CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 331 



itig you will be mbnis a nose ! This is a drawback which even the 

 most robust have to dread, for the frost attacks alike the strong and 

 the weak ; and should an injudicious application be applied — for 

 instance, warm water, instead of cold water or snow, which latter 

 is the better remedy — the sufferer would inevitably lose, not only 

 his nose, but a great part of tlie circle surrounding it. In the east- 

 ern provinces, or Lower Canada, the greater severity of the weather 

 is partly owing to its N. E. position, and partly to the N. E. range 

 of lofty mountains. In the more northern part of the province, the 

 snow commences in November, but seldom continues many days on 

 the ground before December, when the whole country is covered for 

 several feet deep, and it does not entirely disappear before the be- 

 ginning of ]May ! The thermometer usually ranges, during the 

 months of December, January, February, and ]March, from 32 to 25 

 below zero, Fahrenheit ; in 1790, mercury froze at Quebec. It is 

 often 60° Fahrenheit below the freezing point — 20° is the average. 

 During the cold frosty nights, the woods creak as if ten thousand 

 hucher-ons were at them with their hatchets. The entire face of 

 the country is covered with snow, and even the mighty river, St. 

 Lawrence, is arrested in its course. From Quebec to Montreal, the 

 St. Lawrence ceases to be navigable, and serves as a road for the 

 snow carriages, called sleighs and carrioles. Upper Canada, how- 

 ever, it appears, has a somewhat less rigorous climate — neither 

 being so cold in winter as Lower Canada, nor so hot in summer as 

 New York ; for, in the Newcastle district, a man may work in the 

 woods, the whole winter, with his coat off, as in England ; and the 

 summer heat is tempered by a cool breeze, which sets in from the 

 S. W. about ten a. m., and lasts generally, till three or four, p. ra. 



So great is the fertility of the soil in Canada, that fifty bushels of 

 ■wheat per acre are frequently produced on a farm where the stumps 

 of trees, which probably occupy an eighth of the space, have not 

 been irradicated. Some instances of sixty bushels per acre occur ; 

 and near York, in Upper Canada, one hundred bushels of wheat 

 have been obtained from a single acre ! In some districts, wheat 

 has been raised successively, on the same ground, for twenty years, 

 without manure. 



The true Canadian is re])resented to be, in every sense of the 

 terra, one of the finest specimens of our race, fulfilling, with a sa- 

 cred fidelity, every social duty which the obligations of society 

 impose ; demonstrating how much the originally noble character of 

 man is debased and depraved by the poverty and starvation which 

 crush to the earth, in misery and vice, the greater part of » the Eu- 

 ropean community. Of the Canadian ladies, our author thus 

 speaks : — " The beauty of a Canadian is peculiar — neither English 

 nor French, but combining the more exquisite elements of each : 

 she possesses more of vivid emotions than ideas ; and, though defi- 

 cient in the nervous intellect of the Scotch, she exhibits the ardour 

 of the Italian, and the vivacious archness of the Parisian : the quick 

 and varied impulses of her inward soul, are mirrored in the piquant 



