Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/656

638 habit common to swine in their feral condition, just as we see a dog turn about half a dozen times before lying down.

In an interesting paper on local weather-lore, read by Mr. Amos W. Butler before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, during the Philadelphia meeting of 1884, the author has another version of this saying: "When hogs gather up sticks and carry them about, expect cold weather." This is wholly at variance with what I have observed, for my memoranda record this habit almost wholly during the hot weather, and this must necessarily be the rule with New Jersey swine, or the local weather-prophets would not have coined the verse as I have given it.

As to the other couplet, it is about as near meaningless as any saying can well be. Some rustic rhymer, a century ago, may have added it as a piece of fun, but it has stuck most persistently. As it stands now, it has stood for quite one hundred years.

In reference to the dog, I have heard the following more pretentious stanza, which has now taken its place among our nursery rhymes, where, indeed, it is best fitted to remain:

 "When drowsy dogs start from their sleep, And bark at empty space, 'Tis not a dream that prompts them to, But showers come on apace."

Here we have essentially the same inference as in that of the rhyme about cows, but it is not to be explained away so readily. Such acts, as described, can not be attributed to annoyance by flies, for they too often emerge from dark quarters, where they have been unmolested; but the all-important fact must not be overlooked that such acts are not confined to summer. If they were, the electrical theory might be advanced with some confidence. From what I have noticed in such dogs as I have owned, the habit of dreaming, which in the rhyme is denied to be the explanation, is probably the key to the mystery. Again, statistics show that the correspondence between such habits and sudden showers is only what we should expect in the way of coincidences. Dogs certainly are not to be considered as reliable barometers.

The same may be said of the domestic cat. Its movements have all been carefully noted, and the yawning, stretching, scratching, and waving of the tail appear to have been accredited with some special meteorological significance. Careful observation has not confirmed any of these impressions. Table-legs are scratched time and again by Tom or Tabby, and no rain falls for twenty-four or forty-eight hours. They stretch themselves after a nap, lick their sides and wash their faces with the same regularity in midwinter as in midsummer, yet it is only showers, and not snow-storms, which these actions are supposed to predict.

When in summer the signs fail, my country friends conveniently