OF SELBOENE. 307 



had, therefore, on the morning of the 10th, written to 



Mr. } and entreated him to hang out his thermometer, 



made by Adams ; and to pay some attention to it morning 

 and evening ; expecting wonderful phenomena, in so ele- 

 vated a region, at two hundred feet or more above my 

 house. But, behold ! on the 10th, 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 un- 

 expected reverse of comparative local cold, that we sent 



one of my glasses up, thinking that of Mr. must, 



somehow, be wrongly constructed. But, when the instru- 

 ments 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; and, indeed, when we came to observe consequences, 

 we could readily credit this; for all my laurustines, bays, 

 ilexes, arbutuses, cypresses, and even my Portugal laurels 1 , 

 and (which occasions more regret) my fine sloping laurel 

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

 have not lost a leaf ! 



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

 meter 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 observed ; and, by 

 January the 3rd, 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 10th, being bright 

 sunshine, the air was full of icy spiculcp,, floating in all 

 directions, like atoms in a sunbeam let into a dark room. 

 We thought them at first particles of the rime falling from 

 my tall hedges ; but were soon convinced to the contrary, by 

 making our observations in open places where no rime could 



1 Mr. Miller, in his Gardener's Dictionary, says positively that the 

 Portugal laurels remained untouched in the remarkable frost of 1739-40. 

 So that either that accurate observer was much mistaken, or else the 

 frost of December, 1784, was much more severe and destructive than 

 that in the year above mentioned. G. W. 



