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some severe winters I have seen numbers of birds lying dead ; 
this year I saw none, and I cannot help thinking that in the 
wonderful way in which birds are able to forecast the weather far 
better than we can, they had notice of the coming severity, and 
migrated in larger numbers than usual before the frost came. I 
do not think the extreme cold had much effect on the slugs and 
snails, I do not think it ever has; their innate wickedness is a 
complete shield. But I think it had an effect on the insecis ; 
I have had no such plague of earwigs as I noticed last year ; and 
butterflies were certainly much fewer than usual. 
With one marked feature of the year I will conclude this long 
paper. We had literally no autumnal tints this year ; up to the 
middle of October the trees on the lawa were quite green, but the 
frost of the 22nd brought them all down, so that on the morning 
of the 23rd my lawn was thickly strewn with leaves, all green. 
A few retained their leaves, especially the elms, and for two days 
they put on a beautiful, golden appearance, but the heavy gales 
at the end of October stripped them all. To me this was a real 
loss in the beauty of the year ; I think a tree or shrub, however 
beautiful it may be in summer foliage or flower, only half fulfils 
its allotted task if it fails to show the beauty of its autumnal tints. 
I was more especially disappointed this year because 1 was hoping 
to watch the tints, and see how far our English experience would 
agree with the experience of American observers. You are aware 
that the Americans pride themselves on the beauties of their 
autumnal woods, and many good observers among them have done 
their best to find out the causes of the tints, and something of the 
laws which govern them. At present the conclusion seems to be 
that the tints are produced by the action of oxygen on the 
chlorophyll, acting in different ways at ditferent times of the year, 
but in the autumn, when the strength of the tree is diminishing, 
producing a discolouration something analogous to the action on 
