APRIL DROUGHT. T HERE is a common misconception' about April. It
is that it is the most likely month in the year in which to have rain. An April shower has become proverbial. Chaucer began his most famous poem by writing of the time " Wino. that Aprille with his shouros sots
The droghte of Marche hath porced to the rote," and Mr. William Watson, in twelve of the most charming lines that were ever written about any English month, has kept the legend of April rain alive for us in a later day "April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter ; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears l " And all the while April is one of the months in which drought is commonest, and may even be reckoned upon as a likelihood. In 1893, which will always be remembered as a year with one of the worst and longest dry periods on reoord, the drought lasted in the South of England from February 28th to the third week in June. And it was in May of that year that a correspondent wrote to the Times giving the dates of eight prolonged droughts of the nineteenth century. These occurred in 1800, June 6th to August 19th; 1817, March 8th to May 13th; 1835, June 27th to September 2nd; 1840, February 5th to May 7th ; 1844, March .11th to June 23rd; 1852, February 1st to April 28th; 1854, February 5th to April 26th ; 1893, February 28th to May 16th. Out of these eight, four included the whole of April and two took in twenty-six and twenty-eight days of the month. And now the year 1912, with all its other unhappy records, has to be added to the list. In a few places there have been slight showers on one or two days during the month, but in other districts the drought has been absolute. Not a drop of rain fell on the present writer's garden, for instance, through the whole month of April, and May came in with the encouraging headline to the weather reports : "No prospects of rain." The barometer, after a promising descent of three days, was steadily rising.
In a garden the effects of an April drought, must always be unpleasant, but the severity of the punishment depends a good.
deal on other causes besides mere lack of rain. If, as happened this year, the preceding months happen to he wet, the earth becomes stored with water, and the deeper-rooted plants and shrubs well established are able to get moisture, even though the surface of the soil may be baked like a brick. In the writer's country, for instance, in which the soil is sand and gravel, the water stored in December and the early months of the year still shows itself in roadside runnels, which are really "winter bournes," and only run while the soil below them reaches and remains at a certain point of saturation. But the shallower-rooted plants and shrubs and young trees which have not yet had time to become thoroughly established suffer severely. The spring of this year, following last year's drought, has surely been one of the worst periods which it is possible to conceive for certain processes of gar- dening. The difficulties of making new lawns, for instance, have been doubled and trebled. Last year's drought on a newly sown lawn burnt out all the finer grasses and left little else but the perennial rye grasses, which in the dry weeks of last month have spread their lengthening bents over the bare patches left where the finer grasses were burnt out, so that lawns which in ordinary seasons might be expected. now to be stretches of smooth, close turf look no better than newly mown hayfields. As for seeds sown during the past few weeks the prospect could hardly be more unpromising. Grass seed sown in the last week in March shows here and there a thin sprinkling of green ; but sparrows and chaffinc hes which are always a nuisance with sown lawns, this year have not only taken the seed, but have made what was to have been lawn into dust-baths, The only remedy is to resow and to keep the sprinkler going; but the sprinkler is the last resort of the perplexed gardener. When he has begun watering he must go on with it. As for flower- seeds, in the writer's garden sowings were made of the ordinary annuals at the usual time, and on the first of May, when the seeds ought to be well up, there was hardly a single green shoot to be seen. No doubt the seeds will shoot when the rain comes, and the grass, if rain came on a soil thoroughly warmed, would spring all the more strongly because of the stored heat waiting for moisture. But this year the soil has not even been really warmed. Every night there has been a frost, and if you look at the strawberry plants which showed blossom earlier than usual in the unaccustomed spell of sunshine, you will find flower after flower with the blackened centre which ends the hope of fruit. Early potatoes nipped by frost are a common sight in any year, but it is not so common to see their leaves torn and blackened by icy winds as they wore during the last few days of April. But the flower garden and kitchen garden, after all, do not find their owners in the most hopeless case of all. The worst case in a prolonged spring drought is the farmer's and stockbreeder's, who want grass and look for a crop of hay. Of course there is time yet for hay crops to grow if the rain would come, but the farmer who wants grass for his stock cannot wait for June rains, and in parts of the country where the drought last year led to the greatest diffieulty the dryness of the present spring is an almost incalculable misfortune. One of the most dangerous consequences of prolonged drought on sandy soil is the covering of pasture with dust or sand, so that the stock when feeding take up the sand with tho grass, and so run a risk of being " sanded up." A breeder of Shire horses, who is a neighbour of the writer, last year lost a valuable filly in this way, and, if he bad not known what to do, would have lost others. In December he noticed that the filly was not looking well, and had her up for examination. She got worse instead of better, and he sat up at night with her, giving her what medicines he could think of ; but at last the unhappy creature went mad with pain, rolled about her box, and eventually died. She was examined by a veterinary surgeon, who took out of her stomach a hundredweight and a quarter of sand. Cases of this kind, it seems, occur occasionally in the neighbourhood of the Bristol Channel and are rare elsewhere ; but the sole cause was the drought of the summer and autumn. So prolonged a drought has a double effect. Not only does the herbage become covered with dust and grit, but the drinking places become lower and shallower, and the horse, already inflamed and thirsty with the sand it has swallowed, goes to the water and draws up more soil as it drinks. As for the fields in which young grass might be expected to be springing now, the beginning of May found them almost as parched as they were last September. The hedges and roadsides before April ended were covered with a uniform film of grey, which has confused into one dusty border the gold of celandines and the white and green of dead-nettle; in the meadows beyond the hedge the new grass is already brown and withered.
So prolonged a period of sunshine naturally produces un- usual effects with wild and garden flowers. Hawthorn was in blossom in the last week in April, and hawthorn essentially belongs to May—even late May. The May-flowering tulips, small in stature and in bloom, have been glowing in their purples and crimsons three weeks before their time. In many woods the primroses were gone before Primrose Day.
But these untimely blossomings are not to be welcomed ; nor is the brazen sunshine which shuts down the singing birds as if August were already here. In the combination of bright sun and icy northerly winds which brought April to a close the robin and the willow-wren were almost the only birds which seemed to find nothing unhappy in the spring weather.
The cuckoo called fitfully in the early morning, or when the wind dropped at evening; the thrushes and blackbirds, instead of an evening chorus, piped as they pipe when June heightens to the heat of July. Alone of the spring migrants the night- ingale has seemed to care nothing for wind and sun, and one of the consolations after a day of hope deferred and skies still clear and coppery at night has been to listen, under a brilliant moon, to the nightingale pouring out his fierce jets of melody from the darkness of the hazel copse on the hill.
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