Remarks on the Spring of ] 833. 489 



and facts fully bear out the assertion: May-day presented 

 fewer signs of returning summer than I scarcely ever wit- 

 nessed at that period of the year. Not a leaf was to be seen 

 upon the trees, the very buds were scarcely bursting ; even 

 the horsechestnut was bare, its fat luxuriant buds not being 

 in a more advanced state of vegetation than I have sometirnes 

 known them at the end of March. No swifts had yet appeared 

 with us; no azure blue nor orange-tip butterfly. Copious 

 warm rains fell on the 1st of May and a few following days, 

 and were succeeded by the most delightful summer weather; 

 which, of course, brought forward vegetation with extra- 

 ordinary rapidity. Trees, which, at the beginning of May, 

 were (as I have said) bare and destitute of leaves, had, by 

 the middle of the month, not only acquired their broad and 

 perfect foliage, but that foliage had likewise assumed its full 

 dark summer tints. Rhododendron ponticum was in full 

 beauty by the 17th; lilacs and laburnums, some time before. 

 By the 21st, I had no less than four or five species of single 

 British roses in bloom in the garden; the late-leafing trees 

 and shrubs, the ash, walnut, mulberry, acacia (Robin/« 

 Pseud-Acacia £,), and althaea frutex (Hibiscus syriacus 

 L.\ were also in verdure. On the 29th, I observed a field 

 of grass cut for hay at Bed worth, six miles from Coventry : 

 an unusually early instance of haymaking in this part of the 

 country. The cockchafers (which were not numerous this 

 season). had nearly disappeared by the end of May; and, 

 early in June, the rhododendrons were entirely faded and 

 gone by. May, in short, this year, seemed almost to have 

 usurped the place, and assumed the character, of June; real- 

 ising, to the full, all that the poets feign of the " merry " 

 month. I am not quite sure, indeed, that the cuckoo did not 

 miscalculate the season, and mistake the one month for the 

 other; for it was observed, in this neighbourhood at least, 

 that he had become slack in his singing, and was but little 

 heard during the hot weather in the latter part of May, 

 though later in the season, before he became entirely silent, 

 he resumed his song again with considerable vigour. On the 

 whole, the spring of the present year may be regarded as at 

 once both a late and an early one. Judging by the appear- 

 ances of nature in the beginning of May, we should pro- 

 , nounce the spring to be a very backward one; judging by a 

 like criterion in the middle and end of the month, a very for- 

 ward one. The following calendar, extending only through 

 the three months of April, May, and June, may, perhaps, 

 furnish some additional facts in illustration of the above 

 remarks. ^ B gpw p83I 1q ^j ^ Jfetfj h{p? 97firf j 



