METEOROLOGY. 455 



meteorologists and lovers of botany tliat they keep a close and extensive 

 record of the budding and blossoming of plants and buds in their neigh- 

 borhood. {Xature, xxv, p. 553.) 



Dr. Church communicates to the Eoyal Horticultural Society the 

 results of exj)eriments he has had made at Cirencester during the last 

 fifteen years to ascertain the amount of salt in the rain brought by 

 autumnal gales, especially from the southwest. He found from 5 to 7 

 grains per gallon, while the ordinary amount was only 5 grains. The 

 average winter amount was but slightly in excess of the average sum- 

 mer quantity. He noticed that in Oakley Park one side of the trees 

 was severely injured, and that, if no rain followed for a few days after 

 the gale, the salt sparkled on the trees, even at a distance of thirty-five 

 miles from the sea. The salt abstracted the moisture from the leaf-cells 

 and formed a condensed solution, so that the leaf became comi^letely 

 dried up, and perished. Mr. McLachlan added that salt had been ob- 

 served on windows at Lewisham, as at Croydon, and elsewhere. Sir J. 

 D. Hooker remarked that Dalton was the first to record a similar fact at 

 the beginning of this century. With regard to beeches withstanding the 

 gale better than oaks, as mentioned ' at the last meeting, it was elicited 

 that they were unhurt at Kew and Valewood, Haselmere, but at Ciren- 

 cester, in Dorsetshire, and Cornwall, they suffered severely. Mr. Black- 

 moor exhibited foliage of pears, «S:c., from Teddington, some of which 

 was quite unhurt; of other trees growing adjacent to them the leaves 

 were much injured. Vines and peaches showed similar differences. He 

 suggested that it could not be salt in this case. The opinion generally 

 entertained was that such discrimination was due to the trees being rel- 

 atively hardy and less hardy. {Nature, XXYI, 191.) 



Eev. G. Hen slow at the recent meeting of the Horticultural Society ' 

 gave an account of the progress he had made in compiling statistics for 

 a report on the meteorological phenomena of severe winters, and the 

 consequent injury to plants. He had obtained particulars of severe 

 winters from A. D. 220 to 1880 ; but those during which destruction 

 of and injuries to jilants had been specially recorded were the follow- 

 ing eight: 1851-'52, 1852-'53, 1859-'60-'61, 1864-'65, 1878-'79, 1879-'80, 

 1880-'S1. He had collected all the information he had at present been 

 able to find with reference to these winters, and had drawn up first a 

 short account of the principal meteorological phenomena of the year 

 preceding each winter, as well as of the winter itself, as the behavior of 

 a plant under frost so much depends upon its previous condition; in 

 each case his tables give details of injuries to and losses of i)lant oyer 

 as many places in the British Isles as possible. The importance of 

 registering meteorological phenomena and the losses in several winters 

 lay in the fact that the conditions of the winters respectively differed 

 in many ways from one another. The consequence was that the im- 

 mediate cause of plants succumbing to frost was not always the same. 

 There would be an introduction, dealing with several interesting mat- 



