172 NOTES ON THE DRY STJMMEB OF 1896. 



Though taken at Truro, these figures are substantially 

 correct for the KennaU Yalley, which has furnished the material 

 for this paper. It will be seen that the rainfall, for the first 

 seven months of the present year, was 12-191 inches below the 

 average ; or, in other words, that every acre of land received 

 nearly 1,300 tons of water less than usual. The figures also 

 shew that, during the period mentioned, the number of wet 

 days fell to twenty-five below the average. 



All this has told a many-sided tale. On the one hand, the 

 spring flowers, thanks to the rainfall and mildness of the first 

 three months of the year, were very numerous, were unusually 

 large in size, and deep in colour. Dog-violets, celandines, daisies, 

 crowfoot, and other early flowering plants made the hedgerows 

 and meadows gay with their blossoms,— the catkins and pendulous 

 racemes, of the several kinds of trees, perfuming the air with 

 their pollen. Never in the writer's experience have the 

 sycamore, willow, poplar, alder, oak, beech, hawthorn, elder, 

 blackthorn, Spanish and horse chestnuts looked gayer. Foreign 

 trees and shrubs answered to the stimulating effects of the heat 

 of the spring and summer months in a similar manner. Every- 

 where in the district, the male araucaria (better known as the 

 Monkey-Puzzle) has been prolific in cones, a specimen in front 

 of Pengreep house being a noteworthy example. On the same 

 grounds, the flowers on the magnolia and the tulip-tree were 

 also unusually fine, while at Burncoose, hydrangeas were such 

 pictures as to have merited notice by the horticultural and local 

 press. 



By way of contrast to the foregoing, the ash, hazel, larch, 

 and Scotch-pine were altogether below the average in flower, 

 while the birch showed a large number of bare branches and 

 leaves of a very diminutive description. Small summer-flowering 

 plants suffered to a similar extent. In the main the plants 

 themselves were pitiable shrivellings, and the flowers more than 

 usually small ; albeit of a very rich colour. As far as I have 

 been able to ascertain, there was no distinction, in this respect, 

 other than that bog-loving plants presented their normal habit. 



Another interesting circumstance must be mentioned. In 

 the early part of the summer, as early even as the latter part of 



