150 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



in hardiness. But it may be asked in what way we are to 

 account for the impression that our climate has been growing 

 warmer since the settlement of our country, since neither the 

 existence nor the strength of the impression can in any degree 

 be gainsaid. A sufficient answer has been given by Dr. Hale, 

 viz. : that extraordinary seasons are remembered when the 

 intermediate years which are not marked by any unusual preva- 

 lence of heat or cold, are forgotten. As strong instances in 

 confirmation of Dr. Hale's remark, we need only call to mind 

 the repeated references which we find in our annals, and which 

 many of us recollect in the conversation of our predecessors of 

 the last generation, to the long and dreary winter of 1779-80, 

 to which Yirgil's highly ornamented description of Scythian 

 cold might be applied with prosaic exactness. Those of us 

 who have passed the middle age, retain an equally distinct 

 recollection of the cold summer of 1816. Both these extraor- 

 dinary seasons dwelt tenaciously and distinctly in the memory 

 of many who could give no other account, however general, of 

 most other summers and winters of their time. It is not to be 

 doubted that the severe winter which occurred a few years 

 since, when a channel was hewn through the solid ice in Boston 

 harbor, in order to enable the steam vessel to proceed on her 

 regular voyage, will be often appealed to by writers of the next 

 generation as positive proof of the extreme rigor of our winters 

 at the present day. 



Impressions of this description are particularly vivid in our 

 younger days. We all can recollect those made upon us by 

 such striking natural phenomena as occurred just within our 

 recollection, and more especially by those of our early winters. 

 When we recall the mountainous snow drifts, huge icicles, .and 

 nipping blasts of those periods, we can hardly realize that any 

 winters of our later days are both equally severe and equally 

 magnificent; and yet, all the precise evidence which we possess 

 compels us so to admit. It may be further observed, that the 

 severe winters of the last century have been recollected the 

 more vividly, because they were more severely felt than any 

 winter of the same severity would now be. Our people are 

 better clothed, our dwellings better fortified against cold, and 

 what is of still more moment, our roads are far more quickly 



