The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1874-09-18
THEPASr Ssyv1vs EuR.

In it meteorological peculiairties
the past summer has been one OF
the most remarkable for many
years. We are apt to think the
drouth that cut our crops short
was a local calamity, and that 9th.
er sections were happily exempt
from such a disaster. But the fact
is that throughout the United
States, and around the entire circle
of the Northern temperate zone
there has been a prolonged and IN.
usual season of dry weather. The
New York Herald has been gather.
ing facts concerning this remarka-
BILE season, and publishes the result
of its inquiries in a very able edi-
torial. The Herald says:
Following a spring season OF
generally abundant rains through
out the Union, and of foundations
almost without q precedent in the
lower Mississippi Valley, from Ar
kansas to the Bslize, and in the
Gulf States, east of the Mississippi
basin, we have had q summer from
the Atlantic to the Pacific coast so
generally dry from June to Sep
TENDER that it may be designated
as the general drouth of 1874. If
we had this year only the average
rainfall of the winter and spring.
the deficiencies of the summer
NUnnl1 onrtasnlv hoxo ,.a,,Ikzl =
ruinously short crops of every de-
scription, and in the running up of
every article of subsistence to fam
inc prices. But the abundant rains
of the spring have not only secured
US, beyond the average of ten years.
crops of hay, wheat, rye, oats, bar
ley, rice and all the early fruits and
vegetables, but so widely and SO
thoroughly saturated the soil as to
insure us generally good returns of
cotton and sugar, and of that most
important of all our staples, Indian
corn"
1t is probable, the Herald thinks,
that counting all the rain that has
fallen within the limits of the Unit
ed States since the LIST of June, the
aggregate would very nearly APP
proach the average of the last ten
years. But this rainfall, it says,
'has been to an extraordinary de-
gree concentrated in heavy foods
in narrow localities, as in parts OF
Connecticut and the valley of the
Hudson; or it has descended in
overwhelming cloud bursts or wa
terspOuts, as in Pittsburg and at
several points in Nevada. And
similar phenomena marked the
seasons at various points in Central
Europe" And the Herald adds
"These remarkable phenomena
are widely believed to be due to
the comet; but, whatever the caus-
es or the conditions producing
these results, they are exceptional
and out of the regular order OF
things meteorological. We have
had this summer no old fashioned
northeasterly storms, spreading
over the whole country from the
Atlantic coast to the great Plains
no general, settled, misty rains, as
in times past, and in some districts
even of the Atlantic slope-as in
Southern New Jersey, for instance
they have not had even O respect
able thunder shower since june
From the Atlantic coast TO the
great Plains, says the Herald, @the
drouth has been the prevailing CRY
of the farmers" 1t quotes from O
number of papers showing that this
complaint is general.
There is a silver lining to every
cloud, however, and the Herald
notes one other fact concerning this
season, that has we have no doubt,
attracted the attention of many.
And that is the unusual healthfnl-
ness of the Summer. No epidem-
les have prevailed anywhere in the
country, and the mortality list Is
very small. The Herald says:
"But if our summer season this
year has, throughout the Union,
been the dryest, it has been and Is
to our people the healthiest of any
summer for many years, in city,
town and country, East West
North and South. 1t was feared
that the foundations of the spring
in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabams
and Louisiana, would be followed
in the summer by some pestilence
which walketh in the darkness and
wasteth at monday" but thus fal
we have no reports of yellow fever
or cholera, or of any symptoms o.
an epidemic from the Southwest Oh
the Southern Atlantic seaboari
States. It may be said that tn,
danger of pestilence down South Il
not yet past, but still we are en-
couraged to believe that this is des
tined to be q remarkable year
through summer and autumn, no
only in the general cheering record
from its health reports, but in th,
exemption of the South from choI
ora, yellow fever, and from any ep
identical disease. We rejoice tina
September opens with this higl
and grateful promise, and we hop
10 record its fulfillment in the dy