48 The Ottawa Naturalist. [May 



bird-migration, which is another interesting index. Suffice it to 

 say that my plant notes and bird notes, and the weather records 

 kindly furnished me by Mr. Stupart, the director of the meteoro- 

 logical service, alike show these last two springs to have been 

 both unusually early. Both had in March and April almost the 

 same mean temperatures, which were in March icq*^ (1902) and 

 1 1.4" ( 1903) higher than the average for twenty years,* and in 

 April 4.5^ (in 1902) and 2.9^ (in 1903) higher than the normal. 

 And the hot, dry month of May, 1903, of which we have spoken 

 at length above, was 3.6* hotter than the normal, while May, 

 1902, was 1.7° cooler than the normal, and June of both years 

 cooler than the average by 4.4° and 2.4° respectively. 



Comparing the past two springs with the previous two, we 

 see again how remarkably early they were. The mean monthly 

 temperature of March, in 1900, was 18.6°, in 1901 it was 24.3^, 

 while in 1902 it was 33.9° and in 1903 34 4°. It is little won- 

 der that hepaticas and silver, maples bloomed earlier in 1902 and 

 1903 than in 1900 and 1901. But why they should have bloomed 

 from two to three weeks earlier is not so apparent, when we con- 

 sider the interesting fact that the temperature of April was about 

 the same for all four years. But happily we are not left without 

 an explanation, which lies in the state of the soil. In the falls of 

 1901 and 1902 snow fell early and steadily before the frost had 

 entered the ground, consequently there was no frost in the ground 

 to retard vegetation when the snow went off in the spring. In 

 the previous two years the conditions were precisely the contrary: 

 the frost got well into the ground before the frost came, so that 

 the succeeding springs of 1900 and 190 1 were much retarded not 



* These mean temperatures are somewhat higher than that of March, 

 1898, which was the warmest March of which we have any record prior to 

 1902, its average maximum temperature even exceeding those of the 

 Marches of 1902 and 1903 by a small fraction of a degree, being 42.36". Miss 

 V. Lees informs me that she found hepaticas in bloom on Pine Hill, New 

 Edinboro', on the 27th of that month, which is the earliest record for hepaticas 

 of which I have hea^d. While this article is printing I am able to state that 

 this spring hepaticas have not, so far as I know, been found in bloom earlier 

 than the 16th April, and up to to day (23rd April) I have seen no other wild 

 plants in bloom. Till to-day the temperature has not reached 50° One swal- 

 low does not make a summer, nor one hepatica a spring ! 



