But perhaps the year 1825, taking all its circumstances, is the most extraordinary to be found in our annals. The winter of 1824–5 had been mild and wet; the ensuing spring dry, but with keen winds and frosty mornings, which greatly injured the fine blossoms that appeared on our fruit trees; and the continued and profuse nightly fall of the honey-dew was quite unusual: the leaves of the oak, the cherry, and the plum, were constantly smeared and dropping with this clammy liquor, which, falling from the foliage on the ground, blackened it as if some dark fluid had been spilled upon it: the leaves of most of our stone fruits curled up, covered with aphides, and became deciduous; and their young shoots were destroyed by the punctures of these insects that clustered on them. This honey-dew continued to fall till about the middle of July, affording an abundant supply of food to multitudes of bees, moths, and other insects which swarmed about the trees. We rarely begin cutting our grass before the first week in July; but in consequence of the heat of June in this year, it was so drawn up, that much hay was made and carried by the 20th of June, which commonly is not accomplished till August. Our crops on good ground were considered as fair, though in general the chilling season of May had occasioned a deficiency; but all our clover crops and artificial grasses were harvested in the finest order, producing good- sized ricks and mows; yet their bulk was delusive, the provender cutting out light and strawy. The heat and drought continued, with very partial and slight showers of rain, all June and July; nor had we any thing like serviceable rain till the second of August. In consequence our grass lands were burned up, and our fields parched, presenting deep fissures in all parts. The heat was unusually distressing all day; and evening brought us little or no relief, as every wall radiated throughout the night the heat it had imbibed from the torrid sun of the day. Our bedroom windows were kept constantly open, all apprehension from damps and night airs, which at other times were of the first consideration, being disregarded; a cooler temperature, however obtained, was alone required; and we lingered below, unwilling to encounter the tossings and restlessness that our heated beds occasioned. Our wainscots cracked, furniture contracted and gaped with seams; a sandal-wood box, which had been in use for upwards of twenty years in dry rooms, shrunk and warped out of all form; a capsule of the sandbox tree (hura crepitans), which had remained in repose over a shelf above the fire-place for an unknown length of time, now first experienced an excess of dryness, and exploded in every direction; door frames contracted, window sashes became fixed and immovable. These are trifles to relate, but yet they mark the very unusual dryness of the atmosphere.