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SOME NATURAL HISTORY RECORDS. 

 By Fred. Hamilton Davey. 



1. — Notes on the Past SpRiNa. 



Seldom within recent years have we had a more capricious 

 spring than that of 1898. The fact that the thermometer 

 fell below freezing-point not more than half-a-dozen times 

 during the winter, together with the almost entire absence of 

 those long spells of blasting winds which we expect, and rarely 

 fail to have, from Christmas to early spring, encouraged the 

 hope that everything would be in a forward state very early in 

 the year, but in many instances quite the reverse was the case. 



On the whole, last winter will go down to history as a 

 particularly mild one. Blackbirds, thrushes, and robins sang 

 lustily all through those months, and wherever sub-tropical 

 gardening is being carried on, the tenderest subjects survived 

 the winter in splendid form without shelter of any kind. In 

 cottage gardens also, where they were exposed to every wind 

 that blew, geraniums and calceolarias kept their foliage almost 

 as perfect as in summer, and the delicate blue lobelia was 

 blooming all over the district. 



With all these evidences before us, it was but natural we 

 should expect our wayside hedges to put on their vernal glory 

 earlier than usual, and be impatient for the return of the 

 swallow and the cuckoo. Other premature occurrences gave 

 additional ground for the hope. The Dog's Mercury {Mercurialis 

 perennis), a plant that always pushes its way through the soil 

 with its leaves almost fully expanded, as if it meant to take 

 time by the forelock, was in flower quite a fortnight earlier than 

 usual ; and, more remarkable still, a gold-crest's nest was found 

 full of young at Perranwharf as early as the second week in 

 February. This precociousness was not generally sustained, 

 however, for such early flowering trees as the blackthorn, 

 hawthorn, holly, elder, and sycamore were all a week or two 

 late in putting on leaf and flower, while most of our resident 

 birds were unusually backward in commencing nesting opera- 

 tions. When the spring flowers came they were abundant and 

 large, but in the majority of instances they were belated. 



