Late Rainfalls; some of their Effects. 89 



although the dry weather at the end of the year has never 

 been known to fail, the same can by no means be said about 

 the other or spring dry season, in fa6l its entire absence 

 has been quite common lately and in its stead we have 

 had simply a continuation of the heavy rains which began 

 at the end of November and often did not stop until the 

 later dry season began, and no doubt this want of 

 a dry season was the most hurtful feature in these five 

 yearsi It seems to be absolutely necessary that we 

 should have alternating wet and dry seasons, and the 

 want of either of these appears to be about equally dis- 

 astrous so far as stiff clay land is concerned. 



From a careful analysis of figures within my reach I 

 find the loss in yield in heavy years such as these last 

 five have been, is as nearly as possible j of a ton of sugar per 

 acre. This is over the whole year's crop, and includes the 

 yield from good fields as well as poor ones ; of course indi- 

 vidually some of the fields did very much worse, one ton 

 per acre not being uncommon, and in some very bad 

 cases half a ton being all that was reaped, even with 

 manure and every care and attention. This large de- 

 crease in the yield, quite 15 0/0, is by no means the 

 only misfortune that follows such weather as we have 

 had lately. The cost of cultivation is higher in all its 

 items per acre, and when the poor yield is taken into 

 account, the cost per ton made in some items is enor- 

 mously increased ; for instance weeding, I find has just 

 been doubled. During average weather we can gene- 

 rally lay our plans for the various field operations, such 

 as planting, supplying, weeding, forking etc., and may 

 reasonably expe6l to get them executed, but of late all 

 this has been changed, we can supply certainly, as long 



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