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The amount of rain that has fallen over a large portion of the United States in six weeks, running from the 1st of May to the 12th of June, has scarcely a parallel. The Pitts-burg Journal has given this subject considerable attention, and says that the average of observations will give abont ten inches in May, and five inches to the 12th of June, or fifteen inches in forty-three days. These rains do not appear to have been local, but extend east and west at least one thousand miles, and north and south one-half that distance. No wonder the newspapers are full of accounts of rains, floods, and disasters. Fully one-third of the average of the rains of the year have been crowded into six weeks. The Mississippi and its tributaries might well appear to threaten a young Noachian deluge. No such rains have been experienced since the wet season in May, 1855, and then they were not condensed into so small space of time. It is said that some rain gages showed four and one-half inches of rain on the 11th and 12th of June alone. What the cause of these tremendous rains have been, we are not able to say. There is hardly a doubt but that we will either have an equivalent amount of dry weather, or else some other district of the globe is parched up for want of water. The remarkable fact that the annual fall of rain is so nearly equally balanced, sets at defiance all our notions of wet and dry seasons, though portions of a year are extremely wet or dry.
