A proximate cause of the cold summer is perhaps to be sought in an unusual intensity and extent of the area of low barometric pressure which is more or less permanently located in the vicinity of Iceland and, as one of the principal atmospheric “centers of action,” has a great deal to say about the weather of the countries adjacent to the North Atlantic. Dr. C. F. Brooks has called attention to the fact that the Arctic navigator, Scoresby, found unusually mild and open weather that summer in the seas east of Greenland. This would be explained by strong southerly winds, forming part of the “counter-clockwise” circulation around the Iceland low; and if the same pressure system extended its influence to our shores, persistent cold northwest winds might be expected to result over the northeastern United States. 7. INDIAN SUMMER AND THE ICE SAINTS Indian summer _weather_ is an undeniable fact. Every inhabitant of the northern United States and southern Canada is familiar with the mild, calm, hazy state of the atmosphere that frequently occurs in the autumn, sometimes following a brief period of unseasonable cold known as “squaw winter.” It is, however, one thing to recognize the existence of a certain type of weather as characteristic of our autumns, and quite another to admit that one definite spell of such weather occurs more or less regularly from year to year. One true summer, and only one, comes to pass each year, and occupies an approximately fixed place in the calendar. Even the so-called “year without a summer,” which we have just described, was merely a year in which the regular annual rise of the temperature curve was less marked than usual. Indian summer, on the contrary, has never been tied down to a particular part of a particular month. In his notes on the meteorological conditions at Concord, Massachusetts, during the ten years, 1851-1860, Thoreau records the occurrence of Indian summer weather on dates all the way from September 27 to December 13; a range of 77 days. The belief in the definite occurrence, year after year, of what has sometimes been called the “after-summer” is not peculiar to America. It prevails also in Europe, where this supposed period of renewed warmth has been assigned to certain dates, owing in part to its association with the names of particular saints in the calendar. These dates vary widely, however, from one region to another, ranging from August 15 (Julian calendar), the beginning of the “young women’s summer” of Russia, to November 15, St. Martin’s day, a date popularly associated with after-summer in Germany, Holland, France, Italy, and sometimes England.