WINTER OF 1776. 273 



Severe frosts seem to be partial, or to run in currents ; for 

 at the same juncture, as the author was informed by accurate 

 correspondents, at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, the 

 thermometer stood at nineteen; at Blackburn, in Lancashire, 

 at nineteen ; and at Manchester, at twenty-one, twenty, and 

 eighteen. Thus does some unknown circumstance strangely 

 overbalance latitude, and render the cold sometimes much 

 greater in the southern than the northern parts of this 

 kingdom. 



The consequences of this severity were, that, in Hampshire, 

 at the melting of the snow, the wheat looked well, and the 

 turnips came forth little injured. The laurels and laurustines 

 were somewhat damaged, but only in hot aspects. No ever- 

 greens were quite destroyed ; and not half the damage 

 sustained that befell in January, 1768. Those laurels that 

 were a little scorched on the south sides, were perfectly 

 untouched on their north sides. The care taken to shake the 

 snow day by day from the branches, seemed greatly to avail 

 the author's evergreens. A neighbour's laurel hedge, in a 

 high situation, and facing to the north, was perfectly green 

 and vigorous ; and the Portugal laurels remained unhurt. 



As to the birds, the thrushes and blackbirds were mostly 

 destroyed ; and the partridges, by the weather and poachers, 

 were so thinned, that few remained to breed the following- 

 year. 



of trees ! Yet the genial warmth of spring having again tempered the 

 air, these eggs were hatched, and as numerously as in the mildest winters. ' 

 Since that time, there have been winters still more severe, for, in France, 

 as well as in several other European states, in December, 1788, the ther- 

 mometer fell considerably beneath that of 1709. 



" I subjected eggs of insects to a more severe trial than in the winter 

 of 1709. Among others were those of the silk -worm moth, and the elm 

 butterfly, which I enclosed in a glass vessel, and buried five hours in a 

 mixture of the ice and rock-salt, when the thermometer fell six degrees 

 below zero ; notwithstanding which, caterpillars were extruded from all 

 the eggs, and exactly at the same time with those which had not been 

 subjected to this experiment. In the succeeding year, I exposed them to 

 a still greater degree of cold. I prepared a mixture of rock-salt and 

 nitrate of ammonia, and reduced the thermometer to twenty-two degrees 

 below zero, which was twenty-three degrees lower than the cold of 1 709. 



ve find 

 ; same 



time, it is possessed of a principle of vitality which prevents its destruc- 

 tion. ED. 



