THE MAGAZINE 



OF 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



SEPTEMBER, 1832. 



ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



Art. I. Remarks on the Spring of 18S2, as compared ivith that of 

 1831, together ivith a Calendar shotting the Difference of the Two 

 Seasons. By the Rev. W. T. Bree, M.A. 



" ^statem increpitans seram, zephyrosque morantes." Virg. Georg. 4. 

 " Chiding the tardy summer, and the zephyrs long delay'd." 



Notwithstanding the unusual mildness of the preceding 

 winter (the mildest, I think, I ever remember*), the spring of 

 the present year has been, contrary to what might have been 

 expected, any thing but an early one. The backwardness, 

 indeed, of the season has been a subject of conversation in the 

 mouth of almost everybody; and the justness of the remark 

 will appear more circumstantially, upon an inspection of the 

 following calendar, which records the dates of such natural oc- 

 currences as I happened to have noted equally in each of the 

 two seasons, viz., the spring of 1832 and that of 1831. Some 

 of the first spring flowers, indeed, such as the snowdrop and 

 several species of crocus, which usually expand their blossoms 

 in January or February, if only the weather be open, and 

 their progress be not retarded by frost, were earlier this season 

 than they were in the one preceding : but, with comparatively 

 few exceptions, the flowering of plants, the appearance of in- 

 sects and of our summer birds of passage, in a word, the signs 

 of spring, were this year later than usual. The fieldfares f 



* The throstle was to be heard singing almost throughout the winter ; 

 and the titmouse commenced its spring note on the 27th of December. 



-|- These birds were much less numerous, at least in this part of the 

 country, during the season of 1831-2, than usual. I scarcely saw a good 



Vol. v. — No. 29. qq 



