171 



NOTES ON THE DRY SUMMER OF 1896. 



Bt FRED. H. DAVEY. 



For a parallel to the past summer, the memory of the oldest 

 wiU be disturbed in vain. Considered by its results, it must 

 rank as even more historic than the Jubilee summer of 1887, or 

 indeed than any other dry season of recent times. To most, but 

 to the agriculturist in a particular sense, the drought which 

 prevailed, from early spring to after midsummer, was a time of 

 considerable anxiety, fraught in many instances by serious 

 financial losses. To the naturalist it was a period of unbroken 

 interest, as it afforded opportunity for studying phenomena of 

 very infrequent occurrence. In a short space of time nature 

 gave us some of her choicest gifts, and many of her most 

 destructive pests, some of the latter occurring in numbers 

 appalling by their magnitude. On the other hand, as will 

 presently be shewn, a few of the commonest objects of the country 

 were notorious by their scarcity or entire absence. 



To give here full particulars of the rainfall, barometrical 

 readings, hours of actual sunshine, &c., for the whole of the 

 dry season, would but burden these notes with much unnecessary 

 matter. Those who may wish for statistics of this kind will be 

 afforded them by others in due course, in the excellent meteor- 

 ological tables published in the Journal of this Institution, and 

 in the Annual Report of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. 

 Meanwhile the following particulars, which I am able to give 

 through the kindness of Mr. Gregg, will be sufficient. 



