Dickie's Flora Abredotiensis. 521 



high grounds, have only produced fine and coarse sand. In the low-lying 

 parts, on the contrary, even extending to the Havel Lake, there is an exten- 

 sive bed of loam, vv'here the largest brick-works in the country afford an 

 opportunity to the neighbouring agriculturists of improving the soil by 

 the loam. I was told that its proprietor, a short time ago, purchased 

 another estate close by, and that the inhabitants of the old removed with the 

 owner, and settled on the new ; which affords another example of the 

 decrease of the feudal practice of the middle ages, by which the peasant was 

 bound to the soil, effected by means of capital, and great habits of industry. 

 A brick manufactory among fields is not unpicturesque, when interspersed 

 with trees, orchards, and plantations ; and it appears to me that both the 

 inhabitants and the passers by are benefited by the change. 



" The little town of Werder, in this neighbourhood, is very remarkable for 

 the cultivation of fruit and vegetables. It supplies Berlin with a great part 

 of its vegetable productions ; and the river affords an opportunity of con- 

 veying the fruit and vegetables fresh and cheap to market. The women row 

 the boats up and down from the capital, and take charge of their sale, while 

 the men remain in the fields employed in harder labour. It would be worth 

 the trouble of enquiring whether Werder may not have been a German 

 gardening colony; like those established by the princes and bishops of 

 Silesia, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is cheering to see the 

 fruit tree plantations extending down the sandy declivities, and over the 

 plains to the margin of the public road ; the soil, to all appearance, having 

 been improved by the loam above raei^tioned." (p. 29.) 



Art. III. Flora Abredonensis : comprehending a List of the Flotver- 

 ing Plants and Ferns found in the Neighbourhood of Aberdeen ; "with 

 Remarks on the Climate, the Features oftlie Vegetation, &;c. S^c. By 

 George Dickie, A.M., Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, 

 London ; Fellow of the Edinburgh Botanical Society, and Lecturer 

 on Botany in Aberdeen. Small 8vo, pp. 70. Aberdeen, 1838. 



The author has contrived to render this little work extremely 

 interesting, by some preliminary remarks on climate. The 

 average number of cloudy days in Aberdeen is about double 

 the number of clear days, and every third day, or oftener, it 

 rains. Notwithstanding this, the mean temperature of January, 

 the coldest month in the year, is as high as 37° 29^'; the mean 

 temperature of July, the warmest month, is 59° 12''; and the 

 mean temperature of the year, 47° 18". The mean temperature 

 of summer is only about 10° above, and that of winter about 

 the same number below, the annual mean. The following quo- 

 tation gives a very interesting view of the climate of Aberdeen 

 relatively to vegetation : — 



" The influence of climate on the different periods of vegetation must be 

 admitted by every one who has paid any attention to the subject. Thus, in 

 the north of Europe (Upsal), the opening of the leaf is later by one month 

 and a half than that of the same plants at Naples; and, according to Mr. 

 Watson, in Britain the same flowers expand at Barnstaple seventeen days 

 earlier than at Elgin. Humboldt remarks that, in that month whose tempera- 

 ture reaches fifty-one degrees, the birch pushes out leaves : now, in this neigh- 

 bourhood, this tree generally expands its leaves about the beginning of May ; 

 and we have seen already that the mean tempera'ture of this month attains 



