254 MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON MR. MARSHAM’s “INDICATIONS OF SPRING.” 
1899. — The last week in January and the whole of February 
were very variable, though on the whole favourable to vegetation ; 
but the middle of March brought very rough weather with heavy 
and continuous snows, and it continued very cold till the end of the 
month. April was wet and sunless, and ungenial weather continued 
throughout the month of May. Of the 25 phenomena observed, 
2 occurred on the days of their mean, 8 were earlier, and 15 were 
later than their average, in these latter were included all the forest 
trees except the Maple, which was eight days earlier than usual. 
The remarkable feature was the late leafing of the Elm, which is not 
recorded till the 7th of May, the latest of 92 observations. The 30th 
of March is the mean date of the leafing of this tree, but it will be 
seen (Table II) that in 1832, and again in 1852, it was in leaf as 
early as the 8th of February, showing a difference between the two 
extremes of 98 days, a very wide margin. The extremely mild 
weather of January greatly favoured early vegetation, but Mr. Preston 
records that, contrary to what might have been expected, the Winter 
Aconite and Snowdrop did not make their appearance at Brundall 
till eighteen and nineteen days later than in the year 1898; this 
he suggests might have been owing to the drought of the previous 
August and September, but it is worthy of note that the latter 
flower at Stratton appeared on the 10th of January, one day later 
than in the previous year. 
In the accompanying table (No. II) the earliest and latest occur- 
rences of each “Indication” are given with the years on which they 
happened, followed by the number of observations and the mean 
date of each occurrence, and in the last column the years in which 
the event happened on the mean of the whole series of its 
observation. 
