458 The Anomalous Season . [July, 
mena of the organic world, such as the leafing and flowering 
of trees. In like manner the nature of the summer and 
the autumn may be most conveniently judged by the ripening 
of seeds and fruits, by their abundance or scarcity, and 
their quality. This is merely extending a principle fully 
recognised in climatology. If we say that in a certain dis- 
trict the sugar-cane, or the banana, or the cacao, or the 
date-tree flourishes, everyone versed in botanical geology 
will at once form a fairly precise notion of its climate. In 
like manner if we say that in England, in a certain year, 
the sloe was in full bloom on May 13th, we at once charac- 
terise that season. 
What evidence, therefore, has the vegetable life of the 
country to give for or against a recurrence of bad seasons 
every ten or eleven years, between each pair of which a 
strikingly good season is interposed, though not generally in 
the midway ? 
Within the past forty years there have been four, or per- 
haps five, signally inclement years : the winter 1844-45, 
with the succeeding spring and summer ; 1854-55 ; 1860-61 ; 
1870-71 (a less decided case) ; and lastly, 1878-79. The 
first of these seasons showed the ordinary features of a pro- 
longed winter, a backward spring, and a wet and cold 
summer. In some parts of the north of England skating 
was practicable in March. The Rev. L. Jenyns — who has 
tabulated the earliest, average, and latest times of a number 
of organic phenomena, as observed in the years from 1820 
to 1831 — notes that in 1845 these occurrences were later 
than his latest dates, the differences being, however, variable 
in their amount. Hence we learn that different plants, as 
might be expected, are very unequally affeCted by bad 
weather in their times of leafing or flowering. In a bad 
season there is not merely a general translation of periodic 
phenomena to a later part of the season, but there is also 
respective displacement. Animals, we must observe, are a 
less trustworthy guide than plants, because they more 
readily escape our notice. We may, for instance, register 
the first appearance of some bee or butterfly on a certain 
day, whereas had we been in another field we might have 
observed it a week earlier. The summer of 1845 fully 
maintained the character of the earlier portion of the year. 
The season 1854-55 was in almost every respeCt similar. 
The cold set in early and continued late. Frosts, snow- 
storms, and sleet continued into June, and on the morning 
of July 1st a frost cut off the potato-plants over much of 
the north and east of England. No fine weather ever came, 
