Seeing the weather and the differences between ancient and modern phenology from birds.

The ancient phenology is different from today. Lu You's Notes on the Old Learning Temple (Volume 6) quotes Du Fu's poem Plum Rain, and puts forward a question: "There is no plum rain in Chengdu today (Southern Song Dynasty), and it is cloudy and steaming in autumn, such as plum rain in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in May. Is there a difference between ancient and modern times? " Volume five quotes Su Zhe's poem: "Litchi in Shu gives history, but others are different." Lu You explained: "There are no lychees in Pengshan, which is based on poetry, not to mention Chengdu?" However, the Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Ji said that there were lychees in Chengdu. His "Chengdu Qu" said: "Jinjiang is near the west, and the litchi in Xinyu Mountain is ripe." Lu You thinks that Zhang Ji has never been to Chengdu, and his poems are written behind closed doors, with the Chengdu Plain as evidence. However, Bai Juyi, a contemporary of Zhang Ji, wrote many litchi poems when he was in Zhongzhou, Sichuan. In terms of latitude, Zhongzhou is still north of Pengshan. Therefore, just because there were no lychees in Chengdu in the Southern Song Dynasty, it cannot be concluded that there were no lychees in Chengdu in the Tang Dynasty. At that time, it was suspected that there was such a rumor, and Zhang Ji just wrote poems accordingly.

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* This article is selected from Zhu Kezhen and Wan's "Phenology", Science Press 1980 edition, with some abridgements.

Du Fu's poem Du Fu said: "There is no Du Fu in Dongchuan." Anyone who has been to Chongqing during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period knows that in April and May of the solar calendar, cuckoos crow at night, which makes people sleepless all night. But we can't just say that "there is no cuckoo in Dongchuan" is a fabrication. Phenology did not exist in the past, but it still exists in plants. Moreover, cuckoo is a kind of bird, and its distribution range can change with time. Taking wheat as an example, Yao once said in the Record of Ridges: "It is widely geothermal, and it is not practical to grow wheat." (1) But 700 years later, when Qu Dajun wrote Guangdong Newspeak in Qing Dynasty, wheat had already flourished in Leizhou Peninsula. ②

Naturally, we can't be too naive to think that people in the Tang and Song Dynasties didn't invent poetry. We use the poems of Tang and Song Dynasties to study ancient phenology, so we should use them critically. It seems that possible mistakes come from the following aspects:

(1) The poet misused the wrong ideas left over from ancient times, such as treating willow catkins as flowers of poplars or willows. Li Bai's poem "Parting Nanjing Restaurant" says: "The fragrance of Bai Liu flowers (a kind of wine)"; (3) The poem "I heard that Wang Changling moved to Zuolongbiao Kiln to send this letter" said: "Huayang has lost his life." (4) In fact, the so-called floc is that the fruit splits when it matures, and the seeds have a bunch of long white hairs that fly up and down with the wind and can be integrated after landing.

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(1) Hu, editor-in-chief of Selected Agricultural Heritage of China, editor-in-chief of the second kind of wheat, page 65, 1958 was published by Agricultural Press.

(2) "Selected Agricultural Heritage of China", the second kind of "wheat" in Class A, 155.

(3) (4) "Ji" Volume 12, Volume 13, reprinted in Song Dynasty.

(2) blindly follow the legends in ancient books. Qian Qi, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem "To a bosom friend in Beijing": "In February, orioles fly into the forest, and in the Forbidden City, there is spring ..." Orioles are migratory birds, and they arrive in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River in April of the lunar calendar. In February of the Tang Dynasty, there would be no orioles in Chang 'an. The Book of Rites and the Moon Order: "The Moon in Midspring ..." Cang Geng Ming ",misquoted by Qian Qi.

(3) For the convenience of poetry, the poet does not pursue the accuracy of data. For example, Bai Juyi's poem "Tide" said: "The early tide only falls at night, and it flows sixty times a week in January." Gu Yanwu criticized him and said, "There are 58 tides in a big month and 56 tides in a small month. Bai Juyi is a northerner and doesn't know the tide. " (2) In fact, Bai Juyi may not know Chaoxin, but he said it 60 times for the convenience of words.

(4) There are also poets who completely rely on subjective ideas and completely ignore objective facts. For example, Shen Liaozi, a monk in the Song Dynasty, wrote a poem "Singing Lotus": "In May, Linping Mountain went down the road, and countless lotus flowers filled Tingzhou." Someone pointed out: "The lotus flowers in Hangzhou are in full bloom only in May and in June. It should not be said that there are countless full-fledged continents. " The defender of Mr. Lian Liaozi said, "But to put it mildly,' Going down the mountain in June' is not a good poem." ③

(5) There are also some original poems that are well written and corrected by later generations. For example, Wang Zhihuan's "Liangzhou Ci": "Yellow sand goes straight to the white clouds, and there is a lonely city of Wan Ren. Why bother to complain about the willow, the spring breeze is only Yumenguan. " (4) This is in line with the spring situation in Yumenguan, west of Liangzhou. Wang Changling, a poet as famous as Wang Zhihuan, wrote a poem "Join the Army": "There are dark snow-capped mountains in Qinghai, and the lonely city overlooks Yumenguan. The yellow sand wears golden armor in hundreds of battles, and the loulan is not returned. " It also connects Yumenguan with Huangsha. Wang Wei's five-character poem "Send Liu Si to Anxi" appeared at the same time: "Outside Yangguan Road, the lake sand and dust. There are geese in spring, but there are few people traveling thousands of miles ... "The poets in Kaiyuan era in Tang Dynasty are familiar with the situation in Yumenguan area of Anxi. They know that almost every day in spring, they go to China with travel-stained, and they soar. But then I don't know when, the first sentence of Wang Zhihuan's Liangzhou Ci was changed to "The Yellow River is far above the white clouds". Today, the popular anthology of Tang poetry in bookstores has been changed with it. In fact, the Yellow River has nothing to do with Liangzhou and Yumenguan. This change makes this poem different from the geography and phenology of Hexi Corridor.

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(1) The White Xiangshan Collection (Volume 53), The Library of Everything.

(2) of the Japanese knowledge record volume 31, "tide letter".

(3) Lu You's Notes on the Old Learning Hall (Volume 2).

(4) Liao Zhongan's On Wang Zhihuan and its Liangzhou Ci, Beijing Guangming Daily 196 1 year 65438+February 3 1 day.

From what has been said above, we can know that the knowledge of ancient phenology in China was originally acquired by working people from production activities. Poets and scholars who love nature and care about people's livelihood introduced this natural phenomenon, nature and law into their poems and articles. China's cultural heritage is extremely rich. If we sort out the phenological data in predecessors' poems, travel notes and diaries, we can not only "shine the light of virtue", but also greatly increase the treasure house of world phenological data.

Hopkins' phenological law only talks about the difference between latitude and longitude and height of phenology, not about the difference between ancient and modern times. Because Hopkins is an American. The history of the founding of the United States has only been more than 200 years now (American independence is only 1776), so the climate record of the United States is far from the difference between ancient and modern times. The ancient scholars in China, such as Lu You in the Song Dynasty, Jin Luxiang in the Yuan Dynasty and Liu Xianting in the early Qing Dynasty, all suspected that ancient and modern phenology was quite different. Aristotle of Greece also pointed out in the chapter Meteorology that the climate and phenology may be different from ancient times to modern times. At the same time, from the end of 19 to the beginning of the 20th century, under the authoritative theory of Austrian meteorologist J. Hann, a stereotype was gradually formed that the climate in the historical period was very stable and did not change at all. As long as a place has accumulated records for 30 to 35 years, its average value can be used as the standard of this place, which is applicable to any historical era and the future. In recent twenty or thirty years, this view has been proved to be wrong due to the massive accumulation of world climate data. At the beginning of the 20th century, this erroneous concept of climatology also influenced phenology. The reason why many British phenologists organized the national phenological network is to try to obtain a permanent phenological index of all regions of the country, which can be applied to the past and the future. As our country's Yizhoushu said, every year is "the day when peach blossoms first bloom ..." In fact, it's not that simple. Our country's history books are full of evidence of phenological differences between ancient and modern times.

But from the historical phenological records, can it be proved that permanent phenological indicators can be obtained? Let's test this problem from the longest measured phenological record in the west. As mentioned above, five generations of Mashaum family in England recorded the phenology of Nolfo for 190 years. The Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society made a detailed analysis of this long-term record and compared it with the phenology recorded by the Society. Author Magale draws the following conclusions from the phenological records of seven species of trees in early spring:

The phenology of (1) fluctuates periodically, with an average period of 12.2 years.

(2) The greening of seven kinds of trees in the morning and evening is most closely related to the average temperature of each month at the beginning of the year (1-May). The higher the temperature, the earlier the greening.

(3) The phenology is related to the sunspot cycle. From 1848 to 1909, the year with more sunspots is a particularly early phenological year. But judging from 19 17, the year with more sunspots is actually a phenological year.

Comparing the spring phenological records of Beijing in recent 24 years with this, we can see that Beijing phenology also fluctuates periodically. Phenological seasons from 1956 to 1957 and at the latest 1969, 1957 and 1969 are the longest years of sunspots in Japan and China. It seems that the oldest sunspot is also the latest phenological year. But as pointed out earlier, the relationship between phenology and sunspots is unstable, and the reason has not been clearly studied so far.

From the long-term phenology recorded by the British Mashoum family, we can also compare the phenology of18th century and 20th century. If we compare the average from 174 1 year to 1750 and the average from 192 1 year to 1930, the latter is 9 days earlier than the former. In other words, the spring in 1930s was nine days earlier than that in the middle of18th century and in the south of England. Magale compared the phenological records of 175 1- 1785 with those from the end of 19 to the beginning of the 20th century (1-1925). ①

The longest phenological record in the world, that is, the cherry blossom record in Japan, is a single record, and some centuries 100 have only a few records, which can also be used as a reference.

The flowering date of cherry blossoms in different centuries is very unstable. The 9th century is earlier than12nd century13rd day. Bai Juyi (772-846), Zhang Ji (768-8307), Su Zhe (1039-112) and Lu You (1/kloc-) According to the records of cherry blossoms in Kyoto, Japan, the flowering period of cherry blossoms in the 1 1 and 12 centuries was 1 to 2 weeks later than that in the 9th century, which shows that Kyoto, Japan was warmer in the Tang Dynasty than in the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties, which is enough to prove the differences in phenology and climate between ancient and modern times. In the cherry blossom opening records of Kyoto 1 100 years in Japan, the earliest flowering period appeared on March 22nd, 1246, and the latest flowering period appeared on May,184, with a difference of almost four solar terms, that is, the earliest flowering period was at the vernal equinox.

Phenology is not only different from north to south, but also from east to west and from ancient times to the present. That is, it varies not only from place to place, but also from time to time. The fact is not as simple as Hopkins' law. In order to forecast the agricultural season, it is necessary to carry out field observation and research, and make a phenological calendar of this area. The sowing season and harvest time in all parts of China are determined by the working people after hundreds of years of struggle with nature, that is, according to the local climate and phenology. If we want to change them, we must go through accurate investigation, experiment and comprehensive consideration. Make a rash move and you will suffer.