490 REPORT OF THE BECEETART OF THE 



great his contempt for " means and curves.'*' On his hopes for 

 the coming harvest each winter sets its seal, — either the prom- 

 ise of hopeful fruition, or the forerunner of disappointment 

 and defeat. But above all, to the fruit-grower the winter 

 approaches, a season of grave doubts and fears. There is an 

 unpleasant sensation of speculation In connection with his 

 wealth of orchards, and he is ever harrassed by the fear that 

 the weather gods may beget some disastrous "corner" that 

 shall swallow up his all in destruction and defeat. It is this 

 era of ruinous change that has given us the winter of '73, but 

 just departed, and has made it a season of marked exception 

 throughout the entire Northwest The learned prognostics of 

 the weather-wise sage, that with each recurring autumn flood 

 the country press, have for once been realized. Then, too, 

 there were other heralds of the rigor of the approaching win- 

 ter, that no careful observer of nature could have failed to 

 appreciate, — our migratory birds. Unusually early in the past 

 autumn they might have been seen, — robin, grakle, and lark, 

 — each with its separate clan, in noisy concourse over the 

 approaching crisis, then silently winging their way to their 

 winter quarters in the South. With an average season, many 

 of our more common species, as the robin, and, on occasions, 

 the crow, leave behind them in their flight a half-dozen indi- 

 viduals or more, who pass with us the winter, constituting as 

 it were a committee of general arrangement, who preserve 

 affairs in good order for the return of their friends with the 

 approacli of vernal warmth. But during the past winter, with 

 the exception of our regular winter residents, a quartette of 

 golden-winged woodpeckers {Caloptes Auratus) are all that 

 have been visible with us, their fair-weather friends not coming 

 to encounter with them the approaching inclemency. 



But, without sacrificing longer your patience or attention, 

 let us include at a glance the lesson which the season has left 

 ui?. This can the better be accomplished by aid of the appended 



