Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1873-03-17
OUR WINTERS.

The excessive cold of the winter just
past, as compared with that of preced-
ing years, has been matter of much
comment, and variety of causes have
been assigned for it, none however, be-
ing altogether conclusive. Scientific
men tell us that as the world ripens it
grows warmer, and that, from age to age
and from year to year, the climatic
change from cold to heat goes on steadi-
ly and uninterruptedly. Facts seem to
support this theory, and accepting it as
correct. we must look upon the past as
an exceptional winter. whose backward
change was owing to temporary irreg-
ularity in the generally weli-conducted
terrestrial system. It is certain that,
during the past fifty years-during the
past twenty-five, even-there has been a
change in our winters, both as to the fall
of snow and in the degree of cold at
tenaant upon the season. And, going
further back, the records of the early
history of this country furnish US with
reliable data from which to draw COM
parsons Sometimes inland farms and
villages were blockaded for days and
weeks by heavy falls of snow, accompan-
led by bitter cold In those days riv-
ers and bodies of water were frozen year
after year that now are rarely touched
by the action of the frost.
Not hundred years ago. in 1880, the
Chesapeake Bay was frozen solid from
its head to the mouth of the Potomac,
and at Annapolis, where the distance
from shore to shore is five miles, heavy
teams were able to cross for several weeks.
Such an event has not happened since,
though in the exceptional year of 1865
| there was general freezing up Of riv-
ers and harbors throughout the country.
In this city the harbor was covered with
ice thick enough to bear crowds of peo-
pie, who crossed to East Boston and
down to the port daily for many days.
Though the Chicago Inter-ocean, just
received, insists that navigation in Bos-
ton harbor is, at the present time, i'm
peded by ice, " such state of things has
not existed since the year mentioned.
+ In Europe the weather record reaches
farther back, and if reliance can be
placed upon history in this respect, we
may be glad that we were not in the
shoes of our forefathers. In the year
1886 there was so violent frost in a
midsummer day that the crops were all
killed. Some three hundred years be-
fore. in Constantinople, cold snap oc-
Cured, commencing in October and last
ing until the following February, freez-
ing the Mediterranean and the Black
seas on either side over hundred miles
from shore. Hundreds of persons were
frozen to death, and the commerce OF
the port was for time thoroughly de-
stroyed. Gibbon tells us that in early
times the freezing of the streams and
lakes of Central Europe was an unusual
occurrence. The Baltic was frozen in
1868 so thick that the entire army Of
Charles X marched across it from Hol
stein to Denmark, a distance of fifty
miles, with its train of baggage wagons
artillery and cavalry.
The year 1912 was rendered memora
BILE in Europe by one of the severest win
tiers that had occurred for many years
and that has never been surpassed since
with, perhaps, the exception of the win
ter of 1928. 1t performed for Russia /;
task she was unable to accomplish fo
herself, the destruction of the French
army of invasion. The cold set in ear
ly in November, being so intense tina
whole battallions of men persisted on tn
famous retreat, the fields and roads be
ing fairly choked with dead soldiers ant
horses. The loss of the French arm,
from this cause alone was over 10000,
men. 1t is favorite theory of scientis
is that the clearing off of the tim
Der of the country not only effect
the rainfall but the snowfall, and ais
the general temperature. That suppo
sition may be true in a degree, but ther
must be other causes, and deeper seate
ones, at work. Doubtless, with the com
ing discoveries in science, we shall al
rive at them, and be able to understan
clearly and fully what now is mere maj
ter of conjecture. Boston Globe.