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COLD WINTERS. 



DURING the cold weather of last December (1878) we heard 

 much about old-fashioned winters. It was generally assumed 

 that some thirty or forty years ago the winters were colder than 

 they now are. Some began to speculate on the probability 

 that we may be about to have a cycle of cold winters, con- 

 tinuing perhaps for thirty or forty years, as the cycle of mild 

 winters is commonly supposed to have done. If any doubts 

 were expressed as to the greater severity of winter weather 

 thirty or forty years ago, evidence was forthcoming to show 

 that at that time our smaller rivers were commonly frozen 

 over during the winter, and the larger rivers always encum- 

 bered with masses of ice, and not unfrequently frozen from 

 source to estuary. Skating was spoken of as a half-forgotten 

 pastime in these days, as compared with what it was when 

 the seniors of our time were lads. Nor were dismal stories 

 wanting of villages snowed up for months, of men and women 

 who had been lost amid snowdrifts, and of other troubles 

 such as we now associate rather with Siberian than with 

 British winters. 



Turning over recently the volume of the ' Penny Magazine ' 

 for the year 1837, I came across a passage, which shows that 

 these ideas about winter weather forty years ago were enter- 

 tained forty years ago about winter weather eighty or ninety 

 years ago. It occurs in an article on the ' Peculiarities of 

 the Climate of Canada and the United States.' Discussing 

 the theory whether the clearing away cf forests has any in- 

 fluence in mitigating the severity of winter weather, the 



