246 The Natural History 



exactly to zero, being 32 degrees below the freezing 

 point ; but by eleven in the morning, though in the 

 shade, it sprung up to 16^^ — a most unusual degree of 

 cold this for the south of England ! During these four 

 nights the cold was so penetrating that it occasioned ice 

 in warm chambers and under beds ; and in the day the 

 wind was so keen that persons of robust constitutions 

 could scarcely endure to face it. The Thames was at 

 once so frozen over both above and below bridge that 

 crowds ran about on the ice. The streets were now 

 strangely incumbered with snow, which crumbled and 

 trod dusty ; and, turning grey, resembled bay-salt ; what 

 had fallen on the roofs was so perfectly dry that, from 

 first to last, it lay twenty-six days on the houses in the 

 city ; a longer time than had been remembered by the 

 oldest housekeepers living. According to all appearances 

 we might now have expected the continuance of this 

 rigorous weather for weeks to come, since every night 

 increased in severity ; but behold, without any apparent 

 cause, on the ist of February a thaw took place, and some 

 rain followed before night ; making good the observation 

 above, that frosts often go off as it were at once, without 

 any gradual declension of cold. On the second of 

 February the thaw persisted ; and on the 3d swarms of 

 little insects were frisking and sporting in a court-yard at 

 South Lambeth, as if they had felt no frost. Why the 

 juices in the small bodies and smaller limbs of such 

 minute beings are not frozen is a matter of curious 

 inquiry. 



Severe frosts seem to be partial, or to run in currents ; 

 for, at the same juncture, as the author was informed by 

 accurate correspondents, at Lyndon in the county of 

 Rutland, the thermometer stood at 19 : at Blackburn, in 

 Lancashire, at 19 : and at Manchester at 21, 20, and i8. 

 Thus does some unknov/n circumstance strangely over- 



^ At Selborne the cold was greater than at any other place that 

 the author could hear of with certainty : though some reported at 

 the time that at a village in Kent, the thermometer fell two degrees 

 below zero, viz., 34 degrees below the freezing point. 



The thermometer used at Selborne was graduated by Benjamin 

 Mariin. 



