390 Meteorological Journal for April. 
To Levy Zachariah junior, of Portsea, Hants. for a com- 
bination of materials to be used as fuel.—8th of May.—6 mo. 
Results of a Meteorological Journal for April 1826, kept at 
the Observatory of the Royal Academy, Gosport, Hants. 
General Observations. 
This month has been very dry and fine for the season. Na- 
ture has been and is still clad in her richest blooming robes, 
and the beautifully varied tints of the blossoms of the fruit and 
other trees, with the verdure of the fields, have not been sur- 
passed in appearance since the year 1822. No disagreeable 
weather has occurred to prevent agricultural operations, and 
every advantage has been taken of it in this quarter. On the 
18th imstant, at midday, a pair of swallows passed by from the 
S.W.., being the first that have appeared here this year. 
During the latter part ofthe month very considerable changes 
occurred in the temperature of the air, as induced by cold 
northerly gales and showers of hail; several frosty mornings 
followed, and the 28th was the coldest day and night since the 
30th of March: on that morning, between 5 and 6 o'clock, 
there was a slight shower of snow, and early in the mornings 
of the 29th and 30th, a thick hoar-frost appeared on the tops 
of the houses and in the fields, and ice in the ponds and 
ditches as thick as a half-crown piece. 
The destructive effects of these late frosts on the bloom, and 
on the young fruit in open situations, after the uniformly mild 
weather to the 22d, are already perceptible. In consequence of 
this transition in the weather, the temperature of spring water, 
from the 20th to the morning of the 27th, decreased 15-100ths 
of a degree. 
Between the 24th and 28th there was a range in the ex- 
ternal thermometer of 35 degrees! so that the chilly air fell 
like the setting in of a second winter. The mean tempera- 
ture of the external air this month, is three-tenths of a de- 
gree less than that of last April; but it is two degrees higher 
than the mean of that month for the last ten years. 
The atmospheric and meteoric phaenomena that have come 
within our observations this month, are two paraselenz be- 
tween 8 and 9 P.M. on the 21st; two coloured parhelia at 
5 P.M. onthe 25th; one anthelion at 3 P.M. on the 28th; one 
lunar and four solar halos, eight meteors, lightning from the 
passing clouds in the evening of the 21st; and six gales of 
wind, or days on which they have prevailed ; namely, one from 
the North, three from the South-west, and two from the North 
west. 
Numerical 
