1 8 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



climatic peculiarities which make the horse-chestnuts 

 bud a month earlier in the valley below me than on the 

 cast coast have enabled the hairy spurges to live on for 

 ages among the combes and dells of this broken oolitic 

 down, in spite of their total separation from the main 

 body of their congeners elsewhere. Warm nooks like 

 Bath and Bournemouth, in fact, form as it were climatic 

 islands in the midst of our average British temperature ; 

 while in the sheltered spots of the Isle of Wight the 

 Italian arum and the woodland calamint live on as wild 

 plants, whereas they have long since been totally extin- 

 guished by the cold in all the rest of England. 



