92 Canadian Record of Science. 
a foot or two of drifted snow. Cattle, horses and wild game 
can only huddle in sheltered hollows or hide among the 
groves along the river banks and hope for better times. 
All the pasture is covered with a blanket of snow, too deep 
to let an animal get a bite of grass. Then the wind lulls 
and a breeze from the west springs up. It is warm— 
almost balmy in contrast to the biting easterly or northerly 
snow-gales. Near the mountains only a few hours suffices 
to lick up all the snow, except from the gullies, into which 
it may have drifted to a great depth. Cattle and horses 
find the grass exposed, and resume their feeding. The cold 
has done them no harm, for there has been no wet snow or 
sleet. The genial influence of the balmy west wind is felt 
far down the Mackenzie, enabling the buffalo to wander 
almost as far as the arctic circle in that part of the country. 
Winter there, in fact, is neither so long nor so severe as on 
the lofty plateaus fifteen hundred miles southward, for the 
height above the sea is only a few hundred, instead of several 
thousand feet. McKenzie found spring along Peace River, 
in latitude 56°, so advanced by the 10th of May that the 
buffalo and their young were cropping the new grass on 
some of the most exposed uplands. 
Eastward from the mountains the influence of the Chin- 
ook gradually fades out, and is superseded by the northerly 
and southerly currents of Manitoba, which flow up and 
down the great trough of Lake Winnipeg, the Red River 
valley, and the valley of the upper Mississippi. 
In respect to the climate of Manitoba and the Saskat- 
chewan prairies, there is one man to whom all of us are 
indebted for information drawn from an untiring and early 
experience, and sustained by a sound judgment. I refer to 
Prof. John Macoun, of the Geological Survey. His book 
‘“ Manitoba and the Great Northwest,” is a most admirable 
compendium of information in regard to all the natural 
aspects of that great region, and I have had it constantly 
before me in writing out these notes. 
The Canadian plains, as has already been said, stretch 
from Red River westward to the Rocky Mountains, and 
