Woodside. 29 



ability, power, and tendency to revert to the condition out of 

 which it has been evolved by the gardener's skill, unless, 

 indeed, it be a branch from the stock on which the red has 

 been grafted. 



The hawthorn calls up happy memories of May-day, when 

 sports and revels centred in the may-pole, when 



" Not a budding boye or girle, this day 

 But is got up and gone to bring in may. 

 A deale of youth, ere this, is come 

 Back, and with white thorn laden, home." 



It would be almost impossible now, in an average season, to 

 gather a branch of hawthorn in blossom on the first of May. 

 Not because the seasons have undergone any considerable 

 alteration, although it appears to be one of the greatest 

 pleasures in life to older people to keep the younger ones in 

 mind that the summers and winters of to-day are not what 

 they used to be when they were young, but because the 

 seasons have been set back, as it were, by the hand of man. 

 At the time when May-day revels were at their height, the 

 first of May was later in the year than now. May-day fell 

 then on what is now the twelfth, and not the first of May, 

 although it was the first then. 



Our astronomers were for a long time aware that our time 

 had been lagging, and in 1752 the time, as told by the clock 

 and calendar, was eleven days behind the time as told by the 

 position of the earth with regard to the sun and stars. They 

 discovered that by adding one day at the end of every four 

 years to make up for the extra hours beyond three hundred 

 and sixty-five days that the earth takes to move in its orbit 

 round the sun, astronomical time was over-calculated, and 

 that the error, small as it was each year, had grown to a con- 



