148 Rrj oi t of Experiments on the Growth of Barley, 
warm. Then, to the end of September, a period of about sixi 
weeks, the temperatures were pretty uniformly below the average, 
though the weather continued fine. Tlius, the period of drought, 
which had commenced with April, continued to nearly the end 
of August, and even in September there was less than the average 
fall of rain. The great deficiency of rain throughout five con- 
secutive months was, moreover, accompanied by great dryness of 
atmosphere — the degree of humidity of the air being in April 
very unusually low, and in May, June, July, and August, also 
considerably below the average. 
The autumn of 1869, though, as the details show, frequently 
cold, boisterous, and inclement, was, upon the whole, not un- 
favourable forgetting in the seed. The winter, though changeable, 
included a great deal of very cold weather. In the early spring: 
both field-work and vegetation were very backward, and at the 
end of April grass-land was very brown and bare. From the 
beginning of April until harvest the weather was, with few ex- 
ceptions, of short duration, warmer than usual, with a great 
deficiency of rain and a very dry atmosphere. 
The combined heat and drought were even more extreme during 
the months of May, June, and July, 1868, than during the cor- 
responding months in 1870 ; but in the latter year the deficiency 
of rain commenced a month earlier, and continued later than in 
1868. Hence, the grass crops suffered the more, indeed very 
excessively, in 1870 ; and, for a parallel, we must go back as far 
as 1844. As in the two preceding years (1868 and 1869), the 
reports of the cereal crops of the country were very variable, but 
for very opposite reasons in the years of heat and drought, 1868 
and 1870, as compared with 1869. In 1870, the year now under 
consideration, the wheat plant suffered much before the active 
growing time began — in some cases from wire-worm, and in 
others from frosts ; in not a few instances it was ploughed up and 
spring-corn sown ; whilst, over large areas, the remaining plant 
was said to be very thin on the ground, and there was very mucl^ 
more than usual difference in the character of the crops in ad- 
joining fields. Still, the best wheat lands were said to carry, 
though not a bulky, yet a very good yielding crop, and to give 
grain of very high weight per bushel. Estimates of the aggregate 
yield for the most part put it, if not under, at scarcely over an 
average ; but the annual report from Rothamsted (though ad- 
mitting that the country had probably produced some of the 
lightest as well as some of the best crops ever known) laid it at 
rather over average. Barley was also very variable. The seed 
had for the most part been got in well, and, where sown early an'd 
in deep soils, was good ; but when sown late, and in light soils, 
it had suffered very much from the drought. Oats were also 
