534 FHILOSOFHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I7O9. 



and cold being more intense in the southern parts, than here, and the snow 

 much thicker. I began my London journey on the 26th of that month, three 

 days before the thaw, and found that for several miles (near the banks of the 

 river Eden, in both the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland) my horses 

 hardly ever trod upon snow. When we came to Stanemoor, on the confines 

 of Yorkshire, we found the ground covered pretty thick, and the deeper still 

 the farther we came to the south. None of our rivers or lakes were frozen 

 over ; and the extraordinary flocks of swans that resorted hither (nothing like 

 it having been seen by the oldest man living) was a sure argument that the 

 temperature of climates was strangely inverted." 



Another account from Edinburgh, November 5, 1709, from Sir Robert 

 Sibbald, says, " I can learn no extraordinary effects of the cold season here. 

 It was a long winter : the cold came early in October, and continued till near 

 May. There was much snow, which lay long on our south hills near this 

 place. We had not much frost to speak of, and it lasted not long." And as 

 in Scotland, so in Ireland, the frost was very moderate ; of which, among 

 other things, I have this account in a letter from Dublin, from Mr. S. Moly- 

 neaux, who says, they had there a harder winter than usual, but judges they 

 suffered not so much as their neighbours : they had two or three pretty hard 

 frosts, and some snow, but not of any remarkable continuance, as he 

 remembers. 



As to the degree of cold abroad, in the comparison I have already given, 

 between Dr. Scheuchzer's observations at Zurich, and mine here, I said, that 

 he noted the cold to have been excessive there ; but whether more than usual, 

 he saith not. But by a letter I have lately seen from his brother, it appears to 

 have been in as great and unusual excess there, as it was here with us. In that 

 paper also I said to what excess the frost arrived in Italy, viz. that the cold 

 there was so great, that for 20 years past they had not been sensible of greater, 

 and on Twelfth-day it wanted but half a degree of the extremity. 



As to the northern parts, in a letter received from Mr. Otho Sperling, from 

 Copenhagen, he calls it Hyems atrocissima : and I find it noted in the minutes 

 of the Royal Society of May 4, 1709, that Dr. Judichar said the ice was 

 frozen in the harbour of Copenhagen 27 inches thick ; and that April 9, N. S. 

 people had gone over between Schonen and Denmark on the ice. In the 

 northern parts of Grermany also I find they had the same fare with their neigh- 

 bours of Denmark : where the alternate changes of the winds, and of the cold, 

 more or less severe, commonly agreed with the same as observed at Upminster. 

 The snow was more with them, than with us ; the winds changed with us 

 from the easterly points to the westerly and southerly, a day or too sooner than 



