WINTER 1879-80 UPON TREES AND SHRUBS. 69 



Scottish Meteorological Society, we are able to give some of the 

 more remarkable registers, as verified by him with his usual 

 accuracy. 



" The lowest temperature," he states, " occurred on December 4, 

 1879, and was at Springwood Park, near Kelso, where 16° below 

 zero was marked ; at Paxton House, Berwickshire, 12° below 

 zero ; and at Thirlstane Castle, 8° below zero ; and at Milne- 

 Graden, also in Berwickshire, 4° below zero were noted on the 

 same night. Other very low temperatures are recorded on this 

 same night in East Lothian, Berwickshire, and Roxburghshire, 

 but these were exposed temperatures, and the indicating thermo- 

 meters were mostly unverified. Thus the temperature 23° below 

 zero recorded at Blackadder, Berwickshire, was with an imper- 

 fect thermometer fully exposed on a post over tlie snow. Simi- 

 larly, at Allanbank, Berwickshire, we find 13° below zero ; at 

 iSTinewells, 8° below zero. At an altitude, however, of 300 feet 

 higher than at these localities, but in the same district, one of 

 Kemp's registering thermometers (verified) recorded 5° above 

 zero ; but the severe frosty mists and winds nearer the Black- 

 adder and Whitadder rivers invariably intensify the cold, and 

 may so far account for the great difference in temperature in so 

 short a distance geographically." At East Linton, Haddington- 

 shire, on the bank of the Tyne, the protected thermometer 

 marked 1° below zero ; the same instrument, on the same site, 

 having recorded 4° below zero on the night of Christmas 1860. 

 At Eyemouth, on the coast of Berwickshire, and quite within 

 the mitif^atin" influences of the sea — so well known as an 

 ameliorating factor in every severe frost — the cold was more 

 intense than anything known since 1860-61, having reached the 

 unusually low reading of 3° above zero ! Eroni Dumfries, 

 Aberfeldy, and the Clyde districts reports of the severity of the 

 storm show it to have been there also particularly intense. Eroni 

 the geographical area of the extent of the storm, it will be 

 noted that it chiefly embraced the basins of the Tay, Forth, 

 Tweed, Tyne, Whitadder, &c., and tributaries and other smaller 

 streams ; and in every instance the most severe damage to trees 

 and shrubs occurred in the low-lying localities within the 

 influence of the mists and hoar-frosts which i»revailed in the 

 proximity of such situations. For example, at Craigiehall, near 

 Edinburgh, and at Carluwrie, a short distance farther west, and 

 both close to the liiver Almond, far greater injury has been 

 sustained during last winter than in 1860-61, and at both sites 

 (within 100 feet altitude) many coniferous and evergreen shrubs 

 were killed to the ground in that remarkable year. 



A very remarkable peculiarity of the manner in which trees 

 and shrubs suflered from the eflects of last winter's and the 

 previous year's severe weather was noted at Carlowrie, where, in 



