184 
Our Climate and our Wheat-Crops. 
influence of warmer than average weather in early winter and in 
spring ; only moderate or even lower than average summer 
temperatures ; but much less than the average fall of rain from 
seed-time to harvest ; every month being considerably deficient, 
excepting May, which was average, and March, in which alone 
there was an excess, 
1868. — After a favourable seed-time, the early winter of 
1867-8 was very variable as to temperature, including some 
warm, but more stormy, wet, snowy, and frosty weather. From 
February, inclusive, to after harvest, the temperature was almost 
always above the average, and greatly so in May, June, and 
July; whilst, after a considerable excess of rain in January, 
there was, in each month from February to July inclusive, 
excepting in April, an unusual deficiency. 
The period of growth was, therefore, almost throughout one 
of drought, with high temperatures throughout both spring and 
summer. The result was a very early harvest, a not bulky, but 
a high-yielding crop on good and well-farmed soils, but a 
deficient one on light and poorly-farmed land. 
1870. — The autumn of 1869, though frequently cold, bois- 
terous, and inclement, was upon the whole not unfavourable for 
getting in the seed. The winter and early spring were change- 
able, and upon the whole colder than the average. But from the 
beginning of April until harvest the weather was, with few 
exceptions of short duration, warmer than usual, with a great 
deficiency of rain. The combined heat and drought were even 
more extreme during the months of May, June, and July, 1868, 
than during the corresponding months in 1870 ; the mean tem- 
perature being notably higher in each of these months in 1868. 
But in 1870 the deficiency of rain commenced a month earlier, 
and was greater than in 1868. 
After a by no means favourable winter, followed by pro- 
longed spring and summer drought and heat, the wheat-crop of 
1870 was deficient in straw, and also yielded less corn than 
that of 1868, but still considerably more than the average, a 
high proportion of corn to straw, and high quality of grain. 
Thus, out of the six years of highest productiveness throughout 
the thirty-six seasons of our experiments, the three which gave 
the highest produce of all, and high produce of straw as well as 
corn, and also high quality of grain (1863, 1864, and 1854), 
were characterised by generally higher than average mean tem- 
peratures during the winter and early spring (excepting the early 
winter of 1853-4, which was severe), but generally only average, 
or lower than average, summer temperatures. Indeed, June 1854 
was colder than June 1879. Each was also characterised by very 
much less than the average fall of rain from seed-time to harvest 
there being in no case an excess in more than two out of the 
