People talked of "the cuckoo having picked up the dirt," alluding
to the clean state of the country at the time of the arrival of the
cuckoo; and of "blackthorn winds," meaning the bleak north-east winds,
so commonly prevalent in the spring, about the time of the blowing of
the blackthorn. Virgil, in the recipe he gives in his _Georgics_, for
the production of a stock of bees, states that the process should be
begun,
Before the meadows blush with recent flowers,
And prattling swallows hang their nests on high.