414 
The Winter 0/ 1885-86. 
season at the least expense, is the subject of the remaining 
questions put in this enquiry. 
The Meteorology of the Season. 
Before proceeding with the agricultural lessons of the season, 
it may be as well first to give a short history of the meteorology 
of the autumn and winter. This was the subject of a very able 
paper read before the Royal Meteorological Society by Mr. C. 
Harding, one of the Fellows of that Society. This paper will be 
published by the Society in October, and may be usefully consulted. 
Dealing with the winter at length and including also the first 
three months of the present year, I have received from Mr. 
Edward Mawley, of Berkhamsted, Vice-President of the Royal 
Meteorological Society, the following excellent report : — 
" The winter of 1885-6 was, as regards the long continuance of unseasonahly 
low temperature, the most severe that has heen experienced in England for 
many years. The falls of snow were also singularly frequent and at times 
heavy, while the ground remained throughout exceptionally cold. December, 
January, and February are usually kno^vn as the three winter months, but 
the winter with which we are now dealing may be said to have lasted from 
the end of September to the middle of March, or for nearly six months. It 
is, moreover, necessary to bear in mind that these six months of wintry 
weather formed but part of an almost unbroken period of cold weather, 
lasting (if we include November, the mean temperature of which was about 
the average) from the end of July last year to the beginning of July in the 
present year. For it was no doubt owing to the great coldness and paucity 
of sunshine during the previous seven months, as well as to the continued 
frost prevailing at the time, that the ground had by the early spring become 
chilled to a very unusual depth. Indeed, we have to go back over thirty 
years in order to find in the Greenwich records a March in which the 
temperature of the soil at three feet deep was as low as in the same month 
this year. The severity of the weather having been more keenly felt in my 
own county, Hertfordshire, than in any other, a few particulars derived 
from observations taken here, at Great I5erkhamsted, may prove of interest, 
and at the same time convey some idea of the most noteworthy features of 
this memorable winter. (1) The lowest air temperature recorded at four feet 
above the ground was 7°-4 (245 degrees of frost) during the night of the 7th 
of January. On the same night a thermometer exposed on thft surface of 
the snow fell to — 4°'6, or to 45 degrees below zero, thus indicating 863 degrees 
of frost. (2) The same ground-thermometer, on as many as seventy-three 
consecutive nights (Janunry 5th-March 18th), or for two-and-a-half months, 
registered temperature below the freezing-point. (3) Again, more or less 
snow was always to be seen on the north side of some few hedges every day 
between the 6th of January and the 19th of March. (4) The greatest 
average depth to which snow fell was 7f inches on January 6th. (5) During 
the first three months of 1886 snow fell on no less than thirty days. 
(5) Between March 1st and 17th the tenqieraturc of the soil at a depth of 
two feet varied only from Sl'^-S to 35°-l, and at one foot deep only- from 
32°-8 to 33°-3, thus showing a change of but half a degree during over a 
fortnight. (7) The lowest reading at two feet deep was 34°'5 on March 17th, 
and at one foot 32°'8 on the 17th of the same month. 
" Mr. Charles Harding, F.Il.Met. Soc, in a very interesting and complete 
