112 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



an excess of moisture prevails — my great apprehension has been 

 from a want of moisture sufficient and timely to second all my other 

 efforts and crown them with success. Not only this, but it is my 

 experience that the tendency to extreme dryness is on the in- 

 crease — and when our own State suffers, especially the more east- 

 erly part thereof, as it has for the last season, it seems to me it is 

 a fit matter to attract the attention of this intelligent, this honor- 

 able body of Connecticut farmers. 



We cannot irrigate to any considerable extent — the watering 

 pot is scarcely adequate to sustain the flowers and shrubs around 

 our homes through the long, trying, dreary periods of our brassy- 

 drouths — and we must look to the clouds for succor almost wholly. 

 Now, when you most need their refreshing beneficence, they are 

 the most hesitating and delusive, and the question is, can the hand 

 of man do aught to modify this tendency in our foggy, hazy, half- 

 precipitating clouds, and cause them to give down upon us oftener 

 and more liberally their redeeming showers? This is the question 

 and here is the point of the whole .matter. These local, limited 

 showers, here and there, now and then, coming up and moving 

 over comparatively small areas — scuds, as it were, or small storms 

 in miniature, moving in parallel lines from east to west, one day 

 north of you, next day in the opposite direction, and finally giving 

 you your turn of their bounty, are the features of our climatic con- 

 ditions of the utmost importance — our main salvation and redemp- 

 tion during the prevalence of these areas or zones of atmosphere, 

 incident to our climate when vegetation most needs the refreshing 

 waters to save it from the burning, scalding sun, and perfect its 

 growth and its maturity. 



Let us first call attention to our character and conditions as to 

 heat and moisture, by contrasting it to that of England with its 

 limited territory all surrounded with water and subject to an over- 

 plus of moisture, attended with a want of sunshine and of heat — 

 just the opposite of ours. Her storms as a rule are more fi'equent 

 than ours and light, unless it be their local thunder showers, while 

 she very rarely suffers from a prolonged drouth as we do, and then 

 it comes rather as a blessing in disguise. All countries have their 

 peculiar climatic storm conditions and systems, modified by their 

 configuration and location to surrounding waters — and what is 

 there peculiar to us in our system of storms? Our continental 

 slope here in the states is drained by rivers running into the At- 



