42 
THE FLORIST S JOURNAL. 
of position; those, for example, of the Sida Abutilon (Linnaeus) 
fall close to the stem, and seem to protect it from the night air. 
A similar action may be observed even during the day in the large 
leaves of the Hedysarum (Desmodium) gyrans ; for, should dark 
clouds suddenly overspread the sky, they will immediately fall 
down, and cover the stem as with a mantle. 
THE WEATHER FOR MAY. 
That peculiarity of the weather, during the latter half of the past year, 
and all that has elapsed of the present one, which gave to April a character so 
different from what that most variable of all months in the calendar usually 
possesses, has had nearly similar influence upon the weather in May. Alternate 
sunshine and showers, with more or less of thunder and hail, are the ordinary 
characters of April, even to a proverb ; and, although those parts of England 
which are exposed to the winds from the bleak region that lies immediately 
south of the Baltic, and upon which the first effect of the returning sun is to 
increase the cold, by evaporating the water on the swamps, are often blighted 
by the east winds of May ; yet there usually are, in that month, alternations of 
what is termed “fine growing weather,”—that is, gentle showers, with gleams 
of bright and warm sunshine between. 
But the April of 1840 was just as unlike what we are accustomed to look 
upon as an April as can well be imagined; for, with the exception of some 
showers in the early part of the month,—and these had more the character of 
winter showers than of spring ones,—the sky was untroubled throughout the 
month, and generally speaking, cloudless. As April was, thus, not an ordinary 
April, we could not expect an ordinary May; for, as in all other matters, so 
in the weather, our only rational means of anticipating what is likely to be the 
future, is a careful study of the past. In the weather, this is more difficult 
than in the case of almost any other subject; because the elements are exceed¬ 
ingly numerous, and some of them are very obscure. This, by the way, is the 
reason why people, who are shrewd enough in most matters, readily become 
the dupes of every quack, in that of the weather. 
The extreme saturation of the soil by the rains of the preceding season, not 
only nourished the roots of every plant which had “ got hold of the ground,” 
but diffused what may, from its effects, be called “ an underground rain,”— 
a watering ex humum to the leaves and heads. This arose from the evapora¬ 
tion of the moisture escaping from the earth; though, as generally speaking, 
the temperature of the whole twenty-four hours was much more uniform than 
it usually is at the same season. While this evaporation moistened the vege¬ 
tation, instead of drying and parching it, as is the case with the ordinary bleak 
.winds in May, yet, up to the time when the rain came,, the drought had not 
penetrated more than two or three inches into average soils, where exposed, 
while the meadows and corn fields, where the clay was covered, remained quite 
moist 
