396 The Natural History of Selborne 



following night ; so that by the morning of the gth the works 

 of men were quite overwhelmed, the lanes filled so as to be 

 impassable, and the ground covered twelve or fifteen inches 

 without any drifting. In the evening of the gth 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 roth, 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 icth, 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 roth, written to Mr. , 



and entreated 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 loth, at eleven at night, it was down only to 17, and the 

 next morning at 22, when mine was at 10 ! We were so dis- 

 turbed at this unexpected reverse of comparative local cold, 

 that we sent one of my glasses up, thinking that of Mr. 

 must, somehow, be wrongly constructed. But when the in- 

 struments came to be confronted, they went exactly together; 

 so that for one night at least, the cold at Newton was 1 8 less 

 than at Selborne; and, through the whole frost, 10 or I2 . 1 

 And indeed, when we came to observe consequences, we could 

 readily credit this ; for all my laurustines, bays, ilexes, arbu- 



1 I have observed an exactly similar fact on Hind Head, where the 

 thermometer on frosty nights often stands higher than in the valley 

 below. ED. 



