16 Observations upon the Season of 1849. 



most of them scarcely sufficing to lay the dust, and none 

 more than to moisten the surface of the earth, no rain fell 

 (in this city) from the 5th of June until the 31st of July; a 

 drought unusual so early in the season, and one that could 

 hardly fail to produce very serious effects upon vegetation. 

 On the 31st of July and 1st of August there were copious 

 showers; and from that time to the present the rains have 

 been frequent and abundant. The closing months of the 

 year have been characterized only by the customary vicissi- 

 tudes of the seasons, and the purposes in hand require no 

 particular notice of them. 



Early in the season, the numerous fruit buds gave promise 

 of an abundant crop of apples and pears ; but by the middle 

 to last of May, appearances indicated that the trees, from 

 some cause, had received serious injury. Their fiower-buds 

 opened weakly and imperfectly, or, as was more usually the 

 case, withered and fell off without expanding. The foliage, 

 too, of the fruit trees, when it did appear, was thin ; and in 

 some cases the shoots of the growth of the previous year 

 were killed. An examination of the flower-buds of the 

 peach and cherry, made at a much earlier period of the 

 year, in February and March, indicated severe injury or (Jp- 

 struction. Neither was the injury experienced wholly con- 

 fined to the different species of fruit trees. The elms shew 

 by their thin and weak foliage early in the season, and by 

 the greatly diminished number of their seeds, that they had 

 not escaped ; while the common border-flowers, herbaceous 

 plants and box edgings of the gardens, passed the winter 

 more safely than usual. 



The crop of apples and pears, through the State, and es- 

 pecially in the eastern part of it, may be said, from some 

 cause, to have almost entirely failed ; although, in some sec- 

 tions of it, to a limited extent, these fruits seem to have 

 escaped injury. In the County of Berkshire apples are re- 

 ported as abundant, and pears in Plymouth. A few gardens 

 or orchards in the vicinity of Boston, and a single tree scat- 

 tered here and there in various localities, furnished their usual 

 supply of fruit ; but these instances are but exceptions to the 

 truth of the remark. 



