COLD WINTERS. 143 



to January 26th, and then for five days from February 5th 

 to February loth. The river had not been so many days 

 frost-bound in any winter since 1763. Even at Havre the 

 Seine was frozen over ; and at Rouen a fair was held upon 

 the river on January i8th. On January 25, after a thaw of 

 six days, the ice from Corbeil and Melun blocked up the 

 bridge at Choisy, forming a wall 16^ feet high. 



The winter of 1837-38 was remarkable for the long frost 

 of January and February, 1838. It lasted eight weeks. 

 Mr. Plant mentions that ' the lowest point of the thermo- 

 meter during this long and severe frost occurred on January 

 20, when the readings were from 5 degrees below zero, in 

 this district' (Moseley, near Birmingham), 'to 8 and 10 

 degrees below zero in more exposed aspects.' ' On the i3th 

 of January, the old Royal Exchange, London, was destroyed 

 by fire ; and the frost was so great that, when the fire 

 brigade had ceased playing on one portion of the burning 

 pile, the water in a short time became icicles of such large 

 dimensions, that the effect has been described as grand in 

 the extreme.' 



The winter of 1837-38 is not usually included as one 

 among the exceptionally cold winters on the Continent, and 

 the winter of 1840-41, though certainly cold in the British 

 Isles, is not included by Mr. Plant in his list of the coldest 

 winters since 1795. But this winter was exceedingly cold on 

 the Continent. At Paris there were fifty-nine days' frost, 

 twenty-seven of them consecutive viz. from December 5th, 

 when the cold began, to January ist. The intermission which 

 began on January i, lasted only till January 3, when there 

 was another week of frost There was frost again from 

 January 30 to February 10. One of the most remarkable 

 stories connected with the cold of this winter is thus told 

 by Flammarion : 'On the ^5th of December, the ashes of 

 Napoleon, brought back from St. Helena, entered Paris by 

 the Arc de Triomphe. The thermometer in places exposed 

 to nocturnal radiation, had that day marked 6.8 degrees 

 above zero. An immense crowd, the National Guard of 



