I 



IX 



A SPRING RELISH 



T 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 fif- 

 teen 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 suc- 

 cession, 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 belonging to the mascu- 

 line 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 meteorolo- 

 gical influences will get back into the old ruts again, 

 and we shall have once more the regular alternation 



