62 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



PHENOLOGY AS AN AID TO HORTICULTURE. 

 By Edward Mawley, F.R.Met.Soc, V.M.H. 



[Lecture given on May 1, 1906.] 



It may be advisable at the outset to explain the meaning of Phenology, 

 for it is a word which many dictionaries do not contain. It is really the 

 science of appearances. In other words, it deals with the first appearance 

 each year of certain wild flowers, birds, insects, &c. 



On the present occasion I shall only treat of plant Phenology, as it 

 is the number of birds and insects in any year which concerns the 

 gardener rather than the exact dates when they are first seen in any 

 locality. 



I propose, in the first instance, giving a short explanation of the 

 system adopted by the Royal Meteorological Society, the leading organisa- 

 tion in this country dealing with the question of Phenology, and after- 

 wards to offer a few suggestions as to how a modification of that system 

 might with advantage be carried out in private gardens. 



When I became Phenological Recorder to the Royal Meteorological 

 Society in 1889, for the first two years I worked on the same lines as 

 my predecessor, but found it impossible to derive any satisfactory con- 

 clusions from the tabulated results owing to there being altogether 

 only twenty-three observing stations to represent all parts of the British 

 Isles. For the large number of plants required to be observed 

 made it extremely difiicult to obtain sufiicient observers able and 

 willing to send in year after year the necessary returns. After due 

 consideration I decided, with the approval of the Council, to reduce the 

 number of plants from fifty to thirteen, selecting only those which were 

 well known to most dwellers in the country, and allowing an average of 

 about a fortnight between the mean dates of their blossoming, so as to 

 cover the whole flowering season — beginning with the hazel and ending 

 with the ivy. By this means I was able to secure the services of a large 

 number of competent observers who are, in many cases, members of one 

 or other of the Natural History Societies distributed over the country. 

 The British Isles were divided into eleven large districts— such as the 

 south-west of England, the south of England, the Midlands, the north, 

 and south of Ireland, and the west, east, and north of Scotland ; in fact,, 

 the districts adopted by the Meteorological Office for the purposes of 

 weather observation. 



In order that the observations might be taken everywhere on one 

 uniform plan, and so be as far as possible comparable, instructions are 

 printed on the observation forms directing the observer to select his 



