OF 8ELB0BNE. , 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 ole 
vated a region, at two hundred feet or more above m} 
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 leasts, the cold at Newton was 18° 
less than at Selborne ; and, through the whole frost, 1^ 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^, 
and (which occasions more regret) my fine sloping laurel 
hedge, were scorched up ; while, at ISTewton, 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 spimloi, 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 
^ 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. 
