“WORLD GROWING WARMER.
Whilst many people have been bemoaning the cold weather of June and July, it is rather questionable comfort to be told by a weather optimist in the London “Daily Mail” that the world, and particularly the northern hemisphere, is growing warmer. The process, he says, is rather a slow one, but it is none the less steady, and of late it seems to have accelerated to some extent. If we possessed records of the weather since the beginning of the Christian era it is certain that the tem-perature over the whole of Europe and North America would show a startling rise. Unfortunately the thermometer in a com-paratively modern invention, while wea-ther recording is a still more recent inno-vation. Yet for all that we can find plenty of proof, both in history and in other ways. For instance, in Caesar’s account of the Gallic wars we find fre-quent mention of frosts so intense that whole armies were able to cross broad rivers on the ice. We know, too, that in those days Germany’s winter was almost Arctic in its severity. These are conditions which have long since passed away, and it is not more than twice or thrice in a century that a river like the Seine freezes up. We are also aware that no farther back than the sixteenth cen-tury the winters in England were, on an average, much more vigorous than they are nowadays. Another interesting proof is obtained from the records of the Hudson Bay Company. We learn from them that within the last two centuries the average interval between the setting in of the winter frost and the coming of the spring thaw has decreased by no fewer than ten days. Again, European glaciers are everywhere receding. The ice fringes of both poles are retreating. Even during the comparatively short space of time that the Antarctic has been visited by man the, ice has retired some 40 miles. So let us cheer up.”
