10 Review of the Season and Crops Jbr 1847. 
produced in all localities her usual abundance, yet they have been 
such as to verify the promise that harvest shall not fail, and to yield 
ample supplies for man and his beasts, until returning warmth 
and sunshine shall restore the earth to beauty, loveliness, and 
needful fertility. 
In many sections the hay crop fell short one-fourth at least, 
from the produce of last year. This failure has been attributed 
by many to the accumulation of ice on the surface, after the thaw 
in January. But the failure was chiefly on uplands, and the fact 
that ice accumulates most in low or alluvial meadows at such 
times, seems to confute the given theory. 
To our own mind, a more plausible reason appears in the cir- 
cumstance of the snow passing off slowly, and keeping the earth 
in such upland regions so thoroughly saturated with clear cold 
water, that the grass roots were literally drowned or chilled to 
death, a circumstance which need not appear in low meadows 
where the grass by its natural habits is adapted to such seasons. 
Of the grain crops. Winter wheat and rye now receive but 
little attention, and the small quantities sown in the autumn of 
1846, yielded but a poor remuneration for the use of land and 
labor bestowed on its cultivation. The cold water of dissolving 
snows of April, followed by a wet and rather dry May, probably 
had their influence in shortening the crops of winter grain, as 
well as hay. 
Spring Wheat. — The high price of flour in 1846 and '47, has 
taught farmers a blessed lesson, if they will only practice upon it, 
that is, that it is as a general thing best for them to try to raise their 
own bread stuff. A much larger quantity of spring wheat (mostly 
of the Black sea variety,) was sown last spring, and although the 
yield per acre was not as liberal as in some seasons, the crop may 
be said to have been of a fair and remunerative character. 
Oats. — The oat culture in many sections has become a mania. 
Farmers, in some instances, place almost their entire dependence 
on this crop, notwithstanding its exhausting qualities. The crop 
was a full average, and is fetching a good price, which has no 
