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then arises whether our winters are getting colder. An answer, as far as 

 it goes, is given in the following table of mean temperatures, in which I 

 have arranged the forty years in four decades, and have given the summer 

 temperatures as well as those of the winters and contrasted them : 



The winters and summers of the first and second decades have kept 

 their own pretty well ; or, to speak more correctly, the winters in the 

 second decade seem to have become a little milder and the summers a little 

 cooler than in the first; but in the third decade the winters were cooler 

 and the summers warmer; and in the last ten years the progress in the 

 same direction is still more remarkable. 



Is this accident, or is it the expression of a general law? Do our win- 

 ters get colder and our summers hotter, and has this been going on for a 

 length of time and will it continue so to do? 



A simple calculation would show the absurdity of such a proposition; a 

 few hundred years back would bring us to a perfect paradise of a climate, 

 and the same number of years forward would exhibit a state of things in 

 which life could scarcely exist. 



No, these changes are mere temporary oscillations, regular perhaps, 

 irregular probably. The oldest witnesses of our climate, the forest trees, 

 prove that five hundred years ago they must have flourished under the 

 same conditions they now exist in; and in Europe and Eastern Asia, where 

 history dates back from three to five thousand years, it appears the same 

 vegetation, the same trees, and the same products of the field and the 

 orchard, flourish now as in the most ancient times. So our trembling 

 friends who see the finger of a terrible destiny in what they notice in the 

 short span of their lifetime, or in a small part thereof, may take comfort. 



The question about the change in the humidity of our climate and the 

 fall of rain is an analogous one, and it is at this moment of particular im- 

 portance to our young sister city, East St. Louis, where many expect an 

 occasional return of high-water and an overflow, and want to prepare for 

 it; while others, relying on the increasing dryness of the country, consider 

 such steps as unnecessary. 



Here again "facts," the observations of a limited number of years, seem 

 to indicate an increasing degree or even aridity of the climate, and, cor- 

 responding with that, it is supposed that our rivers would never rise as 

 high again as they have done in years past; the "cutting down of the for- 

 ests" is insisted on as the great cause for such a change. 



It is very true, and the history of our time as well as that of thousands 



