A year's -weather. 197 



were very numerous, i 761, 1778, and 1 791, were remarkable mush- 

 room years, on the 31st it rained 2"o-inches, and during the whole 

 month 5'3-inches. 



September 4th, 1 89 1 , 



The marked increase of wet which set in during the month of 

 August has been partly maintained this month. True, there were 

 some very hot days, but so soaked were the corn crops that during 

 the cessation of rain they did not dry in some cases sufficiently in 

 the judgment of the farmer to warrant his safely stacking them. 

 And so the harvest time came and went, and even the festivals 

 celebrating the ingathering were held. Yet over many acres, as I 

 saw at the end of the month, the cereals were in arish mows, black 

 and grim, useless, one feared, for food. Oats suffered most, but 

 root crops gained at the expense of the grain crops ; yet wheat, 

 taking the country through, thanks to the hot sunshine, yielded fairly, 

 but of inferior quality. It is pitiful that the splendid promises of 

 June and July should have been turned into the comparatively 

 disappointing realizations of August and September. The few fine 

 days of September which wrought such a salvation in the prospects 

 of the agriculturist deserve recording, as meteorological changes 

 soon fade in the memory. The first five days of the month were 

 dry, on the 6th and 7th over half-an-inch of rain fell, followed by 

 a dull day, on which we had a little rain. Then came a real touch 

 of summer ! It lasted five days, and closed with a heavy mist on 

 the evening of the 13th, from which it never recovered, though the 

 struggle to be fine continued to the 16th, when it fell away, and 

 soaking rains came on for a week, again followed by another period 

 of five dry days, which were much colder. With a repetition of 

 rain the month went out 3 1 6 days of rain, during which the fall 

 was 3"o5-inches; less than an average September rainfall by half- 

 an-inch, but nearly half-an-inch heavier than the rainfall for the same 

 month last year. 



Hence the month had three periods of five dry days. The 

 average maximum temperature — greatest heat in shade — -was for the 

 1st period 66 degrees; 2nd, 79 degrees 3 and 3rd, 66 degrees. 

 That short summer of deep blue sky, 79 degrees in the shade, on 

 one day loi degrees, and on another 103 degrees in the mid-day 

 sunshine, disturbed by cirrus clouds only in the earlier part of the 



