WHAT IS PHENOLOGY ?
Now I have pressed some of the leaders of this science to tell me of any one certain discovery of which their friends may boast on their behalf. They have always quoted the flowering of the blackthorn and the sowing of barley. They profess to believe on a mass of evidence that if barley is sown in response to this signal it has a better chance of succeeding than by any obedience to the mere almanack or the current state of ground or weather. The science is international. One of our own phenologists communicated throughout the War with a German phenologist through the medium of a Dutch phenologist—a venial breach of regulation. The Americans have worked out some interesting and, indeed. valuable tables of the influence both of altitude and latitude on the progression of the seasons as evidenced by appearances of eggs, migrant 'birds, insects, blossoms, pullulations and the rest. By all means let us all help. At the worst, research work, however amateur, sets a flourish on the practice
of observation ; and if we can between us extract any principle out of English weather—as fickle and lovely as ;t
Cleopatra—we shall certainly deserve the title of genius.
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