66 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Diagram E. 



DAY 



OF 



YEAR 



00 



CM 

 (D 

 00 



PO 

 CD 

 CO 



00 



in 

 CO 



(D 

 <D 

 00 



00 



CO 



cn 

 CO 



CO 



o 

 o 



O 

 <D 



CVJ 



O 



CO 

 o 



(D 



o 



in 

 o 



DAY 



OF 



YEAR 



Swallow (last seen) 



285 

 290 

 295 

































285 

 290 

 295 















7' — 

















\ 

































Small White 



Butterfly 



95 

 100 

 105 

 110 

 115 

 120 



95 

 100 

 105 

 110 



115 

 120 



Although treating exclusively of plant phenology, it may be interesting 

 to see how we deal with the arrival of birds and insects. 



The foregoing remarks have had reference to the methods adopted in 

 order to compare the dates of flowering of certain plants in different parts 

 of the kingdom year after year. But for horticultural purposes in private 

 gardens a much simpler plan need only be employed, as we shall then be 

 dealing with what goes on in a single garden, without regard to anything 

 that may take place in any other garden or in any other part of the 

 country. I have for over thirty years taken observations of the weather 

 with thermometers, raingauges, and other meteorological instruments, also 

 throughout the same period I have noted the dates of first flowering of 

 certain fruit trees &c. in my own garden, with the result that, although 

 I consider both methods most useful to all keenly interested in their 

 gardens, the weather observations, in my opinion, can be better dispensed 

 with than the phenological ones. For the former only tell us what the 

 weather is or has been, and unless the records are carefully tabulated and 

 afterwards studied, as I am afraid they very seldom are, they can be really 

 of little practical service. On the other hand, phenological observations 

 give us, in a way we gardeners can better appreciate, the cumulative 

 effects of heat, moisture, and sunshine upon all the plants in which we 

 are interested. For what we really want to know is not so much the 

 number of degrees of frost on any unseasonably oo\d night as the amount 

 of injury it has inflicted on the more tender plants in the garden, and the 

 retarding effect it has had upon those of a hardier nature. Besides which, 

 when these observations and the notes on exceptional weather effects 

 which should accompany them are afterwards carefully considered, the 

 records will be found far more interesting, more easily understood, and 

 the lessons they teach more readily grasped than any number of dry 

 figures respecting temperature, rainfall, &c. But above everything the 

 very fact of our havin» to keep these phenological records develops our 

 powers of observation, so that almost unconsciously we get into the way 

 of watching day by day those weather changes which have so powerful an 

 influence either in furthering or marring our efforts. Every gardener, in 

 a vague kind of way, has some idea as to the extremes of weather to which 



