. The Past Agricultural Year. 
247 
ipicture of misfortune, gloomy as it is, in which they concur, 
•docs not sufficiently represent the disastrous truth of the past 
agricultural year. Great as the losses have been, and general 
enough to override and overwhelm such attempts at resistance or 
recovery as might, under a less severe infliction, have presented 
us with useful and instructive results, the picture given of them 
in the above reports is insufficient in almost every aspect. They 
were for the most part written immediately before harvest ; and 
although most of them have been since submitted to the writers, 
and have received their corrections up to a more recent date, 
there is, nevertheless, a great deal of disastrous experience which 
has since been realised. The character of the corn-harvest has 
been ascertained beyond a doubt by the threshing-machine. 
And the true dimensions of the unprecedented prevalence of the 
liver-rot in sheep have become more accurately known. Both 
of these experiences are a true consequence of the weather 
during the period covered by Mr. G. J. Symons' Meteorological 
Report in the outset of this paper. The weather of the subse- 
quent months, unusually severe though it has been, has been 
also unusually dry ; but it has been as little able to remedy the 
mischief done by the previous wet season on the health of our 
flocks as it could be to remedy the evil done to the wheat-crop 
already harvested. The sheep-rot, the germs of which had had 
such scope given them by the wet weather of the season described 
by Mr. Symons, had only begun to display itself when these 
reports originally came in. Since that time the disaster has 
assumed really national proportions. Even in dry and arable 
counties, such as Norfolk and Sussex, which have certain marsh 
and grass-land districts, instances of the destruction of whole 
flocks are reported ; and the county and agricultural papers 
have been full of cases of the kind in the midland and western 
-counties, where grass-land is more general. Examples, quoted 
by the ' Bradford Observer,' from the correspondence of a local 
Arm of wool-merchants, are given of the enormous losses of sheep- 
farmers in the counties of Northampton, Warwick, Worcester, 
Oxford, Stafford, Gloucester, Somerset, and Devonshire ; and it 
cannot be doubted that the next annual Agricultural Statistics 
published by the Board of Trade will show a marked diminu- 
tion of the sheep-stock throughout the country in consequence. 
In low-lying districts, and on badly-drained pasture-lands, the 
losses have been ruinous. 
The experience of the corn-harvest is perhaps reported with 
suflicient truth in the correspondence given above. It was accu- 
rately anticipated, both from the appearance of the crops in the 
ripening ear, and from the knowledge that a wet and cold May 
and June rendered it certain that the actual yield must fall 
