358 THE CEREAL AND OTHER CROPS OF SCOTLAND FOR 1881, 



fall was everywhere deficient. Over a considerable part of the 

 rainy division the excess above the average was from 40 to 50 ; 

 and again, as in August, the greater part of the excess was preci- 

 pitated over the Lothians and Berwickshire. As regards the 

 rest of Scotland, the weather was characterised by great and 

 unusual dryness ; over large and extensive breadths of country 

 less than half the usual rainfall of September was measured. 

 It is scarcely necessary to add that, as regards the south-east of 

 Scotland between the Cheviots and the Forth, the weather of 

 1881, so calamitous to the agricultural interests, wrought there 

 its disastrous work with a crushing completeness nowhere else 

 experienced in Scotland. 



October. — The temperature was 1°'8 under the average, the 

 defect of the days and the nights being equal. In the north, 

 the deficiency was small, being almost everywhere north of 

 Aberdeen less than a degree, but it rapidly increased south of 

 the Tay. Thus, the defect was 2°-4 at Edinburgh, 3°-3 on the 

 Lower Tweed, 4°'4 among the Cheviots, and 4°-9 at Silloth. 

 Again, a most unequal distribution of the rainfall characterised 

 this month. Along Tweeddale above Melrose, and over the 

 whole of the north-east of Scotland to the east of a line drawn 

 from Inverness by Pitlochrie to Korth Berwick, the rainfall was 

 above the average, the greatest excess being in Strathspey and 

 Upper Deeside, where at Braemar it was 66 per cent, above the 

 average. Elsewhere it was below the mean, being, as in the 

 case of September, only half the average of the month over a 

 third part of Scotland, and generally in the same districts. This 

 month will be long remembered for the great storm which swept 

 over the British Islands on the 14th, and burst on the east of 

 Scotland with a furious impetuosity scarcely to be equalled by 

 any storm of recent years, for the extensive breadths of forests 

 which it levelled with the ground, and for the well-nigh un- 

 paralleled loss of life which it occasioned among our fishing 

 population between the Eorth and the Tweed. 



November. — In this month a total change set in, instead of a 

 temperature under the average which had all but persistently 

 prevailed for thirteen months previously, the temperature now 

 rose to a degree absolutely unprecedented for November in our 

 Scottish records of weather. Everywhere the excess was abnor- 

 mally large, — the smallest excess being 3°'5 on the north coasts 

 and the largest in inland situations, as happens at this time of 

 the year with high temperatures, since in such circumstances 

 the cooling through terrestrial radiation is much less than usual 

 in strictly inland places. The greatest excess occurred in the 

 central districts south of the Eorth and Clyde, where it rose to 

 6°*3 above the average of the month. During the past 118 years 

 no such lari^e excess has been recorded in November, the nearest 



