DESTRUCTION TO CROPS IN GERMANY.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume II, Issue 169, 2 November 1880, Page 4

DESTRUCTION TO CROPS IN GERMANY.

Tuf. papers are again full of disheartening reports of the harvest in Silesia, Posen, and East arid West Prussia. The crops in certain districts of tlwse provinces may he said.to he wholly destroyed. Many lives have been loot: i ail way and river embankments have been swept away; - bridges are broken down; > villages arsr.flooded; farms nro inundated and -vast -tracts of grain

■ growing land have-been coverted into lakes and swamps by torrents of rain. A great famine is feared in all the above-named provinces. A correspondent who has penetrated most parts of Silesia estimates that in one potato district alone the damage done amounts to 150,000 marks, while 200,000 acres of arable land and pasture ground were inundated by over-flow of tlie Oder. In the neighborhood of Oppelu 3000 acres of potatoe fields are covered with water, while clumps of villages are isolated. In Posen an immense expanse of meadow is inundated. Not only is grain destroyed, hut straw also. It is feared that in some places the wetness of the ground may disastrously delay or altogether prevent its preparation for next year’s seed. In the district of Ivulm, West Prussia, twenty four hours’ rain completely ruined the harvest, especially the wheat. In some parts of East and West Prussia, the fields are so impassable that it is almost impossible to garner what remains of the grain; and potatoes arc beginning to rot. i.iye is almost wholly destroyed. Wheat and barley have little surviving value in the. market. For the laboring portion of tiie community tlie potato crop is the most serious, and the aid of the Government is already being earnestly invoked.