VOL. VII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 3? 



same motion to the venal juice in plants : we having undeniable exjxiriments to 

 show, that the venal juice of plants and the blood of animals agree in this, that 

 they both, when they are once drawn from their respective veins, do forthwith 

 break and coagulate, and that the serum in the one, as well as in the other, 

 becomes a stiff' gelly by a little standing. 



Copi/ of a Letter from Somersetshire , concerning a 'Strange Frost about Bristol. 



N°90, p. 5138. 



The freezing rain, which fell here the Qth, lOth, or nth of December last, 

 has made such a destruction of trees in all the villages and highways, from 

 Bristol towards Wells, Shepton-Mallet, Bath and Bruton, and in other places 

 of the west, that both for the manner and matter it may seem incredible; and 

 is more strange than I have found in any English chronicle. 



A credible person thus writes of it, " The late prodigious frost has much 

 disabled many old orchards exposed to the north-east. Had it concluded with 

 some gusts of wind, it might have been of sad importance; I weighed the sprig 

 of an ash-tree of just three quarters of a pound, which was brought to my table; 

 the ice on it weighed 1 6 pounds, besides what was melted off by the hands of 

 those that brought it. A very small bent at the same time was produced, which 

 had an icicle, encompassing it, of five inches round by measure: yet all this 

 while, when trees and hedges were laden with ice, there was no ice to be seen 

 on our rivers, nor so much as on our standing pools." 



Similar or even worse and more extraordinary complaints I received from 

 several other places, and from eye witnesses of credit. Some travellers were 

 almost lost by the coldness of the freezing air, and freezing rain. All the trees, 

 young and old, on the highway from Bristol to Shepton, were so torn and 

 thrown down on both sides the ways, that they were unpassable. By the like 

 obstructions the carriers of Bruton were forced to return back. Some were 

 affrighted with the noise in the air, till they discerned that it was the clatter of 

 icy boughs dashed one against another by the wind. Some told me that riding 

 on the snowy downs, they saw this freezing rain fall upon the snow, and im- 

 mediately freeze to ice, without sinking at all into the snow; so that the snow 

 was covered with ice all along, and had been dangerous, if the ice had been 

 strong enough to bear them. 



On Wednesday, Dec. J 1, I saw a young man, who returning home from a 

 journey of five miles, and coming into a warm room, cried out of extreme 

 torments in all parts of his body. He affirmed, that the air, and the winds 

 were so unsufferably cold, that he was in utter despair of coming home alive ; 

 yet all that day nothing but moist dew fell under our feet. 



