120 THE VICTORIAN NATRUALIST. 



ing of facts regarding the principal phases of the h'fe-history of 

 plants, insects, and birds of which my paper treats this evening. 



To metereologists, medical men, and others interested in 

 sanitary questions and health resorts, such observations, when 

 collected, form, in the course of a few years, a standard of the 

 climate and vegetation with which to compare local variations. 

 To scientific naturalists, agriculturists, and horticulturists, it shows 

 the relations which exist between meteorological and organic 

 phenomena, and their dependence on each other. 



The study of natural history has altered much both in character 

 and methods in recent years. Botany and the other branches of 

 natural science no longer consist of the mere collecting, preserv- 

 ing, classifying, and naming — the indexing, so to speak — of 

 natural objects ; but in observing the development, life-history, 

 and periodical phenomena of such objects, their modifications 

 under natural and artificial conditions, and the relations they 

 bear to each other and to the pleasures and wants of mankind. 

 The analytical methods of studying natural history are giving 

 place to synthetical, and, instead of pulling plants in pieces, and 

 anatomizing animals to ascertain their minute physical differences, 

 attention is being directed to their relationship to each other, and 

 to forces and agencies by which living things are developed, built 

 up, preserved, and reproduced. 



Of the many attractions of rural life — and, to a certain extent, 

 of urban and suburban life also — none are more interesting and 

 instructive, nor more frequently the subject of observation and 

 record, than the periodic phenomena associated with plants and 

 animals ; and to persons engaged in rural occupations, none are 

 of greater importance, nor the source of so much anxiety. The 

 germination of seeds, the leafing, blossoming, ripening of fruit and 

 seeds, and the fall of the leaves of plants and trees ; the migration, 

 song, and nesting of birds ; the appearance of insects and their 

 larvae ; the habits and instincts of animals, &c., are all phenomena 

 of this kind ; and, being dependent on seasonal and metereo- 

 logical conditions, are largely correlated or dependent on each 

 other, and to be properly understood must be studied together. 

 Such observations are known to meteorologists and botanists as 

 phenological observations, and have been made for many years 

 past in England and the Continent, and in this colony in 1856 

 by our worthy patron. Baron von Mueller, but discontinued owing 

 to his other appointments ; and latterly, about nine or ten years 

 ago, by others. These being so spasmodic gave their records 

 little value for average comparison. 



The scientific value of such observations depends on the care 

 with which they have been made, and on the value which is to be 

 attached to averages of observation extending over a period of 

 twenty years. 



