434 
The Weather of the Past Agricultural 1 < 
ear. 
the excess was no less than 69 per cent. In the east of 
England the excess was small, only 17 per cent. Bright sun- 
shine was everywhere deficient, especially in the south-western 
district, where the loss throughout the season amounted on 
a mean to more than an hour per day. 
The Summer of 1913. 
The summer of 1913 was, for the most part, not only cool 
and cloudy but remarkably dry — a most unusual combination 
of meteorological events at such a season of the year. The 
absence of rain was perhaps all the more noticeable seeing that 
the very dry season was immediately preceded by one of the 
wettest summers on record. Over England and Wales as a 
whole the total summer rainfall in the one year amounted to 
nearly four times as much as in the other. 
June^ opened with a period of cool unsettled weather, and 
on the 5th or 6th heavy rains were experienced in the hilly 
portions of the western and northern districts. An unusually 
severe summer gale occurred on the 9th and 10th, with 
exceedingly heavy falls of rain in Cumberland and North 
Wales, but after this the weather improved, and for nearly 
three weeks a large portion of the country experienced a 
drought of considerable severity. Temperature was at first 
rather low, but subsequently rose to a high summer level, the 
warmest weather occurring on the 16th or 17th, when the 
thermometer exceeded 80° in many districts, and reached 87° 
at Greenwich and Wimbledon, and 88° at Wantage. On the 
latter day severe thunderstorms were experienced in Cambridge- 
shire and Huntingdonshire, the accompanying rainfall amount- 
ing to more than an inch and a half in many places. At Great 
Paxton, near St. Neots, nearly three inches fell in the space of 
an hour and a quarter. After a short spell of cooler weather 
the thermometer again rose, and on the 29th it exceeded 80° in 
several parts of our southern counties. July was mostly cool, 
cloudy and dry? but severe thunderstorms which occurred on 
the 6th, the 10th, and between the 14th and 15th deposited 
heavy falls of rain locally, many places recording in a few 
hours as much as an inch to an inch and a half. On the night 
of the 14th to 15th, during a very severe thunderstorm, nearly 
three inches was collected at Mayfield, in Sussex. The absence 
of summer warmth was rather remarkable, very few places 
experiencing during the month a shade temperature appre- 
ciably above 7o°. Between the 27th and 29th, however, the 
thermometer in some central and southern districts managed 
to reach 80°, and at Killerton, near Exeter, it touched 83°. & At 
a large number of places situated in the western half of the 
United Kingdom, the drought which had commenced about 
