36 
Some of the Agricultural Lessons o/'1868. 
month, and the first fortnight of it was dry. For the rest of the 
year, it may be said — of October that it was both warmer and dryer 
than usual — of November, that it gave us again a rainfall much 
below the average (one-half the average at Chiswick) — of Decem- 
ber, that it was one of the warmest, stormiest, wettest Decembers 
on record. On the whole, and owing chiefly to the first and last 
months of the twelve, 1868 has not fallen, so much as had been 
supposed, below the average of past years as regards its rainfall ; 
but the great deficiency of the supply during those months when 
evaporation is most active, which during 1868 were unusually 
bright and hot, will cause the year to be remembered as charac- 
terised by one of the severest summer droughts on record. It is 
the influence of this drought on the agricultural experience of the 
year that has now to be described. 
Tlie Harvest of 1868 was one of the earliest ever known ; and as 
regards the wheat-crop on all wheat-soils, it was probably one of 
the most productive on record. The quality of the grain, too, 
has proved unusually good. The barley and oat crops, and those 
of peas and beans, on the other hand, were generally deficient. 
The exceptions here have been on the early sown heavy soils of Kent 
and Essex, on which barley is a crop of the regular rotation, and 
where it has yielded during the past year a most valuable and abun- 
dant produce. And the exception to the general excellence of the 
wheat-crop has been on the spring-sown lighter soils which had 
produced an abundant green-crop in 1867, not fed off till late in 
the following spring. The crops cut for hay, both of clover and 
old meadow, were shorter than usual ; and the subsequent growth 
during July, August, and September, Avas hardly anything. 
Nothing was more remarkable than the withered and even 
burned up appearance of the pastures all over the Southern and 
Midland counties. The more deeply-rooted plants, whether 
thistles or elm-trees, stood out with quite startling verdure amidst 
the parched surface on which everything else was bleached so 
nearly to a woollen whiteness, that, at a little distance, a sheep 
was to be detected on the pasture rather by its shadow than its 
outline. Never before had the generally green surface of the 
island borne such a desert hue, and never had railway passengers 
beheld such widely-spread destruction from the scattered ashes 
of the engine-fires. The fen and moor-land districts were burn- 
ing sometimes for miles together, and even amidst the grass-fields 
of fertile Midland counties the destruction often extended over 
acres and along hedgerows for hundreds of yards on either side 
of the railways. The later sown green-crops were universally a fail- 
ure. The returns before me are from nearly every county in the 
island, and the testimony to this effect is almost unanimous. The 
earliest sown mangold wurzcls and kohl-rabi, together v.ith what 
