The Climate of Great Britain. 127 



noted that which occurred in January, 1768. The frost was so 

 intense, says Gilbert White, "that horses fell sick with an 

 epidemic distemper which injured the winds of many and killed 

 some ; meat was so hard frozen that it could not be spitted, 

 nor secured but in cellars; aud bays, laurustines, and laurels 

 were killed." 



White's account of the summer of 1783 will fitly close our 

 sketch of British weather-changes. " This summer," he says, 

 "was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible 

 phenomena ; for, besides the alarming meteors and tremendous 

 thunder-storms that affrighted and distressed the different 

 counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze, or smoky fog, that 

 prevailed for many weeks in this island, and in every part of 

 Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary 

 appearance, unlike anything knowu within the memory of 

 man. By my journal, I find that I had noticed this strange 

 occurrence from June 23rd to July 20th, inclusive, during 

 which period the wind varied to every quarter, without making 

 any alteration in the air. The sun at noon looked as blank and 

 ferruginous as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferru- 

 ginous light on the ground and floors of rooms, but was par- 

 ticularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. All the 

 time the heat was so intense that butchers' meat could hardly 

 be eaten the day after it was killed ; and the flies swarmed so in 

 the lanes and hedges, that they rendered the horses half frantic, 

 and riding irksome. The country people began to look with a 

 superstitious awe at the red, lowring aspect of the sun. Mil- 

 ton's noble simile, in his first book of ' Paradise Lost/ fre- 

 quently occurred to my mind; and it is, indeed, particularly 

 applicable, because towards the end, it alludes to a superstitious 

 kind of dread, with which the minds of men are always im- 

 pressed by such strange and unusual phenomena : — 



' As when the sun new risen, 

 Looks through the horizontal, misty air, 

 Shorn of his beams ; or, from behind the moon, 

 In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 

 On half the nations, and with fear of change 

 Perplexes monarchs.' " 



