395 
The Sping of 1894 . 
might get on with the ordinary spring work. The wish was soon 
gratified, a complete absence of rain being reported over nearly the 
whole of the United Kingdom during the closing fortnight in the 
month. In some localities the drought continued much longer, and 
early in April fears were expressed that the spring of 1894 might 
prove as disastrous to the agriculturist as that of 1893. A gradual 
break-up in the weather was, however, in progress ; and although for 
a week or two the showers were very partial, and in many places 
very slight, the entire country was at length visited by a fairly 
copious rainfall. By the end of April the general outlook was, in 
fact, unusually favourable, and had the following month proved 
equally kind, there can be little doubt that the harvest prospects for 
1894 would have been phenomenally good. The proverbial caprices 
of an English May were, however, displayed this year in a more than 
ordinary degree, the weather being changeable in the extreme, with 
heavy rains in most places, and with unusually low temperatures, 
especially during the latter half of the month. Occasional frosts in 
May are common enough, but it is not often that the country 
experiences such a spell of cold as that which prevailed between the 
19th and 25th of the month, when sharp frost occurred almost nightly 
in some of our central districts. Still later on, viz., between the 28th 
and 30th, another touch of severe cold visited the midland counties, the 
disastrous effect of so much inclement weather being now very appa- 
rent, especially in orchards and market gardens, where an immense 
amount of damage was occasioned. At the close of the quarter the 
great desiderata appeared to be, firstly and above all, an abundance 
of warm sunshine, and secondly, with the hay harvest in view, an 
early cessation of the heavy rains. The leading features in the 
weather of the entire spring are shown in the Table on p. 396, which 
gives for various parts of the country a summary of the condi- 
tions relating to each of the principal meteorological elements. 
Temperature . — We find that over the country generally, the 
mean readings were above the average in seven out of the first eight 
weeks of the quarter, and either equal to or below the normal in 
the five remaining weeks. Taking the season as a whole, the mean 
of all the day readings was in most districts about two degrees above 
the average, but in the midland counties it was as much as two and 
a half degrees in excess. The mean of all the night readings was 
a trifle below the average in the north-eastern counties, and very 
little above it in the midlands or the south-western counties ; else- 
where, however, there was a considerable excess. The mean of the 
day and night readings combined was, upon the whole, about a 
degree and a half above the average, the excess ranging from a 
little under a degree in the north-eastern counties to very nearly 
two degrees in the southern counties and in the Channel Islands. 
The maximum readings for the quarter, given in the first column of 
the Table, were registered in nearly all cases during the second week 
in April, when the thermometer exceeded 70° in all districts 
excepting the Channel Islands, and exceeded 75° in the eastern, 
midland and southern counties. In May the only districts in which 
