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ripening its fruit as far as 64° North, yet apple blossoms are more 
tender than those of the apricot and peach. 
Leaving the garden I should like to mention one memorable 
result of the fine summer. If it has been a great delight to the 
healthy and strong, it has been an untold delight to the 
weakly and invalid, and in many cases a prolonging of life and 
even a renewal of strength. In my own parish I have a remark- 
able proof of this. The ecclesiastical parish of Bitton has a 
population of 1,200, and in the thirteen months from November 
1st 1892 to December 1st 1893, there have been only three deaths, 
and of those three one was a child of a few weeks, sickly from 
its birth ; another was an older child who died from the effects of 
rheumatic fever, but whose life was certainly prolonged for at 
least three months, and happily prolonged on account of the 
bright sunny weather ; the third only was a man of full age. 
When you remember that 17 in 1,000 in a year marks a healthy 
area, you will see something of the effect of a bright summer in 
reducing even that to 3 in 1,200 in 13 months. 
The interesting question now remains what will be the effect 
of the long hot summer on the present winter and on the gardens 
next year. I do not pretend to be a weather prophet, but I do 
not suppose that the weather that is past has very much effect on 
the weather to come, yet I am very hopeful that this winter will 
neither be long or severe. It is very true that we have had severe 
frosts and several of them rather earlier than usual, but an early 
winter is very seldom a severe or prolonged winter ; and the late 
Sir Robert Christison, a very accurate observer gave it as his 
experience for 40 years that sharp frost late in October and early 
in November had been always followed by mild winters.* 
* “ A period of from four to seven days of continuous sharp frost in 
the last week of October or first week in November. In the course of 
forty years I have not met with one exception to the rule that the 
frost then ceases and the winter continues open as far on through the 
winter as the last week of January. My observation does not carry 
me further.” Life of Sir Robert Christison, vol. ii., p. 127. 
