386 PECULIARITIES OF 



mark the very unusual dryness of the atmos- 

 phere. 



Monday and Tuesday, July 18th and 19th, will 

 long be remembered as the acme of our suffering, 

 the thermometer standing in the shade of a passage 

 communicating immediately with the outer air, in 

 an open situation, at 82 of Fahrenheit. A few 

 yards nearer the air, on which the sun shone, it 

 rose to 93, without any influence from reflection 

 or other causes. In towns, and more confined 

 places, it is said, the heat was much greater. The 

 current of air now felt like that near the mouth of 

 an oven, heavy and oppressive, and occasioning 

 more unpleasant sensations than such a tempera- 

 ture usually creates; animals became distressed, 

 the young rooks of the season entered our gardens, 

 and approached our doors, as in severe frosts, with 

 open bills, panting for a cooler element ; horses 

 dropped exhausted on the roads ; many of the 

 public conveyances, which usually travelled by 

 day, waited till night, to save the cattle from the 

 overpowering influence of the sun. The leaves of 

 our apple and filbert trees, in dry situations, wi- 

 thered up ; large forest trees, especially the elm, 

 had their leaves so scorched by the sun, that they 

 fell from their sprays as in autumn, rustling along 

 the ground ; the larch became perfectly deciduous. 

 In our gardens, the havoc occasioned by the heat 

 was very manifest. The fruit of the gooseberry* 



