A REVOLUTION IN CORN-GROWING 83 



All this may read as a very simple explanation, 

 but impossible of accomplishment. Rut the reader 

 may satisfy himself that the writer is merely stating 

 what is his own experience and is his own farming 

 practice. 



A QUESTION OF RAINFALL 



As a general rule, in districts with a 30-inch or 

 more annual rainfall, summer moisture, sufficient to 

 permit of ploughing of the second or third year's lay, 

 is not lacking. 



For instance, in the Rritish Isles for the thirty-five 

 year period 1875 — 1910, the average July ( rainfall has 

 only been less than 2.36 inches east of a line from 

 Hillington, in Norfolk, to Portland Bill, in Dorset, in 

 Lincolnshire, and along a strip of the English East 

 Coast. 



During the same period the August rainfall has 

 only been less than 2.36 inches in a small bit of 

 country east of a curve starting at Yarmouth, passing 

 to the East of Cambridge and Rothamstead, and ending 

 about St. Leonards. August, the harvest month, as 

 a matter of fact, is one of the wettest months of the 

 year. 



The second condition for the sowing of summer 

 corn, viz., a readily available supply of plant food in 

 the early stages of growth, is all-important. Most 

 of the writer's early failures later proved to be due 

 to ignorance of this essential condition. 



Purely owing to the mistake of a workman, who 

 was ordered to go and commence spreading artificials 

 " at the eastern end of a field," and who under- 

 stood, as is generally understood amongst the Irish 

 peasantry, the eastern to mean the right-hand, a 



