Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1919-02-01
Think SEASONS
ARE CHANGING
Many Are of the Opinion That They
Are-Basis for Denial Can Be
Secured From Farm Data
VARIANCE IS IMPERCEPTIBLE
Difference May Be Found Perhaps
in Scientific Comparison of
Century Statistics.

Are the seasons changing? When
ali unusually mild winter is expe-
rienced there are people who say
they are. Read this.
In the first place a fairly accu-
rate assumption that seasons are
not changing can be based upon
data gathered from the farmer-he
who is most dependent of all upon
climatic conditions.
Several years farmers have been
caught with soft corn on their
hands because the crop failed of
maturity before frost. 1t has been
suggested by agricultural experts
that too much attention has been
given to the breeding of large ears,
which require more time for ma
turity, without offsetting it with
equal attention to selection of early
ears for seed.
Since taking up his work in this
county, Palmer r. Edgerton, coun-
ty farm advisor, and himself
farmer of many years experience,
has been urging farmers to go
through their fields and make their
selections of seed from the early
ilatured ears BY so doing a corn
that will come through ahead OF
the frost, even though in large ears,
will be produced.
Yet there are those who believe
that the growing season is chang
ing; that it is different from what
it was according to their recoilec-
ton years ago. Science may show
q
cnange in seasons can be noted, but
this change is too small to be no
ticed in the span of lifetime or
even several generations.
The growing season is measured
at the United States weather bu-
reau between the last killing frost
in the spring and the first one in
the autumn. Each decade has fur
nished its late ones in the spring
and its early ones in the fall, its
early ones in the. spring and its
late ones in the fall. If taken by
I0-year periods the number of days
of the growing season rises AID
falls and, peculiar as it may seem,
the seasons that produced the soft
corn in recent years average in this
decade higher than any preceding
10-year period of which the tri-city
weather bureau has a record, daS-
ing from 1873.
The Figures.
From 1873 to 1880. which in
cludes only eight years of the de-
cade as decades usually are taken,
the average number of growing
days in each year was IT'S, with the
fraction eliminated.
From 1881 to 1890, a full decade,
the average was 165.
From 1891 to 1900 the average
was 179.
From 1901 to 1910 the average
was 16S.
From 1911 to 1915, less than the
calendar decade, the average was
1873, the highest recorded in the pc
RODS mentioned.
Changing the measurements from
the calendar decade to odd figures,
beginning with the first record in
the weather bureau. the statistics
change, but the results are substan-
TALLY the same:
From 1873 to isS2 the average
vas III.
From 1883 to 1892 the average
was 162.
From 1898 to 1902 the average
was 1871.
From 1908 to 1912 the average
was 10
From 1918 to 1918. six years, the
average was 1872.
Within the period from 1911 to
1918. when the farmers have beer.
caught three times in the Illinois
and Iowa corn belt with soft corn,
the maximum growing season was
i'll 1912, with 2O3 days; the mini
mum was in 1916, with 173 days.
and in only two of the eight years
1916 and 1917-were the growing
days less than the average in the
period from 1878 to 1882. In 1917
the number was less by one day
than the average of the early de-
Cade.
Joseph Washington, Earl Rey-
n0lds, EdmOnia Swansay, Virginia
Reynolds and Cecil Reynolds, all
colored, were each fined SO in the
Rock Island police court last
night for disorderliness. Joseph
Beltram, a Mexican, was fined s25