WEATHER. 317 



that we thought it would be curious to attend 

 to the motions of a thermometer; we therefore 

 hung- out two, one made by Martin and one by 

 Dolland, 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 10th, in the morning, the quicksilver of 

 Dolland' 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 10th, 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 10th, 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 phenomena, in so 

 elevated a region, at two hundred feet or more 

 above my house. But, behold! on the 10th, 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, 

 1 or 1 2 degrees ; and, indeed, when we came to 

 observe consequences, we could readily credit 



