NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. . OE 
and intreated him to hang out his thermometer, 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 roth, 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, think- 
ing that of Mr. must, somehow, be wrongly constructed. But, 
when the instruments came to be confronted, they went exactly 
together ; so that for one night at least, the cold at Newton was 
18° less than at Selborne ; and, through the whole frost. 10° or 12°, 
and indeed, when we came to observe consequences, we could 
readily credit this; for all my laurustines, bays, ilexes, arbutuses 
cypresses, and even my Portugal laurels,* and (which occasions 
more regret) my fine sloping laurel-hedge, were scorched up; while 
at Newton, the same trees have not lost a leaf! 
We had steady frost on to the 25th, when the thermometer in the 
morning was down to 10° with us, and at Newton only to 21°. 
Strong frost continued till the 31st, when some tendency to thaw 
was observed; and, by January the 3rd, 1785, the thaw was con- 
firmed, and some rain fell. 
A circumstance that I must not omit, because it was new to us, 
is, that on Friday, December the toth, being bright sunshine, the 
air was full of icy spzcu/e, floating in all direction, like atoms in a 
sunbeam let into a dark room. We thought them at first particles 
of the rime falling from my tall hedges ; but were soon convinced 
to the contrary, by making our observations in open places where 
no rime could reach us. Were they watery particles of the air 
frozen as they floated, or were they evaporations from the snow 
frozen as they mounted ? 
We were much obliged to the thermometers for the early infor- 
mation they gave us; and hurried our apples, pears, onions, potatoes, 
&c., into the cellar, and warm closets; while those who had not, 
or neglected such warnings, lost all their store of roots and fruits, 
and had their very bread and cheese frozen. 
I must not omit to tell you that, during these two Siberian days, 
my parlour cat was so electric, that had a person stroked her, and 
* Mr. Miller, in his ‘‘ Gardener’s Dictionary,’’ says positively that the Portugal laurels 
remained untouched in the remarkable frost of 1739-40. So that either that accurate 
observer was much mistaken, or else the frost of December r784 was much more severe 
and destructive than that in the year above-mentioned. 
