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Qinothera macrocarpa* and berries on Solanum Crispum which I 
never saw before; but I did not notice many others out of the 
common ; but the hollies and the hawthorns are beautifully set 
with berries, and the berries on the privets were, this year, 
quite remarkable from their number, and the intense depth 
of the black colour. I think, however, that the mild 
winter, dry summer, and wet autumn of this year will have a 
marked influence on the vegetation of next year. Fruit trees of 
all sorts are well set with fruit buds ; the spring-flowering shrubs 
such as the Magnolias and Calycanthus are full of promising 
flower buds, and though all November was cold and had an 
unusual amount of frost, plants, even tender plants, seem to have 
been very little affected by it, which shows that they have made 
strong and healthy growth, and are well prepared for the cold, 
when, and if, it comes. 
The animal life of the year requires a short notice. I do not 
know whether the mild winter was in any way the cause, but I 
think that the number of our immigrant birds was much below 
the average. I noticed this especially with the swallows and 
redstarts. Ofredstarts we had very few, though we generally 
have them in abundance; we had a great many swifts, 
but the swallows were certainly few in number and arrived 
very late; I did not see one in my garden till the last week 
in April. But this may have been a purely local occurrence, for 
the number of swallows in the autumn was as large as usual. Of 
course, there are always more inautumn from the accession of young 
birds, but the great addition must have been from the Southward 
rush, which always swells the numbers in our Southern counties, 
and the full number that we had in the autumn probably shows 
*The fruit of Gnothera macrocarpa is most curious. From a 
central line spring four wings each about an inch wide, each 
wing being the pod containing the seeds. The length of the 
fruit is from three to five inches. 
