FIFTEENTH ORDINARY MEETING. 211 
almost midway between Sandusky, Ohio, 20 miles distant, and Leam- 
ington, Ont., and with Kelly’s, an Ohioan island, six miles to the 
southward, and the peninsula of Point Pelee to the northward, 
marks the dividing line between the very shallow and island-dotted 
western extremity of Lake Erie, and the larger, deeper and unbroken 
area of the lake to the eastward. This peculiar position produces 
remarkable climatic effects. The water to the westward is generally 
not more than forty feet in depth, and under the hot summer sun 
becomes so heated that temperatures above 80° are sometimes 
registered at lake bottom in the habours along the neighbouring 
coasts. This high temperature not only tends to increase the average 
heat and length of summer, which here is almost as warm as at Cin- 
cinnati, but increases the warmth and length of autumn—which also 
is as warm and free from frosts as on the Ohio River—and 
reduces the difference between day and night temperatures to 
almost tropical smallness. Another effect, a physician on the 
island informs the writer, is that what corresponds with the nightly 
land breeze of the lake coasts in hot, calm weather, here blows 
not from the land, but from the deeper and cooler lake water 
to the eastward, into the heated western end of the lake. The 
effects in winter of the surrounding shallow water, vary with the 
severity of the seasons. In the milder winters the usual effects of 
water surroundings are experienced in a small daily and seasonal 
range. In severe winters the shallow archipelago of the western end 
of Lake Erie is encumbered with ice and sometimes freezes over, 
and Pelee partakes in greater measure of the continental character 
of the winter of the neighbouring mainland. 
An examination of the records of the meteorological station on 
the island for a period of three and a half years bears out the deduc- 
tions which otherwise could be made from the peculiar situation of 
Pelee.* The figures are interesting. The mean temperature, and 
mean monthly maxima and minima are as follows : 
*The records, which through the courtesy of the Superintendent of the Meteorological 
Service, were furnished the writer, embrace the period between February Ist, 1879, and 
August 31st, 1882. The records for May, October and November, 1879, and April and November, 
1880, are incomplete or wholly wanting. The mean temperature for these missing months has 
been approximated by the writer after careful examinatien of the records of Windsor and 
Sandusky, what is believed to be due allowance having been made for the peculiarities of the 
Pelee climate. The hours of observation were 7 a.m.and2and9p.m. The mean temperature 
is found by adding together the readings at the first two hours, and twice the 9 p.m. reading, 
and dividing the sum by 4. The maximum and minimum temperatures given are those of the 
