302 
yet before we had a week of rain it was a brilliant green, as green 
as the freshest growth of spring. I do not class this with the other 
‘Resurrection Plants, because I think it likely that the fresh green 
arose from young leaves freshly grown, and not from the old 
leaves recovering their colour. But it was really marvellous how 
-soon everything responded to the rain; the lawn was perhaps 
the most conspicuous example, but it extended in a very 
pleasant way to our fruits. I had a good crop of peaches 
on the wall, and a good crop of apples, but both peaches and 
apples were very small, and the peaches, at first, were dry and 
flavourless ; but as soon as the rain came both peaches and apples 
became visibly, and very rapidly plumper, and I had no cause 
to complain of their size or flavour, And, indeed, smallness, 
either of fruit or leaves, is one of the many provisions that 
Nature uses to prevent the bad effects of drought ; and you will 
have noticed many such cases this year. With me the willow-leafed 
Gentian (G. asclepiadea) grows very well, and is often more than 
a yard high ; this year it was about half that size, and that meant. 
about half the usual quantity of leaves, and that, again, meant 
that the plant had only to part with one half the amount of 
moisture that it does part with when in fullleaf. That shows why, 
in a wet summer, there is always an abundance of foliage; a 
greater quantity of leaves is required to carry off the moisture that 
the plant sucks up by its roots, and leaves are provided 
accordingly. The conclusion, then, at which I have arrived, is 
very shortly this: that there was never a complete failure of 
moisture at the roots during the long drought, and that, in one 
way and another, Nature economized the store, and so the plants 
were saved. 
I might say more on the drought, but I must leave myself room 
to say something on some other aspects of the year. I think the 
drought has confirmed what I said last year as to the value of 
rich suitable soil to enable plants to stand against frost. That 
statement was objected to by some of my friends, though I gave 
