342 ADVENT OF THE GREAT COLDS. 



of winter sports ; but the moment that there is a breeze, 

 the cold becomes intolerable, and everybody who is 

 not compelled to go out of the house on urgent 

 business remains closely shut up indoors. 



Thus Colonel Warburton (who has written some of 

 the best books extant on Canada), mentions that, 



" One Sunday, when the thermometer was at 30 below 

 zero, and a high wind was blowing, the effect in many 

 respects was not unlike that of intense heat" "for as the 

 icy wind touched the face, it scorched it like a blaze. * 



Here again, it will be observed, we recognise one of 

 these strange similarities between great cold and great 

 heat to which we have so frequently drawn attention, 

 and anybody who has himself experienced the effects 

 of one of these icy winds, will doubtless at once call 

 to mind this curious sensation which Colonel Warbur- 

 ton here records. 



The great colds of the arctic winter, it is well to 

 observe, do not occur, as one might have supposed, 

 during the great night of winter, but rather at its 

 close, when the sun is beginning to reappear again. 

 The increase of the cold appears however to be 

 generally progressive throughout the winter darkness, 

 as it also seems to be during the lesser nights in tem- 

 perate regions; that is to say, the usual course of 

 things is, as soon as the sun sets, a steady fall in the 

 temperature begins, which, if no abnormal conditions 

 set in to interrupt it (such for instance as a sudden 

 change of wind), continues throughout the night, until 

 sunrise, so that the last hours of the night are always 

 the coldest; the coldest hour of the twenty-four gener- 



* " Hochelaga " or England in the New World, by Col. George 

 Warburton, 1854, p. 59. 



