JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 99 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 
Read before the Hamilton Scientific Association, April 5th, 1901. 
BY WM. YATES, ESQ. 
HATCHLEY, January 29th, rgor1 
However obscure and difficult it may be to ascertain the 
immediate changes of temperature, and however slight the 
power of prognosticating impending weather changes, a few 
assumptions that have been got at by a perusal of carefully- 
made records of precipitation, and temperatures experienced in 
southern Ontario during a period of fifty-five years and more, 
have led to a few conclusions that are believed to be trustworthy. 
One of these, which is almost received as an axiom, is that 
in this zone there is never more than three of the winter 
months in which the temperature remains steadily below the 
freezing point. It has been noticed during the period indi- 
cated above that if December is severe with ample snow-fallone - 
of the succeeding three months is likely to be a mild and open 
one and the period of good sleighing has not been known in our 
time to be of longer than three months’ duration. The old 
pioneers aver that there is always a ‘‘hollow place’’ of a month 
or so during our customary four months in which plow work is 
impossible. The clearing away of the forests as well as the 
draining of eight-tenths of the swampy areas would be thought 
to have an appreciable effect on the provincial climate; the 
severity and the old time frequency of summer-night frosts 
seem to have been much mitigated; also with very rare except- 
ions the autumnal months, especially that of October, have been 
of higher average temperature than was experienced a few 
decades ago in our past history. In the now drained and culti- 
vated swamp lands the sun’s rays penetrate the earth during 
