The Wesleyan Missionary Society of England has a mission at Edmonton, under the care of Rev. Thomas Woolsey. The following extracts from his journal will show the progress of the winter and spring season in 1855:-- "Nov. 1. A little snow has fallen for the first time. " 12. Swamps frozen over. " 13. A little more snow. " 17. Crossed river on the ice. Dec. 2. The past week has been remarkably mild. " 9. More snow. 1856. Jan. 8 to 11. More like spring than winter. Jan. 13. Fine open weather. " 17. Somewhat colder. Feb. 14. Weather open. " 16. Snow rapidly disappearing. Mar. 11. More snow. " 17. Firing pasture-grounds to-day. " 18. Thunder-storm. " 21. Ducks and geese returning. " 30. More snow, but it is rapidly disappearing. " 31. Snow quite gone. April 7. Ploughing commenced. " 28. First wheat sown." The succeeding winter was more severe, and three feet of snow fell during the season, but the spring opened quite as early as in 1856. The comparative mildness of the winter climate of all this vast area of the West and Northwest, at the head-waters of the Missouri, and in the British dominions, as far north as latitude 70°, is in a great measure due to the warm winds of the Pacific. In the autumn of 1868 I crossed the Pacific, from Japan to San Francisco, in the Pacific mail-steamer Colorado. Soon after leaving the Bay of Yokohama we entered the Kuro-Siwo, or the Black Ocean River of the Asiatic coast. This ocean current bears a remarkable resemblance to the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. Along the eastern shore of Japan the water, like that along Virginia and the Carolinas, is very cold, but we suddenly pass into the heated river, which, starting from the vicinity of the Philippine Islands, laves the eastern shore of Formosa, and rushes past the Bay of Yeddo at the rate of eighty miles per day. This heated river strikes across the Northern Pacific to British Columbia and Puget Sound, giving a genial climate nearly up to the Arctic Circle. No icebergs are ever encountered in the North Pacific. The influence of the Kuro-Siwo upon the Northwest is very much like that which the Gulf Stream has upon England and Norway. It gives to Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Vancouver Island winters so mild that the people cannot lay in a supply of ice for the summer. Roses bloom in the gardens throughout the year. So the water heated beneath the tropics, off the eastern coast of Siam and north of Borneo, flows along the shore of Japan up to the Aleutian Isles, imparting its heat to the air, which, under the universal law, ascends when heated, and sweeps over the Rocky Mountains, and tempers the climate east of them almost to Hudson Bay.