The Cold Wave.

There may be some satisfaction--though we doubt it--to know that the progress of cold waves is "due to thee gravity of the hydrostatic pressure due to the weight of the air in the rear of a volume of cold air advancing from the northwest, resulting from the diurnal rotation of the earth on its axis, giving a centrifugal force to the denser cold air greater than that of the neighboring warm air." This mechanical theory of the progress of the wave does not, however, explain exactly why the present (it is impossible at the moment to write "recent") cold wave should have sent the mercury down five degrees lower than any previous temperature which has been officially recorded. It is conceivable that the hydrostatic pressure was increased in some way by the war psychology, and the resisting power of the neighboring warmer air decreased, but it would be hard to maintain any such thesis as that. The simple fact is that scientific and dependable records of the weather are a comparatively new thing. They extend back in this country but 44 years. And they have already gone to prove that there is no such thing as a "change of climate," for better or for worse, in New England. The weather in Boston in essentially what it was at the days of the first settlement; and if there had been no record as low as 14 degrees below zero between the years 1873 and 1917, we may be entirely certain that the exact instruments which we now have would have recorded a temperature as low as that on several occasions since 1630, if they had been in existence. Boston Transcript.