242 
[ September 9, 188$. 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
our walks among the crops. We have striven to study and 
apply to practice the lessons gained in such walks, and we 
would urge upon our readers the high importance of a study 
of the peculiarities of each season of growth, in view of gain¬ 
ing fresh information—hints for our guidance in the future. 
We have little faith in the man who knows all about farming 
and says he at any rate has nothing to learn. Sweet are 
the lessons of adversity, and we shall indeed find them so if 
they lead to better work in every department of farming, and 
enable us to hold our own in our keen competition with the 
markets of the world. 
would have been very much more favourable than they are. We are 
therefore led to the conclusion that a good deal of the deficiency in the 
Wheat harvest of 1886 is due to the very cold winter and spring, and 
that even with a fine hot summer the yield would still have been short of 
the average. One injurious effect produced by the late spring was the 
retarding of the harvest time—always a mischievous process. Over the 
southern counties of England reaping has begun this year nearly a fort¬ 
night later than usual. In connection with this topic the following table, 
showing the date of commencement of Wheat harvest in West Wiltshire, 
may perhaps be of interest: — 
Dates op Commencement op Wheat Harvest in West Wiltshire 
During the Thirtv Years 1853 to 1882, with Amount of Diver¬ 
gence from Average Date. 
WORK ON THE HOME FARM. 
Weekly purchases of sheep has brought our number up to nearly a 
thousand head, and, we must add, made a serious strain upon our farm¬ 
ing capital, yet we still require another hundred for an off farm, and then 
we shall have perfected our plans for sheep-feeding for the season. The 
opportunity for doing this has arisen from the extraordinary growth of 
both green and root crops, and glad are we to be able to turn it to 
account. We have ploughed in several fields of Mustard, but one field 
with a fine crop of Mustard nearly 4 feet in height is being folded with 
sheep, because it adjoins an outlying grass meadow which they will go 
upon daily for a change. With a liberal allowance of cake and a run 
upon some Wheat stubbles those sheep will soon be ready for sale fat 
for the butcher, as they were forward in condition when taken to the 
Mustard. Upon another farm the sheep will go from Clover to white 
Turnips, which are so forward as to be now ready for them, not puny little 
roots, but splendid large ones and plenty of them. This crop of Turnips 
will be as useful in its way as the late crops sown specially for folding with 
ewes and lambs next March. If only flockmasters would confine the use 
of white Turnips to early and late folding, and would not allow pregnant 
ewes to go upon them at all, depend upon it we should not hear such doleful 
accounts of abortion as we now do so frequently. Surely it is high time that 
there should be an end of the practice which consists in running the risk 
of folding ewes upon Turnips before the lambing. We are always ready 
to listen to any plans of our shepherds, but we will not allow them to do a 
thing which we know to be wrong. If their services are worth having 
they will receive our orders with respect and carry them out faithfully. 
Let us urge upon every young man the importance of learning every detail 
of flock management practically, so as to be able to guide a shepherd. There 
is nothing like a master’s eye, again say we. Only a day or two ago we 
looked through the ewes upon the home farm, and we detected two cases 
of fly-striking. Upon speaking to the shepherd about it he said he had 
only just examined those sheep, yet when he went back to them there 
were the maggots sure enough, and it only requires a little of Cuff’s oil to 
destroy them. 
A COOL SUMMER—DATES OF HARVESTS. 
When the summer of 1886 finally leaves us, says the Daily News, it will 
not be greatly missed. With the exception of a few warm days at the close 
of June and the beginning of July, the season has given us no settled 
weather at all, and so once more we have to chronicle a cool, changeable 
summer. While, however, the character of the season has been so poor, 
we must not run away with the idea that it has been bad to an exceptional 
or even to an unusual extent. The season has certainly been a little cooler 
than that of 1885, and much cooler than in 1884 ; but the summer of 1880 
was quite as cool as the one which is just passing away, those of 1881 and 
1883 were decidedly cooler, and that of 1879 was very much cooler. This 
comparison relates to the United Kingdom as a whole : if we take the 
eastern parts of Great Britain alone we find that the summer of 1886 has 
been cooler than in any year since 1880 ; while on the other hand, if we 
look only to the south of England we find that it has been warmer than 
any of the past eight years, with the exception of 1884 and 1885. 
As regards the rainfall of the past season, the meteorological records 
show that taking the kingdom as a whole the summer has been wetter than 
those of 1884 and 1885, but much drier than in any of the five preceding 
years, and very much drier than in 1879. In the eastern and central parts 
of England, however, the season of 1880 was a dry one ; while in the south 
of England the summer of 1883 was nearly as dry as this. The figures 
relating to the frequency, as distinguished from the amount, of rain tell a 
very similar tale, the number of davs with rain being greater during the 
summer of 1886 than in 1884 or 1885. but decidedly less than in any of 
the six preceding years. It is thevef ire clear that b >th as regards tem¬ 
perature and rainfall the summer does not compare so badly with those of 
recent years. But then it must be remembered that these years have 
themselves been very poor. In the course of the past decade there has 
been only one hot summer, and that was in 1878. The season of 1884 was 
fairly good, but its warmth was due entirely to the excessive heats of 
August, the months of June and July being anything but summerlike. 
Although the weather of the past few weeks has been upon the whole 
unfavourable to our cereal crop3, it has not been so bad in itself as to 
afford anv satisfactory explanation of the miserable reports that are now 
arriving from the agricultural districts. In the Wheat-producing localities 
as a whole the rainfall has not been in excess of the average, and in some 
portions of these districts it has been very much below the normal. Tem¬ 
perature again has not been excessively low, and there can be little doubt 
that had the Wheat crops commenced with a fair start the harvest reports 
Days. 
1858. 
Aug. 
13- 
- 6 
later. 
1854. 
99 
)» 
18- 
-11 
19 
1855. 
21- 
-14 
t) 
1856. 
JJ 
6- 
- 2 
earlier. 
1857. 
July 
29- 
- 9 
19 
1858. 
)) 
29- 
- 9 
19 
1859. 
99 
23- 
-15 
11 
1860. 
Aug. 
27- 
-20 
later. 
1861. 
}j 
6- 
- 1 
earlier. 
1862. 
JJ 
19- 
-12 
later. 
1863. 
99 
8- 
- 1 
11 
1864. 
July 
27- 
-11 
earlier. 
1865. 
1 ) 
26- 
-12 
19 
1866. 
Aug. 
4- 
- 3 
19 
1867. 
19 
10- 
- 3 
later. 
Days. 
1868. July 16—21 earlier. 
1869. Aug. 5— 2 „ 
1870 July 27—11 „ 
1871. Aug. 12— 5 later. 
1872. „ 8— 1 „ 
1873. „ 9— 2 „ 
1874. July 27—11 earlier. 
1875. Aug. 16— 9 later. 
1876. „ 3— 4 earlier. 
1877. „ 10— 1 later. 
1878. „ 1— 6 earlier. 
1879. Sept. 4—28 later. 
1880. Aug. 16— 9 „ 
1881. „ 6—1 earlier. 
1882. „ 15— 8 later. 
The table, besides being an agricultural record, is in itself also a 
meteorological register. In the cold season of 1860 we find that the 
harvest was twenty days later than usual ; in the hot and dry season of 
1868 it was as much as twenty-one days earlier; while in the disastrous 
season of 1879 reaping did not commence until September 4th, or nearly a 
month later than the average date. This year Wheat-cutting in Wiltshire 
was nearly a fortnight behind the usual tim6. 
Every now and then it seems a9 though the seasons had completely 
changed; but if we will only take the trouble to go back far enough we 
shall find historical proof that we are not being dealt with more hardly 
than our ancestors. The records from time immemorial show that there 
have been occasional runs of bad weather followed sometimes by cycles 
of drought and heat. In the reign of Edward II. incessant rains were 
reported to have fallen every summer with only two or three exceptions, 
and fifty years later corn was again dear for some years owing to the wet 
seasons. A f ter this there was a run of fruitful years until 1542, when 
commenced a period of rainy summers which lasted till nearly the close 
of the century. Again, in 1692 there commenced a long series of excep¬ 
tionally bad seasons, traditionally referred to as the barren years, at the 
close of the seventeenth century. In 1773 Gilbert White remarks :— 
“ Such a run of wet seasons as we have had the last ten or eleven years 
would have produced a famine a century or two ago.” Then from 1792 
to 1817 another cycle of bad seasons was experienced, after which the wet 
and dry years were pretty evenly balanced to 1877. Since then the 
general character of our summers is well known to us all. Whether any 
scientific explanation can be given of these periods of drought and wet, 
of abundance and of famine, is a question we must leave our philosophers 
to fight out among themselves. At present there is, so far as we are 
aware, no satisfactory solution of the mystery. 
METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 
Camden Square, London. 
Lat. 51° 32' 40" N.; Long. 0° 8'0" W.; Altitude, 111 feet. 
DATE. 
9 A.M. 
IN THE DAT. 
Rain 
1886. 
Aucrust and 
September. 
Barome¬ 
ter at 32« 
and Sea 
Level 
Hygrome¬ 
ter. 
Direction 
of Wind. 
| Temp, of 
Soil at 
1 1 foot. 
Shade Tem¬ 
perature. 
Radiation 
Temperature. 
Dry. 
Wet. 
Max. 
Min. 
In 
sun. 
On 
grass 
Inches. 
deg. 
deg. 
dec:. 
deer. 
dev 
deg 
In. 
Sunday . 
20 
30.006 
65.3 
59.7 
N.E. 
63.5 
78 8 
52.2 
106.5 
45.3 
— 
Monday. 
30 
3 >.024 
08.4 
62.8 
N.E. 
62.7 
88 4 
53.4 
123.2 
47.5 
— 
Tuesday. 
31 
30.101 
07.6 
01.8 
S.E. 
63 7 
87.8 
56 1 
1244 
49.3 
— 
Wednesday .. 
1 
80.125 
66.2 
02.2 
Z. 
64 5 
84 2 
59 0 
117.7 
52.2 
—• 
Thursday .. . 
2 
30.083 
65.3 
58.8 
N.E. 
G5.2 
00.2 
58.6 
80.4 
53.8 
0.232 
Friday. 
3 
30.' 90 
61.9 
60.6 
E. 
62.8 
70.8 
54.8 
92 7 
55.6 
0.3C9 
Saturday .... 
4 
30.045 
64.5 
64.1 
N.E. 
62-8 
79.1 
02.0 
116.8 
56-2 
o.04a 
80.076 
65.6 
61.4 
03.6 
79.3 
56.6 
108.8 
51.4 
_0.58» 
REMARKS. 
S9th.— Fine and hot, bat a little hazy early, and fog in early afternoon. 
30th.—Bright and hot; a splendid August day. 
31st.—Another glorious day : slight haze early, 
lat.—Rather hazy early, very fine afterwards. 
2nd.—Overcast miming, with stealy fall of temperature; small rain bigan at 1 i’-M-* 
wet afterwards. 
3rd.—Dull morning, bright afterwards. 
4th.—Slight rain at 5.15 a.m., thunderstorm at 8.'0 A.M., with very heavy rain, thunier 
at intervals till 11 A M„ hall ai 10.33 A.M.; fine, hot, ani damp afterwards. 
The warmest w.ek thii year, the temperature being about 9° above the average.— 
J. Etmons. 
