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Show SIGNS OF A MILD WINTER. A l'rophet Produces Kridence to Show tb Other Arise Men Are Wrong. "I notice that some wise men in various vari-ous parts of the country are predicting tui uncommonly severe winter," said the old Lackawanna valley weather prophet, "but they are all wrong. All the signs point to a mild and an open winter. When you see caterpillars crawling on the ground all through October, as they did last month, you may set it down as a fact that the temperature will be unseasonably un-seasonably high throughout the winter. Caterpillars don't crawl up to election time when a cold winter is ahead. "Robins were thick in the sumacs and laurels on the hillsides on All Saints' day, and that is a sure sign that there will be no real cold weather till the second sec-ond or third month next year. On Nov. 2 Iii'd a basketful of dandelion and jlrKBnTTig on the highest hill 1 in Lackawanna county. I never 6aw the Lj like of it before-, although I have eearch- ! ed for such indications of a mild winter at about that time in the year every fall since 1837. I also ran across some bone-set bone-set and ferns that hadn't been touched by frost, and that is another good sign of a mild winter. "In a piece of beech wood3 I knocked a chipmunk over with a stone on the afternoon before Halloween and found that it hadn't a single beechnut in its chops, although the nuts were plentiful. That is a sure sign of warm weather up to the holidays. On Oct. 28 I saw a woodchuck sitting on a stone wall. That is one of the best of open wirjter signs, as woodchucks hole up three weeks before be-fore that time when the winter is going to be severe. The toads sang 16 days later than usual another good sign of a mild winter. The fur of skunks and coons is thinner by half than it was a year ago, and that is another reason why I predict a very light snowfall before groundhog daj Rabbits are lean to S what thejr were last year, although food is abundant a sure sign of mild winter weather. All in all, I have never seei. in CO years so many favorable indications indica-tions of an open winter, and therefore I predict that the sales of fuel, sleighs and cutters will be small to what they were a year ago." Scranton Letter. |