310 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL 



managers, and it may now be a good time to urge them back to 

 their original purity and design. Then our old people, and the mid- 

 dle-aged, should spend more time in visiting their neighbors, 

 those of their old-time friends, where they could swap lies with 

 one another and feel themselves young again. One great source of 

 pleasure to the old people of our portion of the state is the Old 

 Settlers' reunion. These are enjoyed to a remarkable degree by them 

 all, as they invariably turn out on these occasions, and their youth 

 is "renewed like the eagle's." But time, the everlasting destroyer, 

 tells me to close. 



METEOROLOGY AI^D VINE CULTURE. 



BY WM. m'mUKTKIE, PH. D., PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, UNIVERSITY 



OF ILLINOIS. 



The relations of climate or weather to the different branches of 

 agriculture has always been considered to a greater or less extent of 

 paramount importance, and scarce a crop is ever discussed without 

 the influence of the weather upon the crop becoming one of the 

 leading elements of the discussion. In the introduction of a new 

 crop, or a new plant, is the climate suited to it, and what will be its 

 effect upon the products obtained, is all the absorbing question. And 

 for its determination nothing more than general observation is 

 usually brought to bear. If the plant will develop and barely ma- 

 ture its fruit the problem is often considered solved. A sufficiency 

 of moisture and heat has been accepted as to the all-important de- 

 sideratum, and even with regard to these elements the prevailing 

 notions are extremely vague. So, then, in the practice of agricul- 

 ture and the careful study of all the conditions which affect its suc- 

 cess or failure, no relations are, perhaps, so much neglected as those 

 which form the subject of this paper, and it is certain that there are 

 none upon which the quantity and quality of farm crops more com- 

 pletely depend, or which may modify to a greater extent the profit 

 and loss in agricultural work. The study of the soil, and its culture 

 and amelioration by fertilizers; the improvement of the seed to be 

 sown by careful selection or hybridization; the physiology of the 

 living plant, have all claimed their share of the attention of students 

 and practical men. The influence of various elements and com- 

 pounds entering into the composition of the soil or of fertilizers 

 upon the development of plants, and the quantity and quality of 

 their fruits, or upon the development of any desired constituent of 

 the fruit, have repeatedly been the subject of exhaustive study, and 

 we all know with what fortunate and valuable results. But the re- 

 lation of specific meteoric agents, as they prevail in nature, to these 

 special points appear to have been largely neglected. 



