[To THE EDITOR OP THY "SPECTATOR."] SIE,—I am no botanist,
but think there can be no doubt that the scarcity of leaf on the wych elms this year is due to the exhaustion of Nature in producing the extraordinary mass of bloom. All trees, shrubs, briars, bushes, and plants—from lowly berry to towering elm—have been literally clothed in blossom. Now acacias are bending under the burden of their graceful hanging globes. There has been nothing like it for many years. The blackthorn began the glorious procession in April, looking as if covered with snow. Your correspondent has well called attention to the seed-pods of the wych elms blown and scattered about in amazing numbers. In our parish old people say they never "saw the like." Many did not know what the little brown discs were; the children threw them at one another in handfuls, and called them wafers. Lawns had to be swept before mowing-machines could work ; paths and lanes were as untidy as in October and November.
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