paWson : rf:port on Yorkshire botany for 1894. 21 



we could realise our peril, came the fatal nights of the 20th, 21st, 

 and 22nd, when the thermometer fell 10° below the freezing point, 

 and blighted in an hour all the labour of last year's sunshine, and 

 all the promise of our forward Spring. Vegetation everywhere was 

 struck as by a murrain. The damage done was not all apparent 

 in a moment: for weeks afterwards every day discovered some new 

 loss in wood and field. It was noticeable that, in the wholesale 

 destruction of garden fruits, when every potato stem lay blackened 

 on the ground, and the half-grown currants and gooseberries hung 

 withered on the bushes, in the orchards the pears and apples were 

 destroyed almost to the last unit, while many of the plums and 

 cherries preserved their fruit uninjured. This brings into prominence 

 the disadvantage which a plant suffers from an inferior or un- 

 protected ovary. It was no doubt the floral envelopes of the plum 

 and cherry which shielded their offspring in this time of stress. 

 Therefore if plants really possess the intelligence which is now- 

 assigned to them, Pyius will no doubt make use of this sad experience 

 and begin to adapt itself better to our fickle climate — otherwise 

 in our island Pmnus is likely to push it out of the order. 



It is a painful thing to dwell upon this heartless work of May. 

 It took the hfe out of the Summer, which was never afterwards 

 able to recover itself. A low temperature, spare sunshine, dull 

 skies and frequent, although not extraordinarily abundant, rain, 

 pursued us until near Midsummer. Then about the middle of June 

 until mid July we felt the warmth of the sun once more, and our 

 hearts again swelled with hope that we should be able to garner with 

 safety such fruits of the earth as were yet uninjured. But now 

 St. Swithin arrived in surly guise. The ill-conditioned Saint did not 

 disdain to strike one already down, and completed the almost 

 anticipated catastrophe. August saw wet harvest-fields : the chilled 

 earth could not regain its heat, and September ushered in an 

 autumnal cold which the sun's now slanting rays were powerless to 

 dispel. Such is the ending of a season which opened with prospects 

 of almost unexampled brightness. 



We are not farmers, however, nor gardeners at this moment, but 

 botanists ; and our Enghsh plants are, for the most part, very well 

 able to bear with the vicissitudes of our climate. I do not suppose 

 that our botanizing has suffered much in all this luckless summer, 

 and although next year we must not expect the same riotous profusion 

 of hawthorn, or crab blossom, or heather, or gorse, we may still 



