phenomena, in so elevated a region as two hundred 

 feet or more above my house. But, behold ! on the 

 loth, 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 com- 

 parative 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° less than at Selborne ; and, through the 

 whole frost, 10° or 12° ; indeed, when we came to 

 observe the consequences, we could readily credit 

 this; for all my laurustines, bays, ilexes, arbutuses, 

 cypresses, and even my Portugal laurels, and (which 

 occasions more regret) my fine sloping laurel-hedge, 

 were scorched up ; while, at Newton, the same trees 

 had not lost a leaf ! 



We had steady frost on to the 25th, when the ther- 

 mometer in the morning was down to 10° with us, 

 and at Newton only to 21°. Strong frost continued 

 till the 31st, when some tendency to thaw was ob- 

 served ; and by the 3rd of January, 1785, the thaw 

 was confirmed, and some rain fell. 



A circumstance that I must not omit, because it 



was new to us, is, that on Friday, December the loth, 



being bright sunshine, the air was full of icy spicules, 



floating in all directions, like atoms in a sunbeam let 



into a dark room. We thought them, at first, par- 



189 



