Without exception everything in my garden this year has bloomed in a way I have not seen it do before. Glimpses obtained on my way to and from town indicate that the same is the case with other people's gardens. It began early in the spring with my little wild flowe' ch as the speedwell, the buttercups, the violets, the wood sorrel and the Potentiiia (Wild strawberry), all of, which were un usually florescent. Next my white lilac tree as literally smothered with blossoms, followed by what is usually called May by Shanghai gardeners, but is really a spiraea, the bushes of which looked as if they were covered with snow. The snowdrops, nestling down at the bases of the rocks, also were particularly good this spring, and later the saxifrage, commonly known as Mother-of-Thousands, which is still in bloom. The mauve-blue Temple-of-Heaven, the roses, especially the ramblers or "Dorothy Perkins," the brilliant yellow Forsythia, the various kinds of jessamine, the mock orange or syringa and the Deutzia all bloomed thick! And now the pomegranate tree are a mass of pure vermilion, the Hypericum or St. John's Wort bushes ablaze with golden-yellow and the gardenia shrubs weighed. down with pure white blossoms of exceptional fragrance. Not only are the flowers thus superabundant, but foliage too is thicker and seems greener than ever before. It is all one can do to keep the garden from becoming a tropical jungle. The beebe or loquat trees are loaded with orange-coloured fruit which makes a wonderful contrast with their dark green leaves. Naturally one seeks an explanation for all this prodigality. Is it that weather conditions have been abnormally favourable? There seems to be more moisture this year than we usually get here, and there have been fewer days when that unpleasant drying spring wind has blown from the north and north-west, but somehow these phenomena do not seem to be sufficient cause for-the excessive verdure and plethora of flowers we have been blessed with this season. I have another suggestion to offer. Last autumn and early winter a war of considerable intensity raged round us, and enormous quantities of explosives were discharged on every hand. Extensive areas of Shanghai ent up in flames. For days on end the air thick with smoke. That from the bombs and shells was, of course, full of compounds of nitrogen, at once one of the main ingre: slents of most high explosives and the basis nearly all fertilizers. Is it not probable that, unobserved, there was a steady deposit of nitrates; phosphates and ther chemical substances from the smoke-charged atmosphere dissolved in the rain as it fell and sprinkled all over this area, fertilizing the sot and so enriching it that it has yielded in leaf and and fruit as never before? If this be the case, it is just one more instance of Nature stepping in and turning the evil man does to g00d.—A, DE C, S, 5
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.