296 • WINTER OF 1784. 



The first week in December was very wet, with the baro- 

 meter very low. On the 7th, with the barometer at 28*5 

 came on a vast snow, which continued all that day and the 

 next, and most part of the following night ; so that, by the 

 morning of the 9th, the works of men were quite overwhelmed, 

 the lanes filled so as to be impassable, and the ground covered 

 twelve or fifteen inches without any drifting. In the evening 

 of the 9th, the air began to be so very sharp that we thought 

 it would be curious to attend to the motions of a thermo- 

 meter ; we therefore hung out two, one made by Martin and 

 one by DoHond, which soon began to show us what we were 

 to expect ; for, by ten o'clock, they fell to 21, and, at eleven, 

 to 4, when we went to bed. On the 10th, in the morning, 

 the quicksilver of Dollond's glass was down to half a degree 

 below zero, and that of Martin's, which was absurdly gradu- 

 ated only to four degrees below zero, sunk quite into the 

 brass guard of the ball, so that, when the weather became 

 most interesting, this was useless. On the 10th, at eleven 

 at night, though the air was perfectly still, DoUond's glass 

 went down to one degree below zero ! This strange severity 

 of the weather made me very desirous to know what degree 

 of cold there might be in such an exalted and near situation 

 as Newton. We had, therefore, on the morning of the 10th, 

 written to Mr. , and entreated him to hang out his ther- 

 mometer, made by Adams, and to pay some attention to it 

 morning and evening, expecting wonderful phenomena in so 

 elevated a region, at two hundred feet, or more, above my 

 house ; but, behold ! on the 10th, at eleven at night, it was 

 down only to 17, and the next morning at 22, when mine 

 was at 10 ! We were so disturbed at this unexpected reverse 

 of comparative local cold, that we sent one of my glasses up, 

 thinking that of Mr. must, somehow, be wrongly con- 

 structed. But when the instruments came to be confronted, 

 they went exactly together, so that, for one night at least, the 

 cold at Newton was eighteen degrees less than at Selbome, 

 and, through the whole frost, ten or twelve degrees ; and, 

 indeed, when we came to observe consequences, we could 

 readily credit this, for all my laurustines, bays, ilexes, arbu- 

 tuses, cypresses, and even my Portugal laurels,* and, which 



• Mr. Miller, in his Gardener''s Dictionary, says positively, that the 



