The Columbus journal., 1885-04-08
THE WEATHER.
The Reason Why Sudden and Marked
Changes Occur.

The Reason Why Sudden and Marked
Changes Occur.
Good old New England weather Of
the kind that delighted the hearts and
added years to the lives of our an
cestors seems to be thing of the past.
We manage to get about the same
amount Of heat and cold, of rain and
drought as formerly. but they are not
distributed as evenly. Weather comes
in streaks Of intense heat and piercing
cold, making our usually even climate
like that of Europe several hundred
years ago.
The records of former times tell ~
that vehicles crossed On the ice
in the Thames for weeks in 1908,
1907 and I'LL, and the forest trees
of England split open with frost.
The frosts were SO severe in Flanders
in 1914 that wine froze and was
chopped out with hatchets, and in Feb
ruary, 764, the Black Sea was covered
| with ice that extended ono hundred
! miles from the shore.
These sudden changes are not pleas
ant to healthy people, while those Of
weak constitutions find them very hard
| to endure. In Boston this winter tho
thermometer has varied fifty degrees
inside of twenty-four hours. A climate
that handles the temperature 50 care
lessly is wrong and should be remedied.
Residents of the country towns feel it
more keenly than in larger places, and
the complaint of social scientists that
the rural districts are becoming depop-
uiated and the cities overrun may be
accounted for on the theory that people
flock to the cities from an instinct of
self representation.
1t Is all very well to muse and specu-
late on these things and quote the
"oldest resident" In support OF our
theories, but after this is done the quee-
ton comes up, Can humanity do any
thing toward effecting q change? Ac-
cording to science the earth is gradu-
ally cooling of, preparatory TO shutting
up shop entirely; but as the reduction
OF its temperature has been only one
tenth of degree in the past two thou
sand years it can not cause oil our
trouble. Besides intensely warm spells
are as common as cold ones. From
this we infer that some human agency
is at work on the machine. The arti-
fetal heat produced is increasing every
year. Most of this is obtained from
coal, boarded up millions of years ago
as part of the suns surplus currency.
This, too, must be counted out. And
| now we come down to the last and
| most plausible theory of mans agency,
that he has so modified the surface Of
the earth that it can offer no barrier to
break the shock of rapid changes. He
has stripped the hillsides and meadows
of their forests, and turned the land
into pastures and tiliage that present
open surfaces to the action of the sun
and wind. Water that was retained
for weeks among the roots of the trees
runs off now in a few hours, and
droughts follow i'm the wake of deluges,
converting our country into camping
ground for billiards and other violent
meteorological demonstrations.
To obviate this we should plant trees
and more trees, we should put them
by the roadside and fences, on the
rocky hills and along the brooks, in
short, at every place where tree will
grow and nothing else will. A little
attention to this matter during the life
of one generation will add beauty to
our barren landscapes and do much
toward tanning down the fierce ele-
ments that sadly perplex us now
Boston Globe.
&e