394 
The Ohio Naturalist. 
[Vol. XII, No. 1, 
sary to give results as accurate as possible, but our figures indicate 
that most plants would fail to secure soil moisture or would secure 
it with difficulty at the depths tested on the dates on which the 
samples were taken in 1908. Our data are valuable only when 
correlated with the observations below regarding the character 
of plants that were able to remain green above ground throughout 
the season of 1908. 
Related to the lack of rain after May 2, 1908, stands the fact 
that corn planted after the middle of May came up very unevenly 
and in some fields scarcely at all. Much of the corn failed to 
produce ears and dried up in August. Other fields, often near the 
poor ones, made a good showing of ears. The difference was due 
in part to difference in tending as well as to local climatic and soil 
conditions. The crop reports probably overestimate the amounts 
harvested in Butler County in 1908; but the bushels per acre 
reported for some of our principal crops for 1908 and 1909 
respectively, are winter wheat, 16.2 and 16, oats 10.4 and 33, 
com 28.1 and 34, potatoes 44.6 and 73. Winter wheat was a very 
unpromising crop in the fall of 1908, and much that was sown did 
not germinate until the following February. In some fields the 
seed failed completely in the fall. But a heavy snow came in 
January, 1909, and when this disappeared early in February, the 
seed had germinated; and in many places the fields were green 
with wheat about an inch high. Frost killed much of this, and 
the prospects were very poor. But the spring rains came, and the 
wheat stooled so that 25 and 30 stalks from one kernel were 
reported by reliable agriculturists. Thus, fields that were so 
thin in early spring that it seemed scarcely worth while to let 
them stand produced about a normal amount of straw, but too 
many stalks from a single kernel for a good yield. So the effect of 
the drought of 190S was felt in the wheat crop of 1909 as well as 
in that of 1908. Of the other three crops, the average for 1908 
was little more than half that for 1909, according to the statistics 
for the two years. 
The pastures were brown and the grass dead above ground 
from the middle of June until late in November. The timothy 
and blue grass of the hay fields were dead above ground soon 
after the hay was cut. From the middle of August until Novem- 
ber, the country, except cultivated fields, presented the appear- 
ance of a desert with scattered vegetation consisting of xerophytes 
with succulent stems, deeply penetrating roots, tough exteriors, or 
milky juice. In open fields, along roadsides and in yards and 
gardens were seen conspicuously resisting the drought, dandelion 
(Taraxicum officinale), mullein (Verbascum thapsus), moth 
mullein (Verbascum blattaria), wild carrot (Daucus carota), milk 
purslanes (Euphorbia maculata and E. preslii), amaranths 
(Amaranthus retroflexus, A. blitoides and A. graecizans), asters 
