342 



ence can be safely drawn from them which will endure the test of 

 critical examination. Any small selection of years may be made 

 Avhich will seem to support some suggested relation between tempera- 

 ture, rainfall, and crop, but other years will be found to contradict this. 

 In a general way good crops result from hot and dry summers and 

 bad harvests depend upon the large rainfalls rather than on the low 

 temperatures. I have added the column of departures and have com- 

 puted the probable errors of the averages, the study of which shoAvs 

 that the temperatures of the good harvest seasons are not sufficiently 

 above those of the poor harvest seasons to 'justify the conclusion that 

 warm seasons are intimately connected with good harvests. If, how- 

 ever, we go into more detail and examine all of the fifty-three years 

 from 1816 to 1888, inclusive, and arrange them by the character of 

 the harvests, we find innumerable contradictions. The study of the 

 rainfall with its probable errors, or rather its probable variability, 

 shows a somewhat stronger argument in favor of the idea that large 

 rainfalls accompany poor harvests, and yet here again the contradic- 

 tions are too numerous to allow us to suppose that this simple state- 

 ment expresses exactly any law of nature. Thus the largest rainfall 

 of 1888 and the small rainfall of 1886 both contradict this law. In 

 the notes a few statements are made by the author as to special occur- 

 rences which seem to him to explain these anomalous cases, and by 

 hunting through the records a few more notes might have been added 

 so that after leaving out the anomalous cases one might say that the 

 remainder accords well with the idea that dry hot summers give large 

 crops and that heavj" rains give poor crops. In general, however, it 

 seems more proper to conclude that we are far from having attained 

 the expression or formula connecting the crops and the weather, and 

 that even if we knew this it would be improper to study the crops 

 of England with reference to the temperature and rainfall at Green- 

 wich, or, indeed, any other single station. 



English irlieat liarvests and Greemcich iceather. 



[Weather in June, July, and August.] 



I. SUPERIOR WHEAT HARVESTS. 



