1 6 THE WOMBAT. 



modified by various natural and artificial conditions. Culti- 

 vation, as you are aware, with all its appliances for modifying 

 the physical conditions of temperature, moisture and soil tends 

 to hastening or shortening of the earlier seasons. Hence 

 cultivated plants generally blossom earlier than wild ones of 

 the same species, and some meteorological conditions, such 

 as high temperature and droughts, if they do not suspend 

 vegetation altogether, shorten the period of growth, and hasten 

 that of maturation, and sometimes give rise to the exceptional 

 phenomena of a second leafing and blossoming of plants in 

 the same year. * This threefold division of the seasons is dis- 

 tinguished among insects by the three stages of their life 

 history — caterpillar, chrysalis, and perfect insect; and among 

 birds, growth by the nesting, maturation, and fattening of both 

 young and parent birds, and rest by migration. 



Such observations as I have suggested are known to 

 meteorologists and botanists as phenological observations ; 

 they have been made in England and on the continent for 

 many years, and were commenced in this colony by the late 

 Baron von Mueller in 1856, but, being of a spasmodic nature, 

 they had no value for average comparison. 



This brings us to the most important question, how to 

 determine the climate of a place as a health resort by record- 

 ing the condition of vegetation at different times of the year ; 

 no method is so easily carried out, and no method is so in- 

 teresting and satisfactory. Meteorological observations 

 require a great amount of skill when made by means of in- 

 struments, and such observations are faulty, as the instruments 

 used are liable at any time to get out of order. Moreover the 

 interpretation of such observations is often puzzling and 

 unsatisfactory, as differences in climate are due to subtle 

 combinations of sunshine, rain, wind, and soil, which no 

 instrument can faithfully record, and which can only be truly 

 declared by the varying conditions of vegetation, and remotely 

 by insects which feed upon it, and by birds and animals which 

 feed on both, and are themselves influenced by such conditions. 

 At all events the evidence is more in favour of biological than 

 of physical data regarding the methods of distinguishing 

 climate and the benefits thereof. 



Writers on climatology do not recognise this importance • 

 as a rule, but trust too implicitly to mere averages of meteor- 

 ological data, forgetting that very similar averages may result 

 from very different ranges of climatic conditions. 



It is now quite clear to you that it is the extremes of 

 temperature, moisture, etc., that determine the character of 

 the vegetation of any locality, and these are also the conditions 

 which determine the character of a health resort. 



* Vide "Phenology aud Rural Biology." 



