VOL. XLVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 455 



watery or weaker parts were frozen into plates of ice, sticking to each other by 

 their edges, the more spirituous parts remaining between them, in their inter- 

 stices, unfrozen ; which being drained off into another glass, the taste was almost 

 as strong as brandy, with a high flavour of the hop. 



Dec. 3 1 . This evening the cold was the most intense observed this season ; for 

 at 10 o'clock Fahrenheit's thermometer stood at 15 degrees. 



Jan. 1. This afternoon it began to thaw, and in the night froze again, by 

 which, next morning, the buildings in general appeared as if they had been 

 white-washed on the outside, being cased all over with ice; and the insides of 

 garrets and outhouses were covered in the same manner. 



Jan. 31, He exposed a glass of proof spirits, impregnated with the essence, 

 or oil extracted from the peel of oranges, at 10 in the evening, in the garden, 

 when Hauksbee's thermometer stood at g3°; at 8 next morning, he found it no 

 way affected by the frost ; nor did there seem any difference either in taste or 

 smell. Feb. 6. At 8 o'clock, he exposed in the garden a drinking glass of water, 

 which was completely frozen over in one minute's time ; and in 1 5 minutes the 

 ice was above -^ of an inch in thickness. Fahrenheit's thermometer then stood 

 at 21 degrees. A coarse grey thread, 2 feet in length, being dipped in water, 

 froze in 4 seconds, so stiff, that he took it by one end, and held it upright, as 

 if it had been a piece of wire. 



If any part of the human skin, the finger, for instance, was wet with spittle, 

 and immediately pressed on a piece of iron, in the open air, it would be frozen 

 so fast, as to stick to it; and, if plucked away hastily, would endanger the tear- 

 ing off the skin from the flesh. He tried the same experiment on lead, but the 

 sticking was much less; and to wood the finger did not stick at all. In some 

 places the ice was -i- of an inch thick, for several days together, within-side of 

 the windows, and that even in rooms where fire was kept; and when the weather 

 became warmer, it did not fall in drops, but vanished imperceptibly into the air, by 

 which it had been brought thither. These plates or cases of ice were sometimes 

 an assemblage of an infinite number of particles not much unlike the scales of 

 fishes; sometimes they resembled small spines, or the crystal shootings of various 

 kinds of salts ; and sometimes they represented a variety of landscapes with trees 

 and plants, from 1 to 3 or 4 inches in length, in so beautiful a manner, as nei- 

 ther pen nor pencil can express. 



LXFI. A Letler from M. de Ulsle, of the Royal Academy of Sciences at 

 Paris, to the Rev. James Bradley, D.D. Dated Paris, Nov. 30, 1752. 

 Translated fro7n the French, p. 312. 



This letter contains a comparison of Dr. Bradley's observations of the planet 

 Mars, with some corresponding observations made at the Cape of Good Hope 



