FIFTEENTH ORDINARY MEETING. 199 
ward, increases the differences beyond those due to latitude, so that 
the part of the province south of the 46th parallel presents a much 
greater variety of climate than any other non-mountainous district 
of equal area on the continent. Eastward from the Georgian 
Bay the effect of the great Jakes in moderating heat and cold rapidly 
decreases, and continental conditions rather than semi-insular 
gradually come to prevail. Lake Ontario not lying in the direction 
from which the areas of low and high barometer advance on this 
region, has but a very limited influence. There being no large body 
of water to the north, such winter anti-cyclones as take a course to 
the Atlantic to the northward of the great lakes pour their refrigerat- 
ing northern blasts down over this region. 
At Ottawa the summers are hotter than at Toronto, Goderich and 
many other places a hundred miles or more further to the south, and 
though the summers over the Ottawa district are shorter than in much 
of the south-western part of the Province, the mean temperature of 
July is quite as hot as in most localities in the latter and the maxi- 
mum temperature very frequently is higher than 95° in the shade 5 
it occasionally exceeds 100° and usually is several degrees hotter than 
at Toronto, the eastern shore of Lake Huron, and even localities as 
far south as Lake Erie. The winters of Ottawa on the other hand 
average as low as 13° Fahr., and are much the same as at Moscow. 
The average minimum is about 30° below zero. Snow falls deep and 
the sleighing season is usually four months in length while in parts 
of south-western and southern Ontario, it is not as many weeks, 
Though the difference in latitude between Ottawa and Niagara is 
only about two degrees, the winters of the former place are at 
least as much colder than those of the latter as the winters of 
Niagara are colder than those of Memphis in Tennessee, eight degrees 
still farther south. Yet the sensible cold is not so great as this 
large excess might suggest ; it is usually enjoyable, the atmosphere 
being dryer and there being more sunshine than in districts more 
within the influence of the lakes. 
The district of Muskoka & Parry Sound, bordering on the Georgian 
Bay, experiences in greater measure the influence of the Georgian 
Bay and Lakes Huron and Superior in tempering the heat in summer 
and the cold in winter of winds from the western semi-circle. This 
influence is necessarily much more marked in winter; though the 
elevation of much of the district makes the apparent amelioration 
