No. t iDEPARTMENT OE AGRICULTURE. 6 



Clarion. Greensboro and Saegerstown normal, and above normal, 

 especially at Somerset where it exceeded four inches. As already 

 stated, the hay crop on account of the cold weather of April and the 

 dry weather of May and early June was very short, particularly in 

 the eastern section of the Slate. The early potato crop was also very 

 short. The wheat crop was retarded during the cold April and 

 weakened by the dry and hot weather of May and early June, so 

 that when it began to head, it was short and weak and afterward 

 when attacked by the Hessian tly it had little resisting power and 

 the crop was in many places nearly a total failure. 



JULY 



The most notable feature of the weather of the first twelve to 

 thirteen days of July was the intense heat that prevailed throughout 

 the entire State, which was not equalled in the eastern sections 

 within the past thirty years, nor in the western section since 19U1. 

 The intensity of this heat was such that all cool weather crops, such 

 as oats and potatoes, except in favored localities, were greatly dam- 

 aged. The leaves of the potato plants were burned and in many places 

 dried up, while the green stalks remained green for weeks. When, 

 later on, more rain came, these stems had been weakened and did 

 not again produce leaves and the tubers could not grow because there 

 were no leaves to elaborate starch. From the middle to the end of 

 the month more rain fell and the weather became cooler and crop 

 conditions changed, except in some places where the weather was too 

 cool for crops to do their best. 



AUGUST 



The first ten days of August were again very warm, and with the 

 exception of parts of the western and southeastern sections, dry. 

 The drought was especially injurious in the central part of the State 

 until after the middle of the mouth v\'hen rain began to fall and, 

 with few exceptions, as in Towanda and LeKoy, Bradford county, 

 there was an excess of rain so that the precipitation varied from .04 

 of an inch at Indiana to 9.27 inches at Gettysburg. The temperature 

 was about as variable as the rainfall. The rains that came in many 

 sections of the State, the latter part of July and early in August, 

 together with the warm weather already referred to, produced large 

 corn crops in the sections where this rainfall occurred ; whereas, 

 where there was a deficiency of rain until the middle of August the 

 corn crop was not up to the previous year. 



SEPTEMBER 



The month of September was pleasant, but the excessive rainfall 

 of the latter part of August and the excessive and even normal rain- 

 fall of September caused the soils in many counties of the State 

 to be so wet that, except where the very best farming is done, the 

 seeding, w^hich should be done dnring this month, had to be delayed, 

 and in many places the delay was so long that a large aci*eage in- 

 tended to be seeded with wheat was not seeded at all which will 

 cause a reduction in the acreage of wheat the coming year. In many 

 sections of the State the coi-n did not ripen as well as it should 

 have done up to this tirue, because of the weather conditions already 

 referred to. 



