In no country other than England, it has been said, can one experience four seasons in the course of a single day! Day may break as a warm spring morning；a hour or so later black clouds may have appeared from nowhere and the rain may be pouring down. At midday conditions may be really wintry with the temperature down by about eight degrees or more centigrade. And then, in the late afternoon the sky will clear, the sun will begin to shine, and for an hour or two before darkness falls, it will be summer.

    In England one can experience almost every kind of weather except the most extreme. (Some foreigners, by the way, seem to have the impression that for ten months of the year the country is covered by a dense blanket of fog；this is not true.) The problem is that we never can be sure when the different types of weather will occur. Not only do we get several different sorts of weather in one day, but we may very well get a period of winter in summer and a period of summer in winter.

    And, of course, the weather's being different provides a constant topic of talk. Even the most silent

    Englishman is always prepared to discuss the weather. And, though he sometimes complains bitterly of it, he would not, even if he could, exchange it for the more predictable climate of other lands.