STATE HOKTICDLTURAL SOCIETY. 233 



The President announced that the next and last regular order of busi- 

 ness upon our programme was the report of the Committee upon Meteor- 

 ology, consisting of Prof. J. H. Tice, of St. Louis, and Prof. J. B. Turner, 

 of Jacksonville, and inquired if these gentlemen had prepared reports. 



The Secretary stated that a recent letter from Prof. Tice informed 

 him that the Professor is engaged on a lecturing tour in the West, and 

 would not be able to prepare a paper for this meeting, but would endeavor 

 to prepare and forward a short report in time for publication. He read 

 the letter. 



Prof. Turner, who was .present, was then introduced by the Presi- 

 dent, and said : 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, I cannot hope to entertain 

 you so soon after listening to the eloquent and inspiring words of the 

 distinguished lecturer who has addressed us this evening. If I may but 

 excite your wonder, and thus secure your attention, it will be all I can 

 hope for. I did not expect to follow Dr. Gregory, or I might have 

 shrunk from the task allotted me. 



REPORT UPON METEOROLOGY— By Prof. J. B. Turner, Jacksonville. 



From the middle of April to the middle of November, a period of 

 about seven months, we were not visited in Morgan county by one single 

 respectable rain ; all the streams and multitudes of the wells and reservoirs 

 went wholly dry ; a drouth more severe than was even known to that 

 most venerable of men, "the oldest inhabitant." But recounting the past 

 history of the weather in the State is of no use to this Society, or to any 

 one else but experts ; every man knows what it has been in his own 

 locality, and in general over the State, far better than any of our 

 reporters can tell him. 



The old adage that "all signs fail in a dry time " is most true, and all 

 our so-called scientific causes, theories, predictions and portends sink at 

 last in practice into mere signs, just as likely to fail when applied to any 

 particular locality as are the hereditary symbolic signs of the people. 

 By help of the telegraph we can learn of the existence and approach of 

 the gathering storm across wider areas than our fathers' unassisted eyes 

 and ears could survey; but no man on earth can tell on what day of next 

 week it will either rain or shine over any particular town or county ; so 

 that all our practical predictions are of little or no value, as yet, to any 

 of the industrial arts upon the lands. 



Upon the seas or lakes the winds alone are the all-important item, 

 and they spread themselves with tolerable uniformity of intensity over the 

 whole area swept by the storms. But in agriculture the rain, and not the 

 wind, is the all-important item ; and the great storms, as they pass us, 

 have, for some reason, contracted such a habit of massing and spilling 



