4728 Calendar of Natural Phenomena. 



26. Snipe (Scolopax gallinago) last seen. 

 Wild Duck {Anas boschas) last seen. 



27. Bean Geese (Anser segelum) return Northward. 

 Pansy (Viola tricolor) flowers. 



28. Bunting (Emberiza miliaria) resumes his song, after four weeks' 



intermission. 

 Redwings (Tardus iliacus) and Fieldfares (T. pilaris) return 



from their second migration. 

 First Lepidopterous insect (Hibernia ?) seen on the 



wing. 



Remarks. — The month of February has, in many respects, differed 

 considerably from the preceding month in atmospheric influences, and 

 their effects upon animal and vegetable life. The first two-thirds of 

 January were comparable with ordinary March and April weather, and 

 the last fortnight, although more seasonable, only paved the way for 

 binding up the whole month of February in the iron bonds of an un- 

 usually severe winter. Instead of bathing in the river, as I did during 

 the first half of January, the corresponding part of February saw me 

 skating on its frozen surface. Nature, which advanced with too rapid 

 strides in January, has, in February, been unduly repressed. A frozen 

 month of drifted snow has enveloped the earth for six weeks, in some 

 places so thickly that the absence both of light and air has materially 

 checked the growth of the early spring plants ; so that vegetation, in 

 those places where a botanist would look for its gradual advance — in 

 the hedgerows and woods — has been almost at a stand-still ; the very 

 lanes themselves being, in many instances, impassable from the ac- 

 cumulated snow. The effects of this inhospitable covering over the 

 otherwise bountiful table of Nature have been manifest on that class of 

 animals which chiefly look to it for supplies. The granivorous birds 

 have been hard pressed by hunger ; and the insectivorous birds have 

 felt even more keenly the common destruction of their natural food, 

 and the difficulty of obtaining those supplies which yet remained. It 

 is remarkable that, contrary to the popular impression, the supply of 

 " hips and haws," which form the subsistence of a large number of birds, 

 especially in default of other food, was this winter extremely scanty, 

 in fact, almost entirely deficient. Under these circumstances, it is not 

 surprising that, during the late hard weather, birds should not un- 

 frequently have been found dead, having perished from the failure of 

 supplies, and the consequent severity of the cold, which alone would 

 not have affected them. During the whole time that the frost has 



