experience the greatest degree of cold.

Between the 4th and the 15th of the month the average temperature in London falls to 36° Fahrenheit; but the Rev. T. A. Preston's twenty years' observations at Marlborough give an average lower than this for the 11th and 12th, the 21st and 22nd, and the 24th, 25th, and 26th of the month. Such cold as this will generally follow a prolonged period of frost, more often perhaps before rather than after a fall of snow; but, though the date of its coming is even more uncertain than most features in our English weather, more snow falls on an average in January than in any other month. Whether, however, we have had a long-continued black frost, or whether the ground be hard bound in frozen snow, even if there be no perceptible fog near the ground, the sky may be a heavy, monotonous surface of blackish-grey. The leafless boughs in the absence of sunshine look black and lifeless, and no verse seems to express the unpoetical unattractiveness of the scene better than Thomson's prosaic exclamation

"How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!"

Whether we have a continuance of frost, or warmer and more foggy weather, in the latter half of the month we very commonly have an anticyclone. The air is still; no wind whistles or moans in the treetops at night; and the mercury stands higher in the barometer than at any other season of the year. This condition of the weather is accurately described by Gilbert White in a piece of verse from which we quote the beginning and the end, not so much on account of any great poetical merit, as because their author's name and the accuracy which could never forsake him, secure the interest of every true Selbornian.

"Th' imprisoned winds slumber within their caves
Fast bound; the fickle vane, emblem of change,
Wavers no more, long settling to a point.
All nature nodding seems composed: thick steams
From land, from flood updrawn, dimming the day,
Like a dark ceiling stand: slow thro' the air
Gossamer floats, or stretch'd from blade to blade
The wavy network whitens all the field.
Push'd by the weightier atmosphere, up springs
The ponderous mercury, from scale to scale
Mounting, amidst the Torricellian tube.

For days, for weeks, prevails the placid calm.
At length some drops prelude a change: the sun

With ray refracted bursts the parting gloom;
When all the chequer'd sky is one bright glare,
Mutters the wind at eve: th' horizon round

With angry aspect scowls: down rush the showers,
And float the deluged paths and miry fields."

We can well imagine the dapper country parson, who saw the mist rise this afternoon from Wolmer pond, as he watches the lurid yellow storm-light burst over the sheep-down, hears the rising wind murmur among the beeches of the Hanger, and then sees the gossamer washed away from the meadow, and the brick-paved footpath, leading to his favourite summer-house, deluged by the sudden rain.

But neither indoors nor out of doors is January all gloom. At the beginning of the month, when commencing another year, according to the almanac, we, like the ancient God from whom the month derives its name, look not only backward but also forward. Christmas jollity has not yet left us. Not only are the churches and our houses throughout the month still decked with evergreens, but the first week of the month falls within the mystic "twelve days of Christmas," which intervene between the feast and the Epiphany, or between our modern Christmas day and Old Christmas day, and are specially associated with all the festivity of the season. Good luck for the next twelve months is, according to some traditions, closely connected with the due observance of these twelve days, by the eating of twelve mince pies or other similar rite; and, as there is nothing about which we are so conservative in the country as about our holidays, many of our old Christmas customs still cling to Twelfth Night, regardless of the reform of the calendar. The drawing of "characters," king and queen and nobility of every degree, which less than forty years ago was the almost invariable accompaniment of "Twelfth cake," is now a forgotten ceremony at our children's parties; but out-of-doors the unvarying requirements in the matter of accumulated heat on the part of any particular plant accompany the almanac with less changeable customs. That remarkable variety of the thorn named from the desecrated abbey of Glastonbury still astonishes beholders by its apparently miraculous blossoming at or about Old Christmas day; and if we do not always have roses at Christmas, we at least have Christmas roses.

The holy thorn that

"Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of the Lord,"

and is said by tradition to have sprung from the staff of St Joseph of Arimathea, is a remarkable variety of the common hawthorn. Withering describes it under the varietal name of præcox, and says "it blossoms twice a year; the winter blossoms, which are about the size of a sixpence, appear about Christmas, and sooner if the winter be severe. These produce no fruit. The berries contain only one seed. . . . I was informed that the berries, when sown, produce plants in no wise differing from the common hawthorn." The trees grown now at Glastonbury, none of which are of any great age, whilst many have been sent to other places, agree on the whole with this description. They do not, as a rule, bear leaves in January, nor is there anything exceptional in the size of their winter blossoms. Though tradition asserts, with Withering, that a severe winter produces not only an earlier but a better show of blossom, this may well be doubted. The fact that the haws which result from the second crop of flowers, those appearing in May or June, each contain only a single seed, allies it to the common variety of the hawthorn known botanically as monogyna ; but, though the young plants raised from its seed may not always reproduce their parent's precocity, I believe they sometimes do so. The Glastonbury variety can, however, be readily multiplied by cuttings. At Woodham Ferrers, in Essex, there is a similar variety, which differs, however, in bearing leaves, and only occasionally flowers, at this early season. Other plants occasionally exhibit this peculiarity, which is approached by the normal order of development in hazel, mezereon, almonds, and willows. Thus it is stated that in the garden of the Benedictine Abbey, of which Gloucester Cathedral once formed a part, there was a holy appletree which flowered at Christmas; and certainly whenever and wherever this physiological freak occurs, it is sufficiently remarkable to have been excusably considered miraculous in an age of simpler faith.

If the snow has not yet fallen, the landscape as a wholemeadows, trees, waste fallows, and newly-ploughed fields-has still some variety of colouring to show us, though in the vivid golden light of a setting sun, reflected in the wet furrows and standing pools, as we see it in one of Mr Leader's pictures, all its colours seem to be assimilated, shot, as it were, with the same gold thread.

As Cowper says in "The Task ".

"I saw the woods and fields at close of day,

A variegated show; the meadows green,

Though faded; and the lands where lately waved
The golden harvest, of a mellow brown,
Upturn'd so lately by the forceful share.

I saw far off the weedy fallows smile
With verdure not unprofitable, grazed
By flocks, fast feeding, and selecting each
His favourite herb; while all the leafless groves,
That skirt the horizon, wore a sable hue,
Scarce noticed in the kindred dusk of eve.
To-morrow brings a change, a total change!
Which even now, though silently perform'd,
And slowly, and by most unfelt, the face
Of universal nature undergoes.

Fast falls a fleecy shower; the downy flakes
Descending, and with never-ceasing lapse,
Softly alighting upon all below,

Assimilate all objects. Earth receives

Gladly the thickening mantle; and the green
And tender blade, that fear'd the chilling blast,
Escapes unhurt beneath so warm a veil."

The change is indeed complete. But little variety of colour, or even of shade, now remains. If the snow continues to fall during the day, we look upward through what then appears as a whirling yellowish fog of falling flakes. The black tree-stems and the lower surfaces of the branches now stand out in sharply-defined contrast; and if the yellow light of yesternight's sunset betokened wind, we shall have on all sides the most fantastic forms of drifted snow-wreaths, sweeping in graceful curves of purest white up the banks, and arching forward over the hedge-rows. If the snow-storm has ceased before daybreak, the glow from the touch of "rosy-fingered dawn" tones down the glare of white.

To quote Cowper once more—

"Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,

Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,

And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,

From every herb and every spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.

"The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad,
And fledged with icy feathers, nod superb."

THE PLANT-WORLD IN JANUARY

IN A WINTER GARDEN

THE season may be inclement; but, if everything be not buried in snow, we shall probably be surprised at the long list of plants which we can find, and even find in flower, during January. Without having recourse to our stoves or greenhouses, and still less to that dreary combination of dusty palms and aloes, with a refreshment bar and a brass band, that too often arrogates to itself the name of Winter Garden, we can find several plants of the highest beauty and interest growing unprotected in our gardens. If we are less exacting in our demand for showy blossoms, and are content for once with various other points of interest, such as those which the nurseryman somewhat contemptuously passes over as "merely botanical," a little painstaking search, especially towards the end of the month and in a mild season, may yield us a catalogue of flowering "weeds" considerably longer than that of the garden plants now in blossom. But, though the list is far longer than we might expect, it is not, of course, to be compared to that of May or June; so that we can afford ample time to enquire into the various popular or local names of the plants we find, as well as to examine them themselves in some detail.

Though roof and wall may still be brightened with green patches of moss, from many of which rise their tiny capsules like jewelled pins studding a velvet pin-cushion, no time of the year would probably be considered less fitted than the present for us to begin the study of any group of plants from any aspect. And yet even now we can find, at no great distance from home, illustrations of most of the fundamental