30 
“THE NINE-WEEKS’ FROST / 5 
(.Read March 5th, 1895.) 
The past Winter, if, indeed, the adjective has yet been earned, 
will impress itself on our memories along with those of 1855, 
1860, and 1878-9. It resembles the first in the period of chief 
cold, and the last in its prolonged severity. That of 1860 was 
noteworthy from a shorter spell of extreme weather, the ther¬ 
mometer reaching our lowest record of 4° below zero on 
Christmas Eve. 
This season’s frosts began on December 27 th. Since then 
until now no meteorological day has passed without at least a 
frost on the ground, except January 17th, 18th, and 20th. 
Skating has been possible unbrokenly from the beginning of 
the year. 
The cold was more striking from the preceding openness. 
November was abnormally mild, the mean temperature here 
being 7° (and December 1°) above the average from 1841-1890, 
the fifty years taken throughout these notes for comparisons. 
As a consequence of this the number of flowers in my garden 
still lingering in bloom w^as 41 and 28 respectively, against 36 
and 15 in 1893, and 26 and 20 in 1892. 
In the South the contrast was even greater. At Street, 
near Glastonbury, Somerset, I observed during the Christmas 
vacation 98 wild flowers, and 113 garden, or a joint total, 
allowing for duplicates, of 204. The nearest approach to this, 
since records were begun in 1877, was 183 in 1881-2. In 
1878-79 only 32 were noted, and 31 the next year; whilst 
1890-91 gave but 10, the ground being snow-bound the whole 
of the 2^ weeks. Among the wild flowers seen in the present 
winter 56 were autumn stragglers, 16 all-season fiowerers, and 
26 spring-blooming. The former included a field of ox-eye 
daisies, gay enough to give a handsome bunch ; blackberry, the 
three buttercups, corn gromwell, erigeron, and the large 
scabious. Primroses were in profusion in a wood with southern 
slope, near which, on Christmas Day, a party of us lay basking 
in the sunshine as if it were summer; dog mercury w r as over a 
foot high ; willow-catkins were in large bud ; on Dec, 29th the 
3-fingered saxifrage was picked; and a root of Draha verm , 
