6 OF THE HEAVENS AND THE AIR, 



other damage done to roads, fields, and hedges, not repaired 

 without a confiderable expence. 



On Sunday evening, 1 2th July, 1761, there was another Thun- 

 der-Shoiver at Neivcaftle and Rothbury, fuch as had not been within 

 any man's memory at the latter place, where the Coquet rofe to an 

 amazing height, entered the nurfery and garden at Rothbury-}\3.\\, 

 on an eminence, deftroyed feveral thoufand fir-plants, and left 

 many cart loads of ftones and pebbles in their room. 



By the favour of our hills and mountains, the receptacles of 

 winds, we are preferved from the more frequent vifits of this 

 dreadful artillery of the fkies, lightning and thunder, which in 

 a mineral country, like this, would otherwife be very common ; 

 the winds, which are nothing elfe but air agitated and put in 

 motion by our all-powerful and wife Creator, drive before them 

 and difperfe the nitrous vapours and exhalations, and make a 

 pure and falutary horizon. 



The great autumnal ftorm in 1756, which was fo general and 

 fatal in other counties, was in this very boifterous, but did not do 

 any other injury, befides making terrible Slaughter, if I may fo 

 fpeak, of large and ftately foreft-trees incur woods and plantations. 



Storms of Hail and Sno-w are frequent with us. In 1760, Dec. 24, 

 about 6 o'clock in the evening, we had at Simonburn a heavy fliower 

 of hailftones of a peculiar form, of the fize of the tip of a man's 

 little finger, with a flat bafis, angular and pointed. 



Shrove-Sunday, 21 ft Feb. ^762, was very fnowy and tempeftu- 

 ous ; the fnow driven into prodigious heaps in feveral places by 

 a boifterous wind, fharp and piercing, filling our imaginations 

 with fear for the fafety of every living creature expofcd to its 

 unrelenting rigour. 



8 Monday 



