464 
LEAVES FROM AN OLD DIARY. 
Sept. 7th. “Last night the rain was so violent & incessant as 
to have made great inundat 118 in Holme, our Cellar was filled w th 
water & the rump of beef with the tub of Pork were altogether 
overflowed — the Cottagers rec’d great damage by rain getting at 
their late gleanings & those farmers whose Barley stacks were not 
thatched must have suffer’d considerably as the rain was excessive, 
the wind was in the south east & it drifted the rain into the roofs 
of dwellings & pent-houses so that not a house in the village 
escaped being soaked. At Stanhoe the effect seems to have been 
the greatest, Mr. Wright had a great deal of his Barley car d away 
in the swathe & Mr. Etheridge’s beer vessels in his Cellar were 
actually rolled in the water & the beer spilled out of the bunghole.” 
“ Speaking of Barometers the other day, Mr. Styleman said he 
remembered at Trinity College within side of the King’s Gate, viz. 
next Trumpington Street there was one which worked w th water 
instead of Quicksilver & that it was 34 Feet long. Qu. if this was 
not erected by Roger Cotes'? it must have been difficult to have 
procured a glass tube long enough to shew the variations. Ned 
Renant bro’t us 6 Knots whose plumage is very handsome . . . 
the papers inform us that Mr. Ball of Lewis saw on the 4th of this 
month 4 or 500 on the wing and that lie shot one w ch was probably 
a male hav£ the breast red — ours was brown inclining to red.” 
I am sorry I cannot learn any particulars about the Water 
Barometer, formerly at Cambridge. Roger Cotes was the first 
Plumian Professor of Astronomy (1706) and he commenced 
building an Observatory over the King’s Gate at Trinity College, 
but he died in 1716 before it was completed — it does not 
seem probable that so unwieldy an instrument would have been 
erected while the building was in an uncomplete state. Sir Isaac 
Newton’s rooms were in the staircase next the gateway ; he certainly 
contributed an astronomical clock to the Observatory, and possibly 
he may have had a hand in the construction of the Barometer after 
Cotes’ death, this however is mere conjecture The Observatory 
was dismantled in 1 7 97. Toricellis’ first experiments were conducted 
by means of a water tube, but he speedily had recourse to mercury 
on account of its greater specific gravity, and although other liquids 
were experimented with, for many reasons they were soon discarded. 
The Royal Society’s Water Barometer constructed by Daniell in 
1830 was subsequently found to read seven inches of the water 
