170 eeesident's aedeess. 



enough to assume the likeness of a distinct species in its own 

 native region, but individual plants of it possess a faculty of 

 assimilating themselves to Ulex Europcea when carried to a colder 

 tract, and there kept for a sufficient time. 



Since the foregoing was written I have had an opportunity of 

 examining the whin coverts of the New Forest, and of Bourne- 

 mouth, in Hampshire. The two forms of the plant are largely 

 intermixed, yet without any intermediate form; and I found the 

 Ulex nana in the month of May covered with half -ripe pods, full 

 of seed from last October's flowers, the pods being very seldom 

 injured by the late most severe winter, though many of them 

 blackened at the tips. These pods will be ripe in June, nine 

 months after inflorescence. 



Ere leaving the subject of the Ulex, or whin, it seems worth 

 while to record that a fox-cover which had been formed between 

 Old Bewick and Chillingham by sowing seed of the common 

 Ulex Miropcea, and which apparently consisted entirely of the 

 larger whin, was utterly killed down by frost some ten winters 

 ago, when it was high enough to be in full perfection as a covert, 

 and although the native self-sown whins of the district had suf- 

 fered little or not at all. The reason undoubtedly was, that the 

 whin seed of commerce is gathered either in the South of England 

 or beyond the sea, in Brittany, and that though identical in spe- 

 cies with our own, the parent plants are often of tenderer sub- 

 varieties, which cannot immediately accommodate either their 

 own constitutions or those of their seminal offspring to a region 

 of much colder temperature. 



It is not alone extreme low temperature in winter which is 

 fatal to vegetation. Eor if this be inflicted only after warm and 

 sunny summers, it is half-disarmed by the vigour and vital 

 energy of the plants themselves. A long protracted low tem- 

 perature, without any great extreme of cold, will be equally 

 destructive in the long run, coming, as it probably does, after 

 a chilly ungenial summer, with little direct sunshine. 



The provision of an autumnal blooming, as well as a vernal, 

 greatly tends to insure the security of continuous propagation 

 in Western Britain; and this more dwarf variety fills up the 



