THE CANADIAN HORTICULTUiUST. 



see fish, large and small, as distinctly as though they were within a 

 foot or two of us. After remaining here for half an liour we retraced 

 our journey to the mouth of Silver Springs Kun, from whence our 

 course lay further up the Ocklawaha. 



FOKTY DEGREES BELOW ZEIIO. CLIMATIC CHANGES IN 



FRANCE AND CANADA. THE BALDWIN AND 



SNOW APPLES. BARRIE vs. STRATFORD. 



BY A, HOOD, BAllRIE, ONT, 



I do not know whether or not the climate of Ontario is really 

 becoming permanently milder than formerly, but I do know that for 

 the past eighteen or twenty years we have not experienced the same 

 degree of cold as in the seven years preceding. The observatories I 

 know will not bear me out in what I ani going to say, because the 

 nearest one, that in Toronto, always recorded ten or fifteen degrees 

 higher than was experienced in the Township of Erin, County of 

 AVellington, tlie locality to which these remarks have reference. But 

 I assert without hesitation that for the seven years from 1855 to 1861 

 inclusive, the lowest reading of the thermometer for each and every 

 winter during that period was never less than SO"" below zero. But 

 what a change there has been since, for although I still lived in Erin 

 during the next seven years, and since then in Wroxeter, Brussels, and 

 Fergus, and have every winter watched for the greatest degree of cold, 

 I have never been able to record more than 22° below, and frequently 

 not as much as that. Thirty degrees, however, was not the lowest 

 record for that seven years, for on the sixth day of March, 1856, 

 between seven and eight o'clock a. m., my thermometer indicated 32° 

 below; another winter, date forgotten, 33° below; on the 19th January, 

 1861, 34° below. But thermometers you know are not always con-ect, 

 and I frequently found it impossible to convince some* |)arties that 

 mine was, until an event occurred that enabled me to prove it. It is 

 not easy to do this, because if right at the freezing point, it may not 

 be so either above or below. We all know that water freezes at 32° 

 above zero, and mercury at 40° below. Prove your thermometer right 

 ; these two points and every step between will be right also. This 

 was enabled to do on the tenth day of January, 1859, between seven 



