The Press., 1916-09-07
IA WEATHER MYTH MUSIC IN MEXICO.
The Idea That the Old Fashioned
 Winter Was a Fury.
FAMOUS FROSTS WERE RARE.

Records Show That Remarkable Snow
 storms and Long Seasons of Hars Freezing Were Not All the Rule
 Testimony of Pepys and Evelyn.
 Perhaps the greatest of weather myths is the legend of the "old fash toned winter'-that prolonged season of ice and snow which is supposed tt have held the land in its grip every year. So firmly has this idea been hel( for many years that it came as shock when meteorologists first began tt delve into the records of the past anG prove it's inaccuracy.
 There can be no doubt that Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, artists who depicted winter scenes, and, in { later era, the Christmas number an( the Christmas card are mainly respon sible for the belief that up to abou half a century ago the British winters were always extremely severe.
 Such records as we possess prove the fallacy of the idea. No records of tho weather were kept up to about fifty or sixty years ago, so that we have t( rely on, the statements of private dia ries and old family records, and there fore it takes q lot of research to obtain any data at all.
 In olden times no one troubled t( make note of average weather, fol writing was an art possessed only b.! few, and writing materials were har( to obtain; hence it is that mention i. made only of something unusual, some abnormally mild winter or heavy fal of snow or prolonged frOsts.
 And when all is said there are com paratively few of the latter, although they were likely to be recorded, while the milder ones would be passed over A few years ago there were published in France some notes concerning yer. mild winters in early times. Gregor. of Tours tells us that 5S4 was excep tiCnally milI, as were the winters O. sos. S34. S44 and 1907, when influenza was rife.
 Another mild season occurred il 1229. when the birds are said to have matched their young by February , while the weather journal of the Rev William Merle, which is in the Bod leian library at Oxford, shows us tha during the middle of the fourteenth century the weather was very much q: it is now and that mild winters were oct uncommon.
 There were one or two mild winter: during the next hundred years, tht most notable one being that of 1495 when barley and corn were in the ca at the end of January. Writings of tht sixteenth century have similar testf tions only going to prove the rule be cause they aroused so much comment.
 pepys and Evelyn come to our ai, from the middle to the end of the sev enteenth century and prove conclusive " that the old fashioned winter is { myth. The dairies of these famous writers have been analysed. and as { result it is found that falls of snow are mentioned only thirteen times over nearly sixty years, while exceptionally heavy storms are referred to only three ines
 Tn the same period there were but six prolonged frOsts, and apparently rnly the famous one of 16S3-4 and an. other a few years later were so severe as the modern ones of 1S9O-1 and 1895 In January. 1861, Pepys comments or the mild winter. and ill December of the following year he notes that he awoke to find the roofs covered with snow. which he had not seen for three years.
 Evelyn has the same story to tell Il few hard winters and many mild ones. Su h years were 1686-7, Dec 20, Little appearance of winter as yet" and 1c02-3, Feb. 4, Hitherto an exceedingly mild winter-an ex- traordin"rily dry and warm season. without frost and like a new spring such as has not been known for many years"
 Here al.d there we come across ref erenceS to the weather which are just like the letters written to modern newspapers informing readers that roses ;Ld primroses were in bloom in my gar~.cn on Christmas day" Gil bert Whites record of the weather be- tween 17GS and 1798 helps to end the myth. for fhe same number of years at the present day would show pretty much the same sort of weather. as thirteen of the Deccmbers were mild and wet.
 There were mild winters in the begin hing of the nineteenth century. as well as one cr two severe ones. so that we may rest assured that the "old fash tened winter was just like the new fashioned ones.-E"neSt c. Pulbrook in London Family Herald.