n8 MY LIFE 



Turvey, I was rather anxious, and when I got up in the 

 morning and saw that the sky was clear, I thought the 

 alamanack was wrong, and was glad of it ; but as soon as I 

 began my journey I found the air milder and the roads de- 

 cidedly softer than the day before, and this soon increased, 

 till by midday there was a regular thaw, which made the roads 

 quite soft, but as there had been no snow, not disagreeably 

 wet. I had, therefore, a very pleasant walk. I dined at Bed- 

 ford, and reached Turvey before dark. 



For the next six days we were at work laying out the main 

 lines for the survey of the parish, cutting hedges, ranging 

 flags, ascertaining boundaries, and beginning the actual meas- 

 urements, and every day the frost continued exactly as pre- 

 dicted by Murphy, culminating in the greatest cold on the 

 20th, after which there was a break. 



I may here state that the rest of the year was very inaccu- 

 rate, though there were certain striking coincidences. The 

 hottest day was nearly, or quite, correct. In August nine 

 days consecutively were exactly as predicted, and in Decem- 

 ber the very mild weather and fine Christmas Day was correct. 



But the perfect accuracy of the fourteen consecutive days 

 with the break on one day of an otherwise continuous frost, 

 and that day being fixed on my memory by the circumstance 

 of my having then to walk twenty miles, forced me to the 

 conclusion that there must have been " something in it " — ■ 

 that this could not have been attained by pure guess-work, 

 even once in a year, and though the most striking, it was not 

 by any means the only success. My copy of the almanack 

 disappeared half a century ago, but wishing to refresh my 

 memory of the circumstances, and to fix definitely the year 

 and day of my journey, I applied to the Meteorological So- 

 ciety to lend me the almanack, if they possessed it. They very 

 courteously obliged me, sending me the five years, 1838 to 

 1842, all that ever appeared, bound together. I then found 

 that my memory of the weather for a week before and after 

 my walk had been quite correct and as I have stated here, and 

 I also had the advantage of examining the succeeding years, 

 with notes of the actual weather in a considerable proportion 



