248 The Natural History 



thermometer : we therefore hung out two ; one made 

 by Martin and one by DoUand, which soon began to 

 show us what we were to expect ; for, by ten o'clock, 

 they fell to 21, and at eleven to 4, when we went to bed. 

 On the I oth, in the morning, the quicksilver of DoUand's 

 glass was down to half a degree below zero ; and that of 

 Martin's, which was absurdly graduated only to four 

 degrees above zero, sunk quite into the brass guard of 

 the ball ; so that when the weather became most 

 interesting this was useless. On the loth, at eleven at 

 night, though the air was perfectly still, Dolland's glass 

 went down to one degree below zero ! This strange 

 severity of the weather made me very desirous to know 

 what degree of cold there might be in such an exalted 

 and near situation as Newton. We had therefore, on 



the morning of the loth, written to Mr. , and 



entreated him to hang out his thermometer, made by 

 Adams ; and to pay some attention to it morning and 

 evening ; expecting wonderful phaenomena, in so elevated 

 a region, at two hundred feet or more above my house. 

 But, behold ! on the loth, at eleven at night, it was down 

 only to 17, and the next morning at 22, when mine was 

 at 10. We were so disturbed at this unexpected reverse 

 of comparative local cold, that we sent one of my glasses 



up, thinking that of Mr. must, somehow, be wrongly 



constructed. But, when the instruments came to be 

 confronted, they went exactly together : so that, for one 

 night at least, the cold at Newton was 18 degrees less 

 than at Selborne ; and, through the whole frost, 10 or 12 

 degrees ; and indeed, when we came to observe conse- 

 quences, we could readily credit this ; for all my 

 laurustines, bays, ilexes, arbutuses, cypresses, and even 

 my Portugal laurels,^ and (which occasions more regret) 

 my fine sloping laurel hedge, were scorched up ; while, at 

 Newton, the same trees have not lost a leaf 1 



^ Mr. Miller, in his Gardener's Dictionary, says positively that 

 the Portugal laurels remained untouched in the remarkable frost of 

 1739-40- So that eitlier that accurate observer wa.s much mistaken, 

 or else the frost of December, 1784, was much more severe and 

 destructive than that in the year above mentioned. 



