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month.
The want of Mail facilities and consequent difficulty of communication, the inability of counties to procure regular means of transportation, and the failure in prompt arrival of shipments at the depots, rendered it exceedingly difficult to secure a distribution in accordance with the apportionment.
The protracted and scorching draught of the past summer proved very destructive to the corn crops, causing almost an entire failure in many sections, and a very light yield in all parts of the State.
It is now generally conceded, by those who have had opportunities for observing that there will be quite as large an amount of destitution during the coming winter and spring as at any other former period.  The number of persons requiring assistance may not be quite so large. but those who do will be more needy and dependent.  The poor have exhausted all their substance, those in moderate circumstances will scarcely be able to subsist and repay advances obtained while cultivating their crops, and those in best circumstances will have very little if any grain to share.  Fully one half the grain necessary to supply the State, will have to be imported.  The lamentable scarcity of bread stuff, is not the result of idleness, or want of effort on the part of our people.  Those able to labor, have applied themselves with more than ordinary industry, and used every possible effort to place themselves beyond the tale of want.  Many of these, however, have failed to secure a subsistence for their families.  The terrible and destructive draught of the