COUNTRY LIFE Minn old diarists (whose nature calendars are published
in some editions of White's Selborne) would have run out of paper this year.. They found a few "indications oUspring " in November ; but -no evidence that cab compare in bulk with this November as ever is. One could almost say that the first fruits of spring are over. In my garden, two species of viburnum (Tinus and Fragrans) are just going off, having finished their first flowering a fortnight ago. The naked-flowered jasmine is full out and at its foot a polyanthus has new buds as well as withered'flowers. Both bees and butterflies, chiefly tortoiseshells, have been abroad; and birds have not only sung perpetually, they have been seen building. At the same time autumn proper has not been arrested. The leaves have fallen "pat ... like the catastrophe of the old comedy,". and most boughs are bare, except on beech and oak, and not least on hazel, which is thick with catkins that are lengthening rapidly. The wheats which this year were sown early, have so completely greened the tilths that they threaten to become "winter proud," and here and there a field is to be grazed. It is an old habit in some country-dwellers to collect a November nosegay, and species _of flower up to fifty and more have been recorded. There is some hope among such that all the records may be broken.
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