276 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
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 de- 
stroyed ; and the partridges, by the weather and poachers, were so 
thinned that few remained to breed the following year. 
BETTE RO ae 
TO THE SAME. 
As the frost in December 1784 was very extraordinary, vou, I 
trust, will not be displeased to hear the particulars ; and especially 
when I promise to say no more about the severities of winter after 
I have finished this letter. 
The first week in December was very wet, with the barometer 
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 im- 
passable, 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 thermometer ; we therefore hung out two, one made by Martin 
and one by Dollond, 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 toth, 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 graduated only to four degrees above 
zero, sunk quite into the brass guard of the ball; so that when the 
weather became most interesting this was useless. On the roth, at 
eleven at night, though the air was perfectly still, Dollond’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 1oth, written to Mr. ——, 
