THE CLIMATE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 283 



The weather during a part of the late winter was 

 somewhat severer than our average English winter- 

 weather. The thermometer, however, at no time 

 descended below zero, as it did on January 3, 1854; 

 and the diurnal mean did not descend at any time so 

 low as 10 7', as it did on January 20, 1838. There is 

 no foundation for the opinion, sometimes expressed, 

 that our winter weather is changing. An examination 

 of the columns in the Greenwich meteorological tables, 

 show that the successive recurrence of several mild 

 winters is not peculiar to the last decade or two. The 

 observations of Gilbert White, imperfect as they are 

 compared with modern observations, point the same 

 way. 



Among severe, but short, intervals of cold weather may 

 be noted that which occurred in January 1768. The 

 frost was so intense, says Gilbert White, ' that horses 

 fell sick with an epidemic distemper which injured the 

 winds of many and killed some; meat was so hard 

 frozen that it could not be spitted, nor secured but in 

 cellars ; and bays, laurustines, and laurels were killed.' 



White's account of the summer of 1783 will fitly 

 close our sketch of British weather-changes. ' This 

 summer,' he says, 'was an amazing and portentous one, 

 and full of horrible phenomena ; for besides the alarm- 

 ing meteors and tremendous thunder-storms that 

 affrighted and distressed the different counties of this 

 kingdom, the peculiar haze or smoky fog that prevailed 

 for many weeks in this island, and in every part of 

 Europe, and even -beyond its limits, was a most ex- 



