HARVEST HOPES.
This season is one when weeds are a peculiarly insistent subject. Like all green stuff, they have flourished out of all measure. But so have the crops themselves. Even yet there may be a certain modicum at any rate of "joy in harvest," though some crops are laid flat by storm, and the winter oats already cut have been soaked through. The yield of all sorts—wheat, barley, oats, the little rye and the less maize—promises to be very heavy if it can be harvested. How much—in colour and in cash—three weeks' sunshine would mean is beyond calculation. It would, in most cases, salve rather than save the wheat and spring-sown oats ; but it might give the barley (the only grain crop that, at present prices, may pay a dividend) just enough quality to bring it up to the very stern standard of the brewers. Sun would save the later potatoes from disease and give a finish to the excellent crops of potatoes, sugar beet, and hops. It is seldom that this could be said at so late a date in this chief harvest month ; but almost all crops have been a fort- night or so behind the almanac.
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