During the cold weather of last December (1878) we heard much about old-fashioned winters. It was generally assumed that some thirty or forty years ago the winters were colder than they now are. Some began to speculate on the probability that we may be about to have a cycle of cold winters, continuing perhaps for thirty or forty years, as the cycle of mild winters is commonly supposed to have done. If any doubts were expressed as to the greater severity of winter weather thirty or forty years ago, evidence was forthcoming to show that at that time our smaller rivers were commonly frozen over during the winter, and the larger rivers always encumbered with masses of ice, and not unfrequently frozen from source to estuary. Skating was spoken of as a half-forgotten pastime in these days, as compared with what it was when the seniors of our time were lads. Nor were dismal stories wanting of villages snowed up for months, of men and women who had been lost amid snowdrifts, and of other troubles such as we now associate rather with Siberian than with British winters. Turning over recently the volume of the 'Penny Magazine' for the year 1837, I came across a passage which shows that these ideas about winter weather forty years ago were entertained forty years ago about winter weather eighty or ninety years ago. It occurs in an article on the 'Peculiarities of the Climate of Canada and the United States.' Discussing the theory whether the clearing away of forests has any influence in mitigating the severity of winter weather, the writer of the article says, 'Many persons assert, and I believe with some degree of accuracy, that the seasons in Europe, and in our own island particularly, have undergone a remarkable change within the memory of many persons now living; and if such really be the case, how few attempts have been made to account for this change, since no great natural phenomenon, like that of clearing away millions of acres of forest timber, and thereby exposing the cold and moist soil to the action of the sun's rays, has recently taken place here; so that if the climate of Great Britain has actually undergone a change, the cause, whatever that may be, must be of a different nature from that generally supposed to affect the climate of North America.' It must be explained that, though in this passage the writer does not speak of a diminution in the severity of the winters, it is a change of that sort that he is really referring to. He had said, a few lines before, that 'some of the older inhabitants of North America will declare to you that the winters are much less severe "now" than they were forty or fifty years ago,' and in the passage quoted he is discussing the possibility of a similar change in Europe, where, however, as he points out, the cause assigned to the supposed change in America has certainly no existence. Since 1830, by the way, the theory has been advanced that the supposed