The Winter 0/ 1885-86. 
425 
Mr. Alexander Ramsey, the editor of the ' Banffshire Journal,' 
has also sent me a series of elaborate tables on values of farm 
produce for each week of each year since 1880. These show 
that during the entire autumn and winter of 1885, toj> prices 
per stone of 8 lbs. of best Scotch beef — and in the higher quali- 
ties there were less reductions in value than in inferior qualities 
— ranged from 8J. to IQd. less (or a penny per lb.) than during 
the rest of the year, or as compared with the average of former 
years. 
Corn Markets. 
The low prices of corn had in many instances the effect of 
causing stock-owners to substitute wheat for oilcakes in stock 
feeding, and many were enabled by economic mixtures of wheat- 
meal to winter their stock at a cheap rate. The following Table, 
which I have compiled from ' Dornbusch,' will give the prices 
of home-grown wheat for the past seven years : — 
1879. 
1880. 
1881. 
1882. 
1883. 
1884. 
1885. 
s. 
d. 
s. 
ti 
«. 
d. 
s. 
d. 
s. 
d. 
s. 
d. 
s. 
d. 
39 
3 
45 
42 
5 
45 
7 
40 
2 
38 
7 
33 
7 
38 
0 
43 
5 
41 
9 
46 
0 
40 
11 
37 
3 
32 
8 
39 
7 
45 
7 
42 
7 
44 
7 
42 
3 
37 
0 
31 
10 
41 
0 
48 
1 
44 
6 
45 
11 
41 
11 
37 
5 
34 
9 
40 
11 
45 
2 
44 
5 
47 
3 
43 
2 
37 
9 
36 
7 
41 
9 
45 
1 
44 
6 
47 
5- 
42 
10 
37 
2 
33 
6 
44 
6 
43 
9 
46 
5 
48 
5 
42 
2 
37 
0 
33 
8 
49 
1 
43 
11 
48 
6 
50 
0 
43 
6 
36 
11 
33 
4 
September 
47 
5 
41 
2 
52 
3 
43 
11 
41 
10 
33 
9 
31 
3 
48 
10 
41 
9 
47 
1 
39 
7 
40 
5 
32 
3 
31 
4 
November .. .. 
48 
9 
43 
9 
45 
11 
40 
10 
40 
3 
31 
30 
8 
46 
7 
1 
44 
41 
2 
39 
6 
31 
I 
30 
5 
Annual Average 
43 
10 
44 
4 
45 
4 
45 
1 
41 
7 
35 
8 
32 
11 
49 
2 
47 
6 
50 
5 
49 
5 
43 
6 
38 
5 
36 
7 
Lowest 
37 
11 
41 
0 
41 
10 
39 
7 
39 
5 
31 
3 
30 
5 
Eange 
11 
(J 
G 
8 
7 
9 
10 
4 
1 
7 
2 
6 
2 
The Snowstorm in January 1881. 
Question No. 8 referred to this snowstorm, the details of 
which were very remarkable, and are given in full in Symons's 
' Monthly Meteorological Magazine ' for February and March, 
1881. Mr. H. Sowerby Wallis, F.M.S., there wrote as 
follows : — 
" After the 9th of January, snow fell daily on some portions of the British 
Isles, and on the 12th and 13th, rather heavily over the greater part of them, 
so that by the 17th (on which day practically none ftU) there was a consider- 
able depth on the ground over the whole of the United Kingdom, the weather 
having been so cold that scarcely any had melted. This depth averat^ed 
VOL. XXII. — S. S. 2 F ° 
