FEBRUARY. 31 



extreme mildness of the greater portion of it. Here are some 

 notes I thought worth taking at the time. December had 

 been rather cold with a little snow, sufficient to facilitate 

 travelKng, At the commencement of the year 1838, we 

 had mild weather, with little snow on the ground, but the 

 roads were still in excellent condition. From the third to 

 the eighth of January we had a thaw with heavy rains, which 

 took away all the snow: the state of nature exactly resembled 

 spring ; sheep and cattle feeding in the fields, streams and 

 brooks flooded, roads filled with deep mud, travelling per- 

 formed wholly on wheels or on horseback, instead of sleighs ; 

 and I read that in Upper Canada even some trees had burst 

 their leaf-buds. The roads continued bare, with some slight 

 frosts, until the nineteenth, when about four inches of snow 

 falling, a new life was put into every kind of business ; the 

 roads were thronged with sleds loaded with hay, grain, car- 

 casses of meat, and all other necessaries, which had been so 

 long prevented from travelling by the state of the roads, as 

 to cause great inconvenience, and in some cases even distress. 

 To the end of January, the weather continued mild, but the 

 whole of February was very severe, and this month, with 

 the latter part of December, was in fact all that we could 

 really call winter ; for as early as the first of March, the 

 snow began rapidly to disappear from the roads and fields ; 

 by the tenth, the sap of the sugar maple was flowing freely ; 

 the catkins of the poplars and willows opened about the 

 middle of the month ; the spring birds and insects appeared, 

 and all things promised a very early season, which was, 

 however, much retarded by continued cold weather in April. 

 It was followed by an unusually wet and warm summer. 



