218 M‘Sweeny, on the Climate of Ireland. 
one almost begins to take notice that this country Boing every year more and more 
temperate.” 
“It was not unusual to have frosts and deep snows of a fortnight and three weeks 
continuance, and that twice or thrice, sometimes oftener in a winter ; nay, we have had 
great rivers and lakes frozen all over, whereas of late, especially these two or three 
years last past, we have had scarce any frost or snow at all. Neither.can | impute this 
extraordinary alteration to any fortuitous circumstances, because it is manifest that it 
hath succeeded gradually, every year becoming more temperate than the year preced- 
ing.——-This winter 1675, I have kept an exact account of wind and weather. To 
transcribe my journal here, would be too tedious, let it suffice therefore to tell, that it 
hath been a very fair and warm, or rather no winter at all.” 
The language used in 1675 is very like that of Hamilton in his Memoir on the 
Climate of Ireland. 
In Rutty’s time, complaints of the inversion of the seasons were common—“ wicked 
exclamations we hear against the inclemency of the climate, our changeable, and par- 
ticularly our moist and windy weather, an inversion of the seasons, &c., which are 
owing to a want of due attention to this branch of natural history, for those changes 
are common to us.”—Natural History of the County of Dublin, Vol. LI. p. 281. 
The writer in 1675, described the prevalence of south and west winds, and stated 
that persons sometimes had to wait three months for a fair wind to come to Ireland. 
He gives the usual height of the barometer in Ireland as at “ 29 inches 4 tenths.” 
Though our climate is variable, yet in its chief leading features its history shows it 
to be the same. It is well known to us all, that September and October are generally 
agreeable months ; Rutty, in describing this time of the year, calls it owr little summer.” 
Ibid, p. 465. ¢ 
Doctor Boate says—“ In the latter end of autumn, weather is commonly fair again, 
for some weeks together, in the same manner as in the spring, but not so long, which 
as it doth serve for to dry up and to get in the corn, hay which till then hath remained 
in the fields, the too much wet having hindered it from being brought away sooner ; 
so it giveth the opportunity of ploughing the ground, and sowing the winter corn, the 
which otherwise would very hardly be done. For that season being once passed, you 
have very little dry weather the rest of the autumn, and during all the winter.” 
Boate speaks of thunder being of rare occurrence in Ireland, and says when it does 
happen, it is in the summer season. ; 
in the reign of Elizabeth, at the siege of Kinsale, there was thunder in December 
‘to the wonder of all men, considering the season of the year.”—Pacat. Hiber. 
In speaking of dry summers, Boate observes—‘“‘ But as winters cruelly cold, so like- 
wise over dry summers do in this island hardly come once in an age, and it is a com- 
mon saying in Ireland, that the very driest summers never hurt the land : for al- 
though the corn and grass upon the high and dry grounds may get harm, nevertheless 
