Even root crops and potatoes and hops are suffering from
excess of rain. In all these as with grasses, clovers and grains growth has been beyond the normal, perhaps beyond remembered precedent on our lighter soils. But, after all, the proper job of the leaf is to convert sunshine into food ; and the leaves cannot make bricks without straw. It is rare to see so very few gaps in the root fields or to see potatoes bearing such a forest of green, and in the warmer intervals hops have grown at a fantastic speed. But sun brings health and quality. The sugar-beet will have less than its due per- centage of sugar ; and both potatoes and hops begin to play the host to a number of mould and fungus maladies, some of them more or less new to even the scientific grower. The only cure is sunshine ; and it must come soon in considerable force, if the situation is to be saved.
- Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet 'recover."
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