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lowest reading was 3°, and at 9 a.m. there were 28 degrees of frost. 
But in January, 1881, the cold was even more intense. On Sunday, 
January 16th, the lowest reading for the previous night was 
7 degrees below zero: and at 9 a.m. it was still 4°5 below zero, 
having thus remained at or below zero from 9 o’clock on Saturday 
night to ro-30 on Sunday morning—a temperature not calculated 
to secure attention to the eloquent sermons which were no doubt 
preached in our churches on that day. From the 8th to the 26th 
the thermometer, with one exception, never rose above the freezing 
point. The waterfall at Hardraw Scar, Yorkshire, was frozen into 
a single icicle—an event which had not apparently occurred since 
the middle of the last century. The weather was the severest 
which had occurred since the famous cold of Christmas, 1860, 
which is I believe the most intense that has been known in Britain 
during the present century ; and when it is said that in London as 
many died, as fell victims to the visitation of cholera in 1848. In 
many places, from 7 o'clock on Christmas Eve till 11 the next 
day, the thermometer was below zero, precisely as it was in my 
own case in 1881. By sheep-farmers I am told, that year, 1860, 
has been remembered as “the bad year.” 
Of other such exceptional seasons that are recorded we may 
name that of 1838; of 1814, when the Solway was frozen over 
from the English to the Scottish side, and presented the appear- 
ance of a vast plain covered with rugged ridges of frozen snow— 
all access to even Maryport and Workington being blocked; and 
lastly, of 1796, when in London the thermometer is said to have 
fallen no less than 48 degrees below the freezing point to 16 under 
zero. Some people may like such winters. One of those I have 
named was, if I remember right, the scene of one of the Mid- 
lothian campaigns. But for ordinary mortals, I think many of us 
will be inclined to say with the Italians, In verno inferno. 
In the period over which my observations extend there have 
been many memorable storms, the most notable of which was the 
terrible gale of the 26th of January, 1884, so destructive to the 
trees and plantations of this country. It was indeed a winter of 
_ storms, as painful experience too well reminds me, each succeeding 
