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[August, 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
EXTRAORDINARY SEASONS. 
To the Editor of the Monthly Journal of Science . 
Sir, — Perceiving an article on “ The Anomalous Season ” in 
your Journal, I forward you the following paragraph from the 
“ Kentish Express.” Neither of the seasons therein mentioned 
agree with an eleven years’ cycle. The hot, dry season, 1818, 
is distant only seven or eight years from the two next similar 
seasons, viz., 1825-26, and if we add a successive period of 
eleven years to 1818 we get the series 1829, 1840, 1851, 1862, 
and 1863, which were certainly not seasons noted for heat and 
drought. A ten-years’ cycle would include 1858 and 1868, which 
were both fine. — I am, &c., 
A Constant Reader. 
“ Mr. Shadrach Luckhurst, of the Charity Estate, Willes- 
borough, a retired agriculturist, who for a period embracing a 
long life-time was engaged in farming the parish of Hinxhill, 
thus writes of one or two past seasons within his recollection. 
He says : — ‘ 1816 was a year never to be forgotten as the wettest, 
coldest, darkest, and most unfruitful on record. An immense 
quantity of corn never came to perfection, but blackened, mil- 
dewed, and rotted on the ground. The summer of 1818 was the 
longest, hottest, and driest I ever remember. A hilly field facing 
the south was sown with wheat in the autumn of 1817. It was 
cut fully ripe on June 29th, thrashed on July 3rd, ground on 
July 4th, a#d bread was made from the flour on the same day. 
This was the earliest wheat I ever saw. In this year the harvest 
was general by July 7th, and it was all cut and cleared by the 
25th of the month. The whole country was of a uniform brown 
colour ; not a blade of grass, not a turnip or cabbage was to be 
seen. Cattle perished for the lack of pasturage and water. Foi 
all that the year was the most plentiful, fruitful, and prosperous 
within my recollection.” 
