324 NATURAL HISTORY 
without any gradual declension of cold. On the 2d 
of February the thaw persisted, and on the 3d 
swarms of little insects were frisking and sporting 
in a courtyard of South Lambeth, as if they had 
felt no frost. Why the juices in the small bodies 
and smaller limbs of such minute beings are not 
frozen is a matter of curious inquiry. 
Severe frosts seem to be partial or to run in cur- 
rents; for, at the same juncture, as the author was 
informed by accurate correspondents, at Lyndon, 
in the county of Rutland, the thermometer stood at 
19°; at Blackburn, in Lancashire, at 19°; and 
at Manchester at 21°, 20°, and 18°. Thus does 
some unknown circumstance strangely overbalance 
Jatitude, and render the cold sometimes much 
greater in the southern than the northern parts of 
this kingdom. 
The consequences of this severity were, that in 
Hampshire, at the melting of the snow, the wheat 
looked well, and the turnips came forth little in- 
jured. The laurels and laurustines were somewhat 
damaged, but only in hot aspects. No evergreens 
were quite destroyed, and not half the damage 
sustained that befell in January, 1768. Those 
laurels that were a little scorched on the south 
sides were perfectly untouched on their north 
sides. ‘The care taken to shake the snow day by 
day from the branches seemed greatly to avail the 
author’s evergreens. A neighbour’s laurel hedge, 
in a high situation, and facing to the north, was 
perfectly green and vigorous; and the Portugal 
laurels remained unhurt. 
As to the birds, the thrushes and blackbirds 
were mostly destroyed ; and the partridges, by the 
