A SPRING RELISH. 



IT is a little remarkable how regularly severe and 

 mild winters alternate in our climate for a series of 

 years, a feminine and a masculine one, as it were, 

 almost invariably following each other. Every other 

 season now for ten years the ice gatherers on the 

 river have been disappointed of a full harvest, and 

 every other season the ice has formed from fifteen 

 to twenty inches thick. From 1873 to 1884 there 

 was no marked exception to this rule. But in the last 

 named year, when, according to the succession, a 

 mild winter was due, the breed seemed to have got 

 crossed, and a sort of mongrel winter was the result ; 

 neither mild nor severe, but very stormy, capricious, 

 and disagreeable, with ice a foot thick on the river. 

 The winter which followed, that of 1884-85, though 

 slow and hesitating at first, fully proved itself as be- 

 longing to the masculine order. The present winter 

 of 1885-86 shows a marked return to the type of 

 two years ago, less hail and snow, but by no means 

 the mild season that was due. By and by, probably, 

 the meteorological influences will get back into the 

 old ruts again, and we shall have once more the reg- 

 ular alternation of mild and severe winters. During 

 very open winters, like that of 1879-80, nature in 



