282 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



evening ; expecting wonderful phaenomena, in so elevate J 

 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 unexpected 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 instruments came to be 

 confronted, they went exactly together : so that, for one 

 night at least, the cold at Newton was 18 degrees less 

 than at Selborne ; and, through the whole frost, 10 to 12 

 degrees ; and indeed, when we came to observe conse- 

 quences, 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 have not lost a leaf I 



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

 thermometer 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 sun-shine, the air was full of icy spiculx, floating in 

 all directions, like atoms in a sun-beam 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 reach us. Were they watery particles 



• Mr. Miller, in his " Gardener's Dictionary," says positively tiiat 

 the Portugal laurels remained untouched in the remarlfable frost ol 

 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. 



