328 On a Hail Storm near Jedburgh. By J. S. Dudgeon. 



On Mr Pott's farm of Eewcastle, over which the storm passed 

 from one extreme end to the other, fully 500 acres suffered, while 

 on Mr Robson Scott's farm of Newton, to the west, about 60 acres, 

 and on Mr Pott's farm of Lanton Mains, to the north-east, some 

 80 acres were exposed to its scourge. 



Having the particulars it may be interesting to give details 

 regarding the actual damage done in some instances. From ten 

 acres of barley on Lanton Mains, a full and most promising 

 crop at the time of the disaster, the whole produce when thrashed 

 out only amounted to 88 bushels of grain. And from twenty 

 acres of oats on the same farm the total yield was 376 bushels, 

 while ten acres under potatoes were found nearly worthless. 

 On the farm of Eewcastle, where 180 acres under barley and 

 oats and 37 acres under turnips were exposed to the calamity, 

 the damage was even more serious. Sixty acres of barley and 

 fifteen acies of oats were so totally cut to the ground that 

 scarcely a single head could be found standing uninjured, while 

 the remaining 105 acres were only slightly less destroyed. The 

 corn plants which had been thus cut down by the hailstones came 

 away again at once in fresh growth from the root, and soon 

 pushed forward into ear, presenting in the course of six weeks 

 thick and even crops of grain. These might, in an earlier 

 climate and under the influence of a warm dry autumn, have 

 filled and ripened properly, but in this instance the weather 

 proved adverse, and though Mr Pott exercised the greatest 

 patience and allowed the crops to stand uncut till the end of 

 October, the result was disappointing ; for though the straw, still 

 partially green when reaped, was found to make excellent fod- 

 der, yet the yield in grain was found sadly deficient alike 

 in quantity and quality — quite unfit for marketable purposes. 

 For instance from a thirty acres field of barley, stacked by the 

 10th of November, the produce of grain only reached 21 bushels 

 per acre and its weight only 42 lbs per bushel. And fifteen 

 acres of oats gave when thrashed 408 bushels of corn weigh- 

 ing 35 lbs per bushel. Perhaps as judicious a course was 

 followed in the case of another field of Barley, containing thirty 

 acres also, which had been seeded down to grass. This was 

 allowed to stand for five weeks, or until the second growth was 

 coming into ear, when Mr Pott had it cut and saved like a hay 

 crop. On this fodder he wintered 60 cattle for three months, 

 which ate it greedily and throve well. 



