Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-03-14

which the barbarian armies securely
crossed. Even in comparatively mod
ern times intense cold has visited large por-
tions of Europe. In 1868 the Baltic was
clothed with an immense sheet of ice, over
which Charles x. marched his entire army
from HoIstein to Denmark, assistance of fifty
miles. There are not wanting several in
stances, extending as far as 1928, when
the Thames was so thickly coated with ice
as to furnish safe entertainment to large
fairs, while just after our western country
was settled, at the close of the last century,
the Recovered sea around Holland was the
theatre of a winters campaign Arago,
the distinguished French physicist, attempt
ed 70 argue from the collected annals of ex-
IRENE winters that the climate. of the CONT
nenfs had in the lapse of agesSof the worlds
physical life undergone no changes. But
in the light of the present century, now
nearly three-auarters passed, such view
must be discarded. Whether we ac'
cept the ten year cycle of hot and
cold years, or whether we adopt the
cycle of forty years, indicated BY the
rigorous winters o.. 1909, 1749, 1859, 1880
and 1912, including the present, we find
great mitigation IN the cold. No winter in
the nineteenth century will compare in Sc
verify with many that can be named in the
,,-o,,,o,,e tba v,oadiaauol end tho classic no
RODS, in which latter Ovid mentions the
fact that the waves of the Euxine or Black
Sea were strongly CONCEALED. The colonial
records of America give but very meagre
accounts of accurate thermometric data,
bat few facts show that our climate, cold
as this winter has been, is not as rigorous
as when the present century opened. Mr..
jefferson states, in his valuable papers, that
in 1870 the Chesapeake Bay was frozen solid
from its head to the mouth of the Potomac
River, and at Annapolis, where it is more
than five miles between the nearest points
of land, the ice was so firm that loaded car
riages went over it. From this and other
phenomenal occurrences, the Virginia phil
osopher inferred that when the county
was cleared the extreme cold would be d.
minished. The old records of American
climate, such as those of Rush and Volney,
indicate winters of greater severity than
now occur. Samuel Williams, of Harvard,
the learned author of series of thermome-
trio observations during the last part of the
previous century, computed the change of
winter climate at Boston at ten or twelve
degrees from 1880 TO 178S. As before init
mated, there are no thermemetric records
sufficiently comprehensive to afford infer
entail conclusions as to climatic change in
the West and the Valley of The Mississippi;
but the early accounts of the first settlers
and explorers all go to show extremes of
cold greater than are now experienced.
The Canadian settlers, until after the mid
die of the last century, found the climate
around Quebec too severe for corn to ripen.
1t is certain that our coolest winters since
1900 have not attained the low tempera.
lures of the preceding five decades, in
one of which, as we have seen, the
Chesapeake Bay was frozen over. The
winter of 1856 was marked by exsraordina-
ry and extensive refrigeration, holding
the rivers from st. Louis to Philadelphia
in its icy grip from December to late in
March; but this was an exception, and yet
can hardly be ranked with the early coloni-
al winters in point of intensity. The at
tempt has been made to explain these
changes of terrestrial climate by the
changes which man has wrought upon the
forest covered face OF the Continent and
drainage of the soil, resulting in dimin-
ished rainfall and snowfall Whether this
be theoretically correct or not, the facts re-
main the same; and they furnish additional
proof that the aerial shell of the earth is I'M
dersoing physical change, as well as the
solid crust and the deep sea beds.