78 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Total annual average, 111.3 days. 



These observations include those days on which slight show- 

 ers fell. It is hardly necessary to remark, that our showers 

 of summer rarely come so slow and drizzling as the short rains 

 in England. If we add up the parts of days on which it rained 

 or snowed in the vicinity of Boston, including, of course, those 

 days on which it rained or snowed all day, we find an average 

 of but 58.8 days, the largest number in any year of the series 

 of nineteen being 72 days, the smallest 45 days, and these 

 days are distributed among the several months as follows : — 



Or, to carry the comparison still farther, I take observations 

 made in Berkshire County in 1837 and 1838, regarding them 

 as average years, and find that the number of days on which it 

 rained or snowed in these two years was 98|-; or, leaving out 

 the days on which it snowed, we find that in 1837 it rained 38£ 

 days, and in 1838, 32*-. In 1837 there were 157 fair and 157.1 

 cloudy days; in 1838, 203 fair and 114 cloudy days. These, 

 it should be noticed, were not excessively dry in that part of 

 the State, but on the contrary, with the exception of great 

 failures in wheat sown in competition for the State bounty, 

 they were marked by agricultural prosperity. The amount of 

 rain at Amherst, in the summer of those years, was, — 



August, 2.57 " August, 3.95 



