Year: 1874

We regret to say that the September returns
of the Department of Agriculture show very
heavy decline in the prospects of the cotton
crop in all our cotton producing States except
Virginia, in which State the product, con-
fined to few of the Southern border counties.
is too small to exercise any apprecable infu-
ence on the general result In North Carolina
the decline in the promise of the crop since
August has been fifteen per cent, in Georgia
seventeen per cent in Alabama nine per cent,
in Mississippi fourteen per cent, in Ten
nessee thirty-fve, in Louisiana twenty
one, in Arkansas forty, and in Texas
forty-one per cent The promise of the
crop Of the whole cotton-producing section
is one-sixth cut down from the promise
of August. In other words, the drought since
August has resulted in q loss to the South Of
say, half million bales in its maturing crop
of cotton.


In many districts hot winds have blighted
the crop, and in one or two cases they have
destroyed it within half an hour. These hot
winds are analogous to those from the great
desert of Africa, which sometimes within an
hour blast the crops of the exposed districts
of Algeria Our southwestern hot winds,
which this season have been SO destruc-
tive to some of the exposed fields of
cotton, come from the arid plains Of Western
Texas and of New Mexico and Chihuahua "a
vast semi-desert region over which there has
been little or no rainfall for many months,
and our cotton States directly exposed to these
Ie nd Tor
siana and Arkansas. Hence, Notwithstanding
their rich alluvial soil and their deluging rains
of last spring, those States have suffered
more severely than any others from the
drought of August and September. Not only
are their cotton fields most disastrously
affected, but their Indian corn has been pro-
portionately blighted, and the blight has ex-
tended more or less to oil the corn States Of
the Mississippi basin, SO that but for the in
creased area planted the decrease in our aggre-
gate corn crop would materially this coming
winter enhance the prices of every article Of
subsistence throughout the United States. As
it is corn is '.firm'' in the market, with an up
ward tendency, and should this drought con-
tinue even q week or two longer the general
blighting of our pasture fields will materially
contribute to carry up the price of corn But
we hope that during this week the drought
will be extinguished in bountiful and general
rains


Meantime, the soil of Southern New Jersey
has been SO thoroughly exhausted of its mois-
ture that the cranberry bogs have become
combustible beds of dry peat, and the fires in
them, from their intense heat are unap-
proachable. From the smoke of these fires in
the swamps and woods of Jersey and Long
Island has come much of the haziness of the
atmosphere over this city Of the last three or
four days. From Poughkeepsie comes the
complaint of serious drought throughout the
valley of the Hudson, and from Ontario we
have reports that the creeks are drying up,
that the cattle are starving and that bush
fires are raging in oil directions. In the heart
of Pennsylvania work in some of the coal
mines is suspended, owing to the scarcity of
water. In Philadelphia they so keenly feel
the effects of the drought that prayers for rain
are to be made in all the Catholic and Episco-
! nal churches this day. No better evidence