3Gi 
spread very fast even in Italy; It is a tree of very rapid growth, 
often attaining the height of GO or 80 feet in less than thirty years 
(one case of 125 feet in hfty years is recorded), and consequently 
its Avood is of very soft and spongy texture. But one sex, the male, 
Avas brought to England, though both sexes are extant in Lombardy ; 
and it has ever since been propagated here b}'’ sucker, and not from 
seed; and Ave know that this method of propagation produces 
debility of constitution, and inability to Avithstand the attacks ot 
any enemy, disease, or hardship. WJrat Avonder then, that a half- 
hardy tree of Aveakened constitution, Avhen exposed to the hardship 
of eleven months continued Ioav temperature, such a season as had 
not been experienced in this country lor sixty-live years, and to a 
rainfall during nine out of those eleven months “ unprecedented,” 
amounting to 2^- inches more than had ever before been registered 
in this country in the same space of time, should sicken, and being 
exposed during the Avinter Avhich folloAved (1879 — 80) to a 
December “remarkably cold,” Avitli a minimum temperature of 
X degree in the Eastern Counties, and then to a January Avioh a 
mean temperature 5J- degrees beloAV the average of thirty-nine 
years, making a total period of fifteen months successively, ot 
unusually Ioav temperature, should fail to recover itself in the 
summer of 1880; and being again subjected to the coldest 
October for thirty-nine years, and the Avettest on record, folloAved 
by the furious snowstorms and severe frosts of last January (1881), 
should succumb to so long a period of abnormally uufavourable 
conditions; and even should the fungoid disease theory of Uv. Purdy, 
or the peculiar root structure of Dr. Lowe, be confirmed by future 
observations, I think we shall still be justified in considering the 
fifteen months’ Ioav temperature Avliich continued to January, 1880, 
and the unprecedented Avetness of nine of those months, as the 
predisposing causes Avhich Aveakened the tree and deprived it of its 
poAver of resistance, either to the attacks of disease, or to the 
Avinter of 1880—81. And thus is explained the riddle, that trees 
Avhich survived 18G0— G1 died from the effects of the less severe 
winter of 1880—81, for they had not in the former of these two 
seasons suffered fom the same special weakening circumstances. ^ 
Mr. Purdy of Aylsham, has made a most excellent suggestion, 
that those who possess dead or dying Lombardy Poplars, should 
convert them from unsightly into beautiful objects by planting at 
