48 DR DAVY ON AN UNUSUAL FALL OF RAIN 
from Stornoway, of the 28th of February, are inclosed the flower of the ribes 
sanguineum, the young leaf of the sweet briar, and of the common fuschia, 
gathered in the grounds of the castle in rather an exposed situation, and it is 
stated that the Loincera tartarica, the honeysuckle, and Ayrshire rose, are in 
full leaf. The spawn of the frog I found here in the ditches as early as the 21st 
of the same month. A writer in the Evening Mail of the 4th of March, referring 
to the mildness of the season, says he heard a nightingale singing in the neigh- 
bourhood of Southampton on the evening of the Ist of the month, and that he 
had previously heard the same birds singing on the 13th of the preceding month 
in North Storeham Park. I shall mention another proof: in winters of ordinary 
coldness butterflies are torpid, lose very little of their weight, hardly an appre- 
ciable quantity, and when the warm weather of spring sets in, roused into action, 
they are vigorous and take wing. One that I have had under observation since 
December, a Vanissa urticee, which then weighed 2°4 grains, has never become 
completely torpid; it has lost ‘54 grains of its weight, and now, though not 
torpid, is almost inanimate, just opening its wings when warmed, but incapable 
of flight. Further proof may be offered in the unusual success of the angler in 
the month of January. The number of charr taken in that month in Winder- 
mere was unprecedented ; one fisherman, trowling with the minnow, captured, it 
is said, nineteen dozen, in good condition, equal to those taken in April and May. 
In November, an adjoining lake, Rydalmere, was frozen over, and there was 
skating on it! Zastly, | may remark, that up to the present time the same in- 
equalities as those already described of excess and deficiency of rain, would 
appear, from what is stated in the papers, to continue throughout the country ; 
but the deficiency more common than the excess. Thus, whilst here we have 
had few days of sunshine, in Berkshire and the counties similarly situated drought 
has prevailed, and to so great a degree as to interfere with the operations of 
agriculture, the ground having become so parched and hard as hardly to receive 
the plough. 
LESKETH How, March 8, 1859. 

Postscript. 
Since the above was written, I have been favoured, through the kindness of 
my friend Dr Lerrcn of Derwent Bank, Keswick, with a register of the fall of 
rain at Seathwaite, Borrowdale, from 1845 to the present time, kept by Mr Joun 
Dixon. The results, it will be seen, are strongly confirmatory of those hitherto 
obtained, as showing the augmentation of the quantity the nearer the approach 
to the central part of the district, where the mountains are highest and the 
