INDIAN SUMMER, the name given to a period of mild and pleasant weather which gen erally occurs toward the end of autumn. The term first made its appearance in the last de cade of the 18th century. During the next decade the phrase was °second summer?' This indicates that the spell of weather known by this name was not generally noticed much be fore 1800. The term Indian summer became established about 20 years after its first appear ance, which was in western Pennsylvania, and spread to New England by 1798, to New York by 1799, to Canada by 1821, and to England by 1830. The term, is, then, not an Americanism; to write in praise of Indian summer is now a literary convention of three continents.
It is by no means easy to account for the origin of the term. The principal characteristics of the season which it describes are haziness, smokiness, and high temperature. Some ex planations of the origin of the term are (1) that the Indians predicted such spells of weather; (2) that the smokiness was produced by Indian fires; (3) that this was the last season of Indian attacks on the settlements of the whites; (4) that the season partook of the Indian character of deceptiveness; (5) that the name was given because one of the seasons of East India was similar in character. Horace Walpole used the
term in 1778, not in reference to America, but in relation to weather in the tropics. ((Squaw winter)) was a name for the spell of cold weather preceding the Indian summer, and perhaps the key to the nomenclature is to be sought in this latter term. Analogous terms in use in Eng land and Germany are: Martin's Sum mer,') °All Hallow Summer? "Saint Luke's "Old Woman's Summer?) Consult Monthly Weather Review (Vol. XXX, pp. 19-29; 69-79, Washington 1902).