ARTICLE VII. 
WHY IS THE WINTER SO MILD ? 
By G. F. Matthew. 
Read February 6th, 1906. 
The unusual character of the current winter season has caused 
a good deal of comment, and certainly there will be few living 
who can recall such another. Coming after the severe and con- 
tinuous cold of tlie previous winter and its accumulated snows, 
the contrast is very striking. In place of deep snow banks, heavy 
ice, and the continuous cold of last winter, we have been treated 
to but one honest snow storm and to repeated periods of mild 
weather, with some rather heavy rains ; so that now the snow has 
disappeared and the doe on the rivers has become unsafe. 
While not professing to be a weather prophet, one might sug- 
gest a peculiarity in the weather of the past summer and fall as a 
probable factor in the present conditions. 
It will be within the recollection of some of you that the St. 
John river during the past season was unusually low — not only 
for a short time in the later summer as is usually the case, but 
continuously through the summer and throughout the autumn. 
We had no autumn rains that were of any weight and consequent- 
ly there is no “fall freshet.” Usually the water in the river at 
■the autumnal period rises sufficiently to cover the lower or marshy 
part of the intervals, and not infrequently to cover the “high 
marsh” as well, while occasionally there are autumns in which 
the “fall freshet” rivals that of the spring. 
The level of the water in Kennebeccasis Bay and other expan- 
sions of the St. John river is governed not by the rains on the 
lower affluents of the main stream, but by the rain-fall of the 
basin of the St. John as a whole. The level of the water in 
these lakes at the mouth of the main river affords an excellent 
gauge of the rain-fall in northern Maine as well as for the 
principal part of the province of New Brunswick, because it is in 
such close sympathy with the rain-fall of the upper St. John. 
Now all dwellers on the shores of Kennebeccasis Bay will 
