BSCOBDS OF THM SEASONS AND THE TEAMS 417 



leading crops may afford most valuable records. In 

 making notes, it is best to choose common and 

 easily recognized plants, so that the records can 

 be compared and duplicated in other places. 



529a. Plants which appear to be most valuable for the main pheno- 

 logieal observations and for the greater number of observers in New 

 York and New England are as follows, it being understood that the 

 observer shall designate, as far as possible, the particular variety which 

 he has recorded in the case of cultivated plants: 



Apple, pear, quince, plum, sweet cherry, sour cherry, peach, choke 

 cherry {Prunus Virginiana), wild black cherry {Prunus serotma), Japan- 

 ese or flowering quince (Pi/rMS Japonica), cultivated raspberry, culti- 

 vated blackberry, cultivated strawberry, lilac, moek-orange or syringa 

 {Philadelphus coronarius), horse-chestnut, red-pith elder {Sambucus 

 racemosa), common elder (Sambucus Canadensis), flowering dogwood 

 (Cornus florida), native basswood, native chestnut, privet or prim 

 (lAgustrum vulgare), red currant, cultivated grape. 



5296. For the fugitive or abnormal epochs of the year, as 

 "warm spells" in winter or spring, or "late falls," and the killing 

 frosts of fall and late spring, the observer must consider whatever 

 plants come in his way. Here is the chief value of the dandelion 

 in phenological records ;— it should not be included in any general 

 scheme of notes. There is the greatest temptation to record the 

 blooming of the very earliest spring flowers, as mayflower or epigea, 

 hepatica, erigenia, dandelion, willows, crocus, and the like. This is 

 well, and the records should be made, as showing the first burst of 

 spring ; but these records should not be mixed in with those de- 

 signed to show the general onward course of the seasons. 



Suggestions. — There is a common passion to make dates of the 

 opening of the spring flowers and the leafing of the trees, and in order 

 that this desire may be guided and directed into useful channels, 

 this chapter has been inserted. Suppose that dates were kept of the 

 blooming, or leafing, or falling of the leaves, of certain trees or other 

 plants in the school premises, or of the appearing of the dandelions. 

 The habit might soon become a tradition in the school, and the records 

 be continued from teacher to teacher. Or, the pupil might be asked 



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