NOTES AND QUERIES. 15 
SEASON AND THE GROWTH OF TREES. 
The year 1893 and 1896 will long be remembered in the south 
of England on account of their remarkably dry summers. In 
1893 drought set in at the beginning-of March, and continued 
practically without a break until the early part of July, when 
a few days showery weather revived vegetation wonderfully, 
although it again suffered from the intense heat of the following 
August. In the present year (1896) the dry weather com- 
menced about the end of March, and continued until August 
19tb, although thunder showers and _ occasional sprinklings 
totalled up to about an inch of rain throughout that period. 
These remarks only apply to the locality in which they are 
written, as the great feature of the 1896 drought was its 
extremely partial character, neighbouring counties, and in some 
instances neighbouring parishes, receiving widely different amounts 
of rain. Taking the rainfall for the whole of the two seasons, 
however, an important difference may be noted. The drought of 
1893 succeeded one of the wettest Februarys on record, and 
the ground at the commencement of the dry weather was fully 
saturated. That of 1896, on the contrary, followed an exception- 
ally dry autumn and winter, and although the month of March 
was rather wetter than the average, the rainfall for the ten 
months, commencing November 1895, was greatly below the 
average. These two years were separated by a damp and grow- 
ing season in 1894, and one with a dry spring and wet July and 
August in 1895. 
With the idea of ascertaining, if possible, what effect these 
four seasons have had upon the growth of trees, so far as the 
breadth of the annual ring is concerned, a number of trees 
belonging to four different species—oak, beech, Scots pine, and 
larch—were tested by means of Pressler’s ‘growth borer.” The 
maximum and minimum ring breadths in each section are alone 
given, while the ring showing the maximum or minimum zone of 
summer wood is indicated by a thick or thin line respectively. 
The trees were bored about four feet from the ground, and 
on the north side. The results are given in the following 
table :— 
