EDLEY.

'We may soon expect winter,' said Sam Holt, as he drew forth his
gigantic snow-shoes, which had been standing up against the interior
wall of the shanty, and now emerged into the brilliant sunshine.

'Soon expect it!' ejaculated Robert; 'why, I should say it had very
decidedly arrived already. I am sure twelve inches of snow must have
fallen last afternoon and night.'

'It is late this year; I've seen it deep enough for sleighing the second
week in November; and from this till March the ground will be hidden,
generally under a blanket four feet thick. You are only on the outskirts
of winter as yet.'

'Four months! I wonder it doesn't kill all vegetation.'

'On the contrary, it is the best thing possible for vegetation. Only for
the warm close covering of snow, the intense and long-continued frost
would penetrate the soil too deeply to be altogether thawed by the
summer sun.'

'I was very much struck,' said Robert, 'by seeing, in a cemetery near
Quebec, a vault fitted with stone shelves, for the reception of the
bodies of people who die during winter, as they cannot be properly
interred till the next spring.'

'Yes; Lower Canada is much colder than our section of the Province.
Learned men say something about the regular northward tendency of the
isothermal lines from east to west; certain it is that, the farther west
you go, the higher is the mean annual temperature, back to the Pacific,
I believe. So the French Canadians have much the worst of the cold. You
might have noticed flights of steps to the doors of the _habitans_? That
was a provision against snowing time; and another proof of the severity
of the frost is that any mason work not bedded at least three feet deep
into the earth is dislodged by the April thaws.

'Now what would you say to freezing up your winter stores of meat and
fowls? They're obliged to do it in Lower Canada. Fresh mutton, pork,
turkeys, geese, fowls, and even fish, all stiff and hard as stone,
are packed in boxes and stowed away in a shed till wanted. The only
precaution needful is to bring out the meat into the kitchen a few days
before use, that it may have time to thaw. Yet I can tell you that
winter is our merriest time; for snow, the great leveller, has made all
the roads, even the most rickety corduroy, smooth as a bowling-green;
consequently sleighing and toboggin parties without end are carried on.'

'That's a terribly hard word,' remarked Arthur.

'It represents