148 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



therefore I will give you the result of the investigations at 

 Amherst in relation to the season, and, of course, its effect 

 upon crops. I desire to compare the rainfall and the temper- 

 ature. This tells the whole story in relation to the influence 

 of the seasons on our crops. The farmers in adjoining towns 

 say that we have been blessed with abundance of rain this 

 year as compared with them. We have thought they were 

 blessed with rain as compared with us. It is probable that 

 the average has been the same in all the towns. I think the 

 farmers in the valley of the Connecticut will bear me out in 

 saying that until this year, the year 1873 was one of the 

 severest seasons for crops that we ever knew. The rainfall 

 in Amherst, in 1873, during the months of May, June, July, 

 August, and September, was a little more than 16-^ inches. 

 The rainfall of those same months in 1876 has been 16|, and 

 a trifle more. It did not vary but jqVo °^ an mc ^ m ^ e ^ w0 

 years. The temperatures of 1873 and 1876 are altogether 

 unlike. The average height of the mercury has been four 

 degrees higher in 1876 than it was in 1873. Therefore, we 

 have had this year unparalleled droughts, combined with 

 excessive heat, making it disastrous to our crops beyond the 

 year 1873 ; and the remarkable part of it has been, that in 

 the month of August this year, which was the month that did 

 the work of mischief, that killed the corn crop and destroyed 

 our fruit crop, — in the mouth of August, this year, in Am- 

 herst, we had only 2.072 inches of rainfall. It is a wonder 

 that the entire vegetation of the earth was not destined. 

 Now, I will compare 1876 with 1874, because that was the 

 year in which my experiments began on a broad scale, in the 

 open field, aud see how the two seasons compare. In 1874, 

 the rainfall of May, June, July, August and September was 

 26.369 inches ; in 1876, during the same months, it has been 

 16^ inches. During those months, we had almost ten inches 

 more rainfall in Amherst, in 1874, than in 1876. During 

 those two years, in relation to temperature, which enforces 

 the condition of rainfall, we have had an average temperature 

 in 1876 of seventy degrees, and in 1874 our average temper- 

 ature was less than sixty-five degrees. In other words, in 

 1874, when these open-field experiments began, we had 

 twenty-six inches of rainfall and a temperature of sixty-five 



