A year's ■weather. 383 



fortnight of dry weather, and then followed for nine days 

 all sorts of weather changes, snow, sleet, hail, heavy rains, 

 lightning and thunder, the thermometer registering 12 degrees 

 of frost outside, the snow falling six inches deep. Except 

 on one day the sun was seen in gleam or clearness every 

 day in the month. On five nights the thermometers in shade 

 registered frost. Our greatest heat in day showed a monthly mean 

 of 50*4 degrees, one degree warmer than our 40 years' average. 



A peculiarity of the month was the general fixity of the wind. 

 It began with a week or more of north-westerly winds, followed 

 by similar periods of northerly, southwesterly, and easterly winds, 

 with which it closed. 



The following are the rainfalls of the month and those of last 

 year and a forty years' mean. 



40 years' mean. 1891. 1892. 



January 4-85-ins 3-40-ins 2-27-ins. 



February ... 3-38-ins 0-22-ins 4-43-ins. 



Totals ... 8-23-in3 3-62-ins 6-70-ins. 



The rainfall for January and February, 1890, was 7*46 inches. 



The cold and sometimes biting winds did not wholly keep 

 in check the growth of the larger trees ; their blossoms depending on 

 the wind for fertilization were conspicuous during the greater part 

 of the month, and gave a pleasant relief to the general wintry 

 aspect of many trees. But many of our valleys, especially noticable 

 from the railway in those about Lostwithiel, were all of a grey-green 

 tint, due to humble plants which grew on the barer ground, the 

 trunks of the trees, or hung in tufts from nearly every twig. 



Whether the lichens be useless, or even harmful, they gave a 

 special charm to our Cornish valleys in February. Some lichens 

 are very useful, as the litmus lichen, Iceland and reindeer moss, 

 for dyes and foods. 



The lichens in interest take the first rank, though generally so 

 despised. They are slave makers, who have cultivated a taste 

 for vegetable food which they cannot make themselves. A cross- 

 section of a leafy stem shews within small green bodies, these are 

 green algae which the lichen creeps upon and captures, and wraps 

 up in threadlike tissue, between which light and air can pass. 

 The^ are not parasitic in any sense of the word, the algse cells 



