180 
WINTER IN COLD CLIMATES. 
of France ; for there, as we have seen, the winter is believed 
to extend itself into the months which belong to the spring, 
later than at periods when the forest covered the greater part 
of the ground.* More causes than one doubtless contribute to 
this result; but in the case of Sweden and the United States, 
the most obvious explanation of the fact is to be found in the 
loss of the shelter afforded to the ground by the thick coating 
of leaves which the forest sheds upon it, and the snow which 
the woods protect from blowing away, or from melting in the 
brief thaws of winter. I have already remarked that bare 
ground freezes much deeper than that which is covered by 
beds of leaves, and when the earth is thickly coated with 
snow, the strata frozen before it fell begin to thaw. It is not 
uncommon to find the ground in the woods, where the snow 
lies two or three feet deep, entirely free from frost, when the 
atmospheric temperature has been for several weeks below the 
freezing point, and for some days even below the zero of Fahr¬ 
enheit. When the ground is cleared and brought under culti¬ 
vation, the leaves are ploughed into the soil and decomposed, 
and the snow, especially upon knolls and eminences, is blown 
* It has been observed in Sweden that the spring, in many districts 
where the forests have been cleared off, now comes on a fortnight later 
than in the last century. —Asbjornsen, Oni Skovene i Norge, p. 101. 
The conclusion arrived at by Noah Webster, in his very learned and 
able paper on the supposed change in the temperature of wunter, read be¬ 
fore the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799, was as fol¬ 
lows: “From a careful comparison of these facts, it appears that the 
weather, in modern winters, in the United States, is more inconstant than 
when the earth was covered with woods, at the first settlement of Euro¬ 
peans in the country; that the warm weather of autumn extends further 
into the winter months, and the cold weather of winter and spring en¬ 
croaches upon the summer; that, the wind being more variable, snow is 
less permanent, and perhaps the same remark may be applicable to the ice 
of the rivers. These effects seem to result necessarily from the greater 
quantity of heat accumulated in the earth in summer since the ground 
has been cleared of wood and exposed to the rays of the sun, and to the 
greater depth of frost in the earth in winter by the exposure of its un¬ 
covered surface to the cold atmosphere .”—Collection of Papers by Noah 
Webster, p. 162. 
