254 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
filled so as to be impassable, and the ground covered twelve or 
fifteen inches without any drifting. In the evening of the 9th 
the air began to be so very sharp that we thought it would be 
curious to attend to the motions of a thermometer : we therefore 
hung out two ; one made by Martin and one by Dollond, which 
soon began to show us what we were to expect ; for, by ten 
o'clock, they fell to 21, and at eleven to 4, when we went to bed. 
On the 10th, in the morning, the quicksilver of Dollond's glass 
was down to half a degree below zero; and that of Martin's, 
which was absurdly graduated only to four degrees above zero, 
sunk quite into the bras« guard of the ball ; so that when the 
weather became most interesting this was useless. On the 10th, at 
eleven at night, though the air was perfectly still, DoUond's glass 
went down to one degree below zero ! This strange severity of 
the weather made me very desirous to know what degree of cold 
there might be in such an exalted and near situation as Newton. 
We 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 elevated a 
region, at two hundred feet or more above my house. But, be- 
hold! on the 10th, at eleven at night, it was down only to 17, 
and the next morning at 22, when mine was at ten ! 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, some how, be wrongly constructed. But, when the in- 
struments 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 or 12 
degrees ; and indeed, when we came to observe consequences, 
we could readily x^redit 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! 
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 
* Mr. Miller in his Gardener's Dictionary, says positively that the Portugal laurels remained 
untouched in the remarkable frost of 1/39-40. 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. 
