In the year 1770, when Benjamin Franklin was president of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, a paper was read before that society entitled: “An Attempt to account for the Change of Climate which has been Observed in the Middle Colonies of North America.” It is published in the first volume of the society’s Transactions. Barring the long _s_’s and the use of the word “colonies,” the greater part of it might have been addressed to the owners of automobiles and Liberty bonds. We are told of a “very observable change of climate,” remarked by everybody who has resided long in Pennsylvania and the neighboring colonies. “Our winters,” says the author, “are not so intensely cold, nor are our summers so disagreeably warm as they have been.” These changes he ascribes to the clearing and cultivation of the country. Another firm believer in old-fashioned winters and old-fashioned summers was Thomas Jefferson. In his “Notes on Virginia,” written in 1781, he says: “A change in our climate is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are become much more moderate, within the memory even of the middle-aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep. They do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, two or three days, and very rarely a week. They are remembered to have been formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance. The elderly inform me, the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every winter.” Samuel Williams, who published a “History of Vermont” in 1794, uses almost identical language in reference to the climate of that State. “Snows,” he says, “are neither so frequent, deep, or of so long continuance as they were formerly; and they are yet declining very fast in their number, quantity, and duration.” That these changes, he adds, “are much connected with and greatly accelerated by the cultivation of the country cannot be doubted.”