STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 189 



conditions of drought or wet, in his own little county, or State alone, he 

 would reason from a basis quite too narrow, to become a determining 

 cause, in any of those great processes, that extend round the entire globe, 

 as he will most readily see, by simply looking on the map of the world, 

 and observing how very small, and insignificant a part, of the vast whole, 

 his uwn little county or State, or in fact the whole United States, really 

 is. Amid influences so far-reaching and vast, a mere local cause is like 

 a stone dropped in mid-ocean ; it indeed produces its true effect in its 

 circling waves, but they are soon obliterated and swallowed up in the vast 

 jjower of the boundless impulses that conflict with them. Since the deliv- 

 ering of that lecture, I have been exceedingly gratified to notice that this 

 ^ubject has also arrested the attention of our Meteorological department at 

 Washington, and that it is announced in the papers that Commodore 

 Myers has already ordered a regular report of the depth of our rivers, as 

 the most feasible way of determining the general condition of the soil of 

 our continent, and of estimating its reserved force of retained summer 

 heat ; and from that obtaining a probable forecast of the severity of our 

 winters. I need not say to nurserymen or farmers, of Mhat vast value this 

 one single item would be to them, in mere dollars and cents, could it be 

 achieved ; but here, again, we need to know, not simply the actual con- 

 dition of our own continent, but also the relative condition of the conti- 

 nents east of us, before either our anal}'sis or our conclusions can be .said 

 to be complete. Meantime we must keep our eyes and ears open, look 

 at the facts and causes as widely as we can, and make the best gue.ss at 

 their results that we can ; and here as elsewhere we shall do better to use 

 our reason some, or as far as we can, with what few data we can get. 

 than we shall not to use it at all, even though we may often fail, 

 from the narrowness of our view. The two or three past years seem to 

 many to be exceptions to the general law or rule of mild winters after wet 

 foils on the wide scale. In one sense they have been signal exceptions, 

 and in another not at all. 



In this single State, and somewhat around it, we have had falls of 

 extreme drought, while all around us they had the opposite of extreme 

 wet. Last winter an unusual polar wave, or dip as it has been sometimes 

 called, or cold atmospheric wave, early in the season swept over the 

 whole country, and buried our narrow dry belt with the rest, whoU} 

 beneatli the snow, thus making its retained heat, for the time being, as 

 wholly inoperative as though it did not exist. But toward spring, after 

 the snow had melted away, and even while it was melting away, any one 

 could perceive the proper normal effects of the reserved heat, on our 

 comparatively narrow, and therefore, on the wide scale, impotent drought 

 belt ; for we were plowing and planting here, over the region of this nar- 

 row drought belt, while the ground of the wetter regions, east and west 

 and north of us, was still covered with snow ; and thus, although our lit- 

 tle narrow drought belt was wholly im})0tent, and far enough from giving 

 to the whole West a mild winter, still, it did what it could for us who 

 lived directly ujjon it. It gave us a much earlier warmth, though 



