Shields, who made so great a fuss, was employed by one of my father’s foremen at the lumbering, and the picture and its story are true in every essential particular. Upper and Lower Canada were thought by many to have extremely severe winters. It is probable the belief was well founded, but the climate of Upper Canada has undergone a very material change since that period (1835). To-day Upper Canada is pre-eminently a fruit-growing country. Apples, pears, peaches and grapes are staples in this favored land. COLD WINTERS OF YORE. Old men tell us that our winters are less severe now than they were fifty or sixty years ago. The long unbroken spells of extreme cold which they used to experience in the early days of our history, are not known now. It is true we do get a cold spell during the winter, now and again, and sometimes deep snow; but these cold spells soon break, and the deep snows do not remain all winter. Not long since I was talking with one of the Grand Trunk Railway conductors, who had been on the line for over twenty years. He said that when he first came on the line it was not at all unusual to have the snow even with the car steps for miles. At other places, he said, they would for long distances pass through tunnels of snow piled or drifted as high as the car tops, whereas now the railway company seldom send out their snow-plough at all, nor does the snow seriously hinder the running of the trains. It may be that the snow does not now lie as deep as it did before the land was cleared, but is more drifted. This no doubt is true, in a measure, but then if we got as much snow as our fathers used to, and this drifted, the consequences would be most disastrous, and would be an effectual bar to locomotion.