752 Exceptional Seasons [December 
better than any seasons we have since experienced. As for 
the year whose end is now approaching, no one can 
pronounce it exceptionally warm, though it may seem 
favourable in comparison with 1879. It has brought no 
sultry nights, and the proportion of northerly and north- 
easterly wind has been uncommonly high. Winter may be 
said to have set in on October 20th, and all appearances 
seem to point not to a heat-wave, but to a winter of excep- 
tional severity. 
We turn next to the cold years. Mr. Jenkins gives the 
following series ; — 1829, 1837, 1845, 1855, 1863, 1871, and 
1879. The remarkably bad years on record are 1816, 1845, 
1855, 1860-61, 1871, and 1879. 
We are bound to admit that here theory and experience 
coincide far better than in the case of the warm years. 
Concerning 1829 and 1837 we can learn nothing ; 1845 and 
1855 were both wretched, and in 1871 the snow which had 
fallen a few days before the end of 1870 lay unmelted into 
February, whilst the spring and early summer were un- 
favourable. August and September were, however, dry, 
warm, and sunny. But 1863 breaks the series. It cannot 
for a moment be compared with 1860-61. Christmas-day, 
i860, was ushered in by probably the most intense cold ever 
registered in England since accurate thermometers became 
available. Well-grown apple-trees, and even oaks of a yard 
in circumference, were killed. The havoc among the orna- 
mental trees and shrubs in Chatsworth Park was terrible. 
The succeeding spring and summer — called so merely by 
courtesy— ■-were even more ungenial than those of 1879 : • 
perhaps less wet, but certainly colder. In November we 
saw the corn over extensive tracts of country rotting where 
it had grown. 
The bad season of 1816, again, cannot be harmonised 
with 1829 by any multiple of 8. It will also strike the 
reader that the interval 1845 to 1855 i s one * en ’ no * 
eight, years. If, then, we add to 1845 2 x 8, we are brought 
to 1861, the really worst season. It might, therefore, be 
asked whether any cause could have retarded the cold-wave 
so that it reached the earth in 1855 instead of 1853, which 
latter was, however, a most ungenial year. We doubt, 
meantime, how far the expression a “ wave of cold,” as 
applied to the regions of space, is justifiable. And this 
doubt leads us to another very important consideration : do 
these warm and cold years extend simultaneously over the 
whole earth ? If not, it is surely hazardous to assign them 
to cosmic causes. It is understood that the season of 1879, 
