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placement of the ordinary weather we naturally look for as each 

 season returns — that the machinery of the heavens was all out 

 of gear, and no longer to be depended upon. I have known 

 the thermometer on Christmas Day higher than it had been 

 the midsummer day preceding. I remember one year in 

 which, for three consecutive days in June, the maximum 

 temperature did not exceed 52*, 54", and 55", respectively — 

 other years in which it got up, in December, as high as 60". 

 I have seen the thermometer again, in the middle of March, 

 as low as 7°, at another time near 70°. To take yet another 

 instance. The first half of October, 1 834, was characterised 

 by hot summer weather, with a temperature some days as 

 high as 75" ; during the same month in ] 836, at the 

 time of the Newmarket races, there was so heavy a fall 

 of snow that the course had to be swept before the horses 

 could run. 



The spring months, however, perhaps present the greatest 

 irregularity. Thus, April is not unfrequently as cold as 

 March, and one particular year (1837) March was the coldest 

 month of all. Yet April is sometimes warmer than May, and 

 I remember one year (1833) when Maj' was as hot as, if not 

 hotter than, any other month. It is singular that one month 

 should thus stand between two others, characterised respec- 

 tively as being occasionally, however rarely, one the coldest 

 the other the hottest month (though probably never both in 

 the same year), that intermediate month, April, partaking 

 sometimes of the character of the one extreme, sometimes of 

 the other. 



And, further, in April itself, what sudden and extraordinary 

 changes not unfrequently take place, even from one week to 

 another. On the 7th of April, 1859, the thermometer at 

 Swainswick rose to 78°, while in some parts of England, 

 according to the papers, it was as high as 80^ Only a week 

 previous it had been down to 26° — six degrees below the 



