CURIOSITIES OF TILE DROUGHT.
The infltiencei of the long drought and frost in conjunction are observable in a great number '45f Minor and unexpected details. 'It is a wonder: how plants have 'maintained' their vigour,-yet-it is found that in 'spite' °tidally frosts, of great severity, and little or no: rain, some spring-sown crops hive grown better thaathe..winter-bown.. Aspatagus, just coming, .
to its harvest, sprouted -with- its- usual vigour; but the • effort, at any-rate.in Aotne gardens, seems to. have robbed it of its .tisualflavour. Claters, .whick one would lieve thought: especially snatteptible, to frtiftt, have :never ftiolteir *ate stt thick_ ;and flourishing., Eitber - frost or . draught talents: to have quite upset the 40imal irit'itipci of some birds. .Great numbers have deaertpd their nests, Tthers have gorie a step further and sucked their own eggs.. It is-trornmon experience that.unasual numbers ,oteggs.have bees deittroyed., Yarioua. marauding birds were suspected ; but,in one:instance.af any rate a cock pheasant was caught, ,yellowrbeaked; jin the. act of sucking the, eggs he fathered, On tbia subject is there any foundation, for the common county: belief that pheasants seldom._ hatch the first . eggs they . lay, and that, _therefore, • most_ broods arefrOrn a. second laying.t. In regard to such very real nesting birds as ducks, it would probably .in most" years increasc the species, if the first clutch. were destroyed. W. BEACH THOMAS.