Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1890-02-21
yBLIsHED DAILY AND TRI-wEEKLY AT THE
Gazette Building. 80 and 81 Prince st.
ICoMMUNICATED.
About the Weather.

COMMUNICATED.
About the Weather
While cur neighbors Of the trans Missis.
sisippi region have been wsdiog through
snow dyit;s and sledsiGg over frozen rivers,
with tee mercury down to twenty-five and
thirty degrees below zero We, in this highly
favored section, may well Congratulate our
selves oo the kindly way Ia which The
present winter has dealt with us. The
weather we have been having the season
through has doubtless been the most re-
markable Of any winter weather that can
be recalled 5y the oldest living person OF
our generation. From the fret day o! No.
yember, 1889. 10 this twentieth day OF
February, 1890, there has not been ftoat
enough 10 encrust the ground more than an
inch in depth, and ell the SHOWS which have
fallen would not together combined, have
made eu inch in thickness. There has been
no hail nor sleet, an not enough ice on the
Potomac to freeze can of cream. The
small boy, much 10 bis disappointment, has
net had even trial on his sskates. The pre-
vsiling winds have been from the lands OF
the palm and the orange. On any day the
oloughmar might have turned his furrows
ss in summer. Grass has been growing
NEST of the time, snd cattle have been graz
ing in the feids.
uonth ago the wayside aders dropped
,heir blossoms. and now, wood vio!ets are
10 bloom. and the trailing sfbutus opens liz
starry petals along the meadow hlllsldfs.
Peach trees, too, quickened into their
new life by the south winds breath, ere open
ing their buds, we fear, all too premalurely.
The ground hog mpeled by that unerrlng
lo,o IF nts loft
Gays ego, and II no bad luck befel him must
now be we'll on his journey TO that bourne
wbitaer 40 man knoweth and OF which no
man eau tell. The frogs are out for the
bird iims and have come to stay. The
feng end ponds are noisy with their JUDI.
snt crcakipgs. Larks, robins and blue
birds ere on the wing looking for mates and
nesting places Fishermen ars already
casting their nets in the river for the fret
run Of herring and shad. Inded, oil things
about snd around Us proclaim that the reign
of our very mild winter, almost mlsnomer,
is over, and that spring has indeed come to
abide. Who, then, shall say after this, that
the muskret when be built his den 60 fraily
last fell, and the squirrel when he laid up
so little store of nuts, aud the wild goose
whom be larried in more northern lands
were not good prophets of the weather
Much better than Deyoe and Virgins we
think.
The question now for scentiats, and par
ticularly chinatologists to determine, In
view cf oil these remarkable weather phen
omena we have been realizing, is May not
our climate be permanently changing, or at
least that of our winters as we approach
The threshold of the 10Th century. Somebody
has said that the course of the Gulf Stream
was being DETECTED more and mora with
it's warming Influences toward our Atlantic
coast as the years rolled by. The climatic
changes herea5outs have certainly been
marvellous since the years Of our own boy.
hood memories Then it was not unusual
In winter for the ground to be frozen foot
in depth and to be covered with successive
falls Of snow until the zig Gag fences Of the
fields were almost hidden from view, and
the sleighs, with their juggling bells and
merry parties, took the place of wheeling
vehicles for weeks at time. The rivers
were embargoed with solid or drifting ice
for months, and such skating and sliding as
the ponds afforded, aud such coassipg down
the hills Well, the boys and girls then
surely had winter delights But all these
old tins occurrences seem to have had their
day and are now as tale that Is told. over
toe land you can see the wrecks OF the old
sleiehs in which the merry parties coursed
over the snow bound roads, lying among the
rubbish piles of old farm houses, very sad
mementoes Of joyous winter times long van
ished. County ice houses are falling into
ruin, and it does seem that there ia g proba-
bility of our having to look iD the coming
years for our supplies of the cooling article
to the rivers of Maine.
Ooc. on time, so the records of geology
tell u, in finite cycles before the coming of
Nimrod, the mighty hunter, or Uric, the
builder Of cities In the Mesopotamian Val.
lev, or the strsnding of the ark of Noah on
the heights of Ararat, and before the great
Appalachian chain of mountains had been
upliited from the depths. the primeval wa
tiers which surged over Virginia and On to
the Mississippi basin were warm as the seas
of the tropics and were the realms Of the
teredo, the nautilus, the coral Insect, and
mighty host of saurain monsters; and who
shall say that geologic history like the his.
tory OF individuals and nations may not re-
peat itself, and that our climate may not, in
the inscrutsble order of Gods appointings,
be drifting back 10 that of the orange and
the palm
From the peTpatually frozen hills of Sibe-
ria the natives dig out the preserved forms
of the elephants of once tropical climate
feed their dogs on their fash and send their
tusks to the Russian markets. But l am
trespassing upon your space and SO will
stop short. w. HIS.
Andalusis, Va.