PRINCIPALLY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF FELSTEAD. 193
that two or three droughts spread over consecutive summers might
completely extinguish certain forms.
The absence of spring characters in 1893 was greatly due to the
lack of weeds. There were but few buttercups and scarcely any
daisies to enrich the brownish green tint that prevailed in the meadows.
The weeds, in fact, were relegated to more congenial times. This
brings us to notice more particularly how much is involved in that
word "relegated." The most casual observer would have noticed in
the September month a number of species that had struggled into
bloom about four months after date, and he would probably have
noticed that some were blooming for the second time. This means
that the roots of many plants had been subjected to a great
strain, and if that strain had been much intensified only the hardier
ones would have survived ; or, to express its equivalent in other
terms, it might be said that the tendency of the season was to con-
vert biennials into annuals, and all plants into perennials.
Meteorologists, I believe, know of no reason why the next
summer should not imitate its predecessor; and, indeed, why anti-
cyclonal conditions should not prevail for several successive
summers. If such were to be the case, we should have a lesson
taught to us on the flexibility of organisms. It would then become
evident to all that a change of conditions involved changes of
habits of plants, to say nothing else. It is these abnormal seasons
that to the careful observer are the best exponents of the doctrine
of specific change. In fact, one has only to take a standpoint
sufficiently high, and to convert years into centuries or ages, to see
that all specific and generic changes are the prototypes of proto-
plasmic change; and when we can forecast the rest or direction of
the one, we shall be in a position to say something of the other.
These great problems are controlled or affected by the passing
seasons that slip by without our notice, and die and seldom give a
sign.
The summer, not generally being a season of great rainfall with
us, it might be surmised that the springs would not be affected much
above the ordinary, and where the water-bearing stratum was of
sufficient depth there appears to have been but little scarcity. The
rains of summer, however, in an ordinary course keep the surface
moist and the air heavily-laden with aqueous vapour—witness the
dews of spring and autumn. This quantity of moisture was almost
wholly abstracted this summer, and so the ground at and near the
O