THE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
OCTOBER, 1881. 
I. WEATHER-WISDOM AND THE HARVEST. 
ISMISSING as incurable the fanatics who sought 
a political cause for the series of bad seasons from 
which we have suffered, we come to a band of meteor- 
ologists, professional and amateur, who have latterly been 
prophesying smooth things concerning the weather and the 
crops. A wet cycle, we were told, was just coming to an 
end, and a dry one was beginning, the comparatively favour- 
able harvest-time of 1880 being its forerunner. The present 
year was to be a repetition of 1868, and when, after a spring 
dry, but marked by an unusual amount of cold, blighting, 
northerly winds, a brief wave of high temperature passed 
over these islands, an excellent harvest was considered as 
guaranteed. Never was there a more typical illustration of 
the folly of counting chickens before they are hatched. The 
critical month, August, has proved exceptionally ungenial, — 
cold, wet, and boisterous to a degree bordering upon that of 
“ cruel 1879.” Thus we see that a dry cycle, if such has 
actually set in, does not necessarily involve a good harvest. 
We have had abundance of dry weather when rain would 
have been more useful, and now the wet has come when 
drought was needed. We see, further, another illustration 
of the simple rule that after an exceptionally severe and 
prolonged winter, such as the past, it is useless to expedf a 
really fine, warm summer. 
But before we form the conclusion that the seasons are 
deteriorating, or that a new “ Glacial epoch ” is approach- 
ing, it will be well to look back to former years. Before us 
lies a tabular record of the weather, colledled by Mr. 
Glaisher, and taken from the “ Farmer’s Almanack ” for 1880. 
vol. hi. (third series). 2 P 
