The excellent state of agriculture in Jersey and Guernsey has often been mentioned in the agricultural and general literature of this country, so I need only refer to the works of Mr. W. E. Bear (Journal of the Agricultural Society, 1888; Quarterly Review, 1888; British Farmer, etc.) and to the exhaustive work of D. H. Ansted and R. G. Latham, The Channel Islands, third edition, revised by E. Toulmin Nicolle, London (Allen), 1893.
Many English writers — certainly not those just named — are inclined to explain the successes obtained in Jersey by the wonderful climate of the islands and the fertility of the soil. As to climate, it is certainly true that the yearly record of sunshine in Jersey is greater than in any English station. It reaches from 1,842 hours a year (1890) to 2,300 (1893), and thus exceeds the highest aggregate sunshine recorded in any English station by from 168 to 336 hours (exclusively high maximum in 1894) a year; May and August seeming to be the best favoured months. 201 But, to quote from the just mentioned work of Ansted and Latham:
“There is, doubtless, in all the islands, and especially in Guernsey, an absence of sun heat and of the direct action of the sun’s raysin summer, which must have its effect, and a remarkable prevalence of cold, dry, east wind in late spring, retarding vegetation” (p. 407). Everyone who has spent, be it only two or three weeks in late spring in Jersey, must know by experience how true this remark is. Moreover, there are the well-known Guernsey, fogs, and “owing also to rain and damp the trees suffer from mildew and blight, as well as from various aphides.” The same authors remark that the nectarine does not succeed in Jersey in the open air “owing to the