We shall not be wrong in assuming that the minds of the gardening fraternity have for the last three weeks been more concentrated on the weather than on the war. Our atom of mind has and still can think of nothing else but frost and its effects, and the means of defence in the way of coke, mats, and litter. We have no special gift of weather-wisdom, but have certain beliefs, among which the moon has no share whatever, with one slight exception; and that is, during the time of a solar eclipse which we lately experienced the temperature sank several degrees. The great bulk of our rustic meteorologists, however, credit the moon with great influence; or rather, because she has entered certain of her quarters, certain other effects must follow to the weather, but the reason why is not made clear. When there is such a preponderating amount of weather-wisdom in rural parts, whether the moon, old Moore, or the newer Dietrichen be the authorities, it is no matter of surprise if some shrewd and true and infallible observations have been arrived at by dint of experience rather than of reason, and therefore more likely to stand good, and chiefly as regards the winds of the locality.

It is wonderful how meteorology as a science is being developed, and how such capricious things as winds and clouds and rain are being understood. We wish we were read up in the subject: Mr Buchan's book is one we long to read with a poor gardener's longing, but for the prohibitory number of shillings and sixpence, who do (not) place it within the reach of everybody. What irony is contained in these few commendatory words!

I daresay most of our readers have seen a great cotton-mill or engineering works or tweed factory, and wondered at the variety of intricate and compound and apparently contradictory motions there in action. However heterogeneous these motions be, and diverse in their various applications, there is only one source of all the activity, the engine; or, strictly speaking, the coal-fire under the boiler. Now the weather appears to us to be just the motion of a great and complicated system of machinery, this motion originating in the sun as the engine, and air, vapour, condensation, evaporation, heat and cold, are the parts of the machine through which this motion makes itself felt. Now though the source of this motion is well known, it is difficult to trace the connection of every outlying and remote motion through the parts of the machine to that source; it is difficult to believe that it forms part of a harmonious whole, what is the immediate cause of all the shiftings and eddyings of the wind, which we see every day at present, right round the compass in twenty-four hours.

Part of this intricate motion of the machine, no doubt, is produced by the friction of very large streams of air at different temperatures, moving in oblique or contrary directions, like the eddies produced in water by the motions of contrary currents: still we are so far in mystery that we cannot anticipate local changes, nor great changes of the wind and weather, except so far as the barometer enables us to guess. We live and carry on our operations in the midst of the motions of this machine; the gardener's work is entirely controlled by its influence; and while we must deferentially bow our acknowledgments to old Sol as the prime turner of the handle, one of our beliefs is that his aides-de-camp the winds have more to do with the weather in these islands. We grant him the immediate superintendence of the tropics, which he does very satisfactorily, while we, in these temperate climes, receive our share of weather second-hand through the agency of the winds. We grumble at our variable climate, our sudden and extreme changes, but meteorologists tell us we have no right geographically to such good weather as we get, except now and then: at Christmas we are reminded of our deservings, and were it not for our insular position, stuck up in a great bath of warm water, we should be no better off than the Esquimaux of Labrador. We must acknowledge, again, that the sun sends us our bath of warm water by the Gulf Stream as he sends us our south-westers; yet we repeat, the winds are our chief weather-breeders. Our coasts take their character so far from the winds to which they are most exposed, the cold dry eastern haurs of the east coast biting shrubs and blossoms, the damp winds of the west verdant but crypto-gamic; and any wind requiring the prefix north to express it savours of barrenness, though not as a rule.

It follows, then, that the winds of a coast determine very largely its vegetation.

We read of the Broccolis in Cornwall being killed by 13° of frost, comparatively a very small amount of cold; on the dry east coast we have seen them stand half as many more without injury. The explanation may be that up to within a week of the frost the moist south-west wind was blowing over a gradually cooling country, which condensed deluges of warm rain, making Broccolis and all Greens soft and sappy - the worst possible condition to stand severe frost. Evergreen shrubs escape, because the summer growth, being early made, became hardened by the heat and drought of the season, so that Sweet Bays and evergreen Magnolias and Camelias withstand 20° without injury. The southern counties of England are in character moist, from their more immediate proximity to the waters of the Gulf Stream. This is observed even during severe frost, from the amount of hoar precipitated on the trees and the foliage of shrubs, which, no doubt, at the same time acts as a protection. The success of tender shrubs would indicate a climate approaching that of Japan, and might suggest at Penzance, or, at any rate, Cork or Killarney, the establishment of a Royal Japonica nursery for the out-door growth of all those broad shining-leaved moisture-loving plants with Japonica to their names, and many more from the same green country.

The more tender of the Hybrid Rhododendrons, whose foliage also indicates the choice of a moist atmosphere, might be added; also the lovely Lapageria, the prince of conservatory climbers, with its broad shining leaves tapering to a point to shoot off the falling rain, might also succeed wholesale out of doors, coming as it does from the Patagonian slopes, where there is much frost and snow, but also one of the heaviest rainfalls in the world. This Japan climate, however, has its disadvantages when the winds are so uncertain. In the north and east coasts the precipitation falls more in the shape of snow, which protects herbaceous vegetation from the effects of frost, and much severer frost than without snow. The Cornish Broccoli-grower would be puzzled to protect acres of Greens when the north winds come down on him. In case of war with America, the Yankees very wickedly threaten to dam up the Gulf of Mexico, and starve us out by stopping the Gulf Stream; but they could not stop the winds, and even the stream itself might come in bigger volume by some other way. Out-door Grapes have been plentiful on the south coast the past season, but with considerable mildew.

Our next-door neighbour is never without plenty of English Grape-wine, but is utterly oblivious of all the literary mysteries on the growth of the Vine and the making of wine. If our memory is not at fault, we have seen an old Vine which occasionally bears crops of black Grapes out of doors at Garscube on the Clyde, which speaks much for the mildness of the climate of St Mungo. None will more readily admit the importance of the winds on the climate of this country than those who have to contend with the sea-blast in rearing plantations: the plants which will flourish almost on the top of a cliff on the south coast, say at Bournemouth, would not exist on the Northumbrian coast. Shelter is the one thing needful in such circumstances. In the whole range of sea-coast plants, nothing at all comes near the Sea Buckthorn for shelter: it is a real breakwater for any sea-coast wind. If we ever had anything to do with sea-coast planting, we should throw up a breastwork of that sturdy plant, which in a few years would become dense enough to shelter anything inside it, provided the situation were not absolutely a hillside. After a practical knowledge of his profession, the next most important study for the young gardener is meteorology.

The minds of the great majority, however, are not alive to this fact. Indeed, to be called weather-wise is generally but a doubtful compliment. We venture to say there is no more fascinating study, and none more calculated to entertain the mind and excite its wonder. The Squire's Gardener.