Severe frosts seem to be partial, or to run in currents; for at the same juncture, as the author was informed by accurate correspondents, at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, the thermometer stood at nineteen; at Blackburn, in Lancashire, at nineteen; and at Manchester, at twenty-one, twenty, and eighteen. Thus does some unknown circumstance strangely overbalance latitude, and render the cold sometimes much greater in the southern than the northern parts of this kingdom.

The consequences of this severity were, that, in Hampshire, at the melting of the snow, the wheat looked well, and the turnips came forth little injured. The laurels and laurustines were somewhat damaged, but only in hot aspects. No evergreens were quite destroyed; and not half the damage sustained that befell in January, 1768. Those laurels that were a little scorched on the south sides, were perfectly untouched on their north sides. The care taken to shake the snow day by day from the branches, seemed greatly to avail the author's evergreens. A neighbour's laurel hedge, in a high situation, and facing to the north, was perfectly green and vigorous; and the Portugal laurels remained unhurt.

As to the birds, the thrushes and blackbirds were mostly destroyed; and the partridges, by the weather and poachers, were so thinned, that few remained to breed the following year.

of trees! Yet the genial warmth of spring having again tempered the air, these eggs were hatched, and as numerously as in the mildest winters.' Since that time, there have been winters still more severe, for, in France, as well as in several other European states, in December, 1788, the thermometer fell considerably beneath that of 1709.

"I subjected eggs of insects to a more severe trial than in the winter of 1709. Among others were those of the silk-worm moth, and the elm butterfly, which I enclosed in a glass vessel, and buried five hours in a mixture of the ice and rock-salt, when the thermometer fell six degrees below zero; notwithstanding which, caterpillars were extruded from all the eggs, and exactly at the same time with those which had not been subjected to this experiment. In the succeeding year, I exposed them to a still greater degree of cold. I prepared a mixture of rock-salt and nitrate of ammonia, and reduced the thermometer to twenty-two degrees below zero, which was twenty-three degrees lower than the cold of 1709. They suffered nothing from this rigorous treatment, as they were all hatched in due season.' From the experiments of John Hunter, we find that a hen's egg will freeze by a great degree of cold, while, at the same time, it is possessed of a principle of vitality which prevents its destruction. - ED.

S

LETTER CVII.

TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.

As the frost in December, 1784, was very extraordinary, you, I trust, will not be displeased to hear the particulars; and especially when I promise to say no more about the severities of winter, after I have finished this letter.

The first week in December was very wet, with the barometer very low. On the seventh, with the barometer at twenty-eight five-tenths, came on a vast snow, which continued all that day and the next, and most part of the following night; so that, by the morning of the ninth, the works of men were quite overwhelmed, the lanes filled so as to be impassable, and the ground covered twelve or fifteen inches without any drifting. In the evening of the ninth, 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 Dolland, which, soon began to shew us what we were to expect; for, by ten o'clock, they fell to twenty-one, and at eleven to four, when we went to bed. On the tenth, in the morning, the quicksilver of Dolland'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 brass guard of the ball, so that, when the weather became most interesting, this was useless. On the tenth, at eleven at night, though the air was perfectly still, Dolland'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 tenth, 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, behold! on the tenth, at eleven at night, it was down only to seventeen, and the next morning at twenty-two, 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, somehow, be wrongly constructed. But, when the instruments came to be confronted, they went

exactly together, so that, for one night at least, the cold at Newton was eighteen degrees less than at Selborne, and, through the whole frost, ten or twelve degrees;* 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 Newton, the same trees have not lost a leaf!

We had steady frost on the twenty-fifth, when the thermometer, in the morning, was down to ten with us, and at Newton only to twenty-one. Strong frost continued till the thirty-first, when some tendency to thaw was observed, and by January the third, 1785, the thaw was confirmed, and some rain fell.

We

A circumstance that I must not omit, because it was new to us, is, that on Friday, December the tenth, being bright sunshine, the air was full of icy spicule, floating in all directions, like atoms in a sunbeam let into a dark room. 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 reach us. Were they watery particles of the air frozen as

He says,

*The Rev. Mr Bree, of Allesley Rectory, made similar observations in the years 1830 and 1831. "I have elsewhere observed, in the year 1830, that the effects of the frosty nights on trees seemed to differ according to the circumstances, and to be most destructive in lower situations. Several instances of the same kind presented themselves to my notice this season, during the frosts which prevailed in the month of May. The gooseberries and currants were in some cases much injured in gardens which lay low, while those in more elevated situations escaped unhurt. Many of our native plants were cut off, as equisetum arvense, aspidium filix mas. and aculeatum scilla nutans, &c. all of them lovers of low ground. But not only were the late frosts most destructive in low situations, they seem also to have had a much more injurious effect on vegetation within a few feet of the surface of the ground than they had as many yards above it. And of this I was struck with a remarkable instance in a wood in this neighbourhood, which consists chiefly of oak. For the space of several acres, I observed the opening foliage of the underwood oak, about seven or eight feet from the ground, to be entirely cut off by the frost, though the bushes were, of course, much sheltered by the overshadowing boughs of the poles and trees above them; while, contrary to what might be expected, the foliage of the poles and trees themselves, which were exposed to the atmosphere, but elevated some yards above the underwood, remained unaffected." In the case, also, of single oak trees, in other situations, I observed the foliage of the lower boughs to be cut off by the frost, and the head of the higher branches to be unimpaired." -ED.

they floated, or were they evaporations from the snow frozen as they mounted ?*

We were much obliged to the thermometers for the early information they gave us, and hurried our apples, pears, onions, potatoes, &c. into the cellar and warm closets: while those who had not, or neglected such warnings, lost all their stores of roots and fruits, and had their very bread and cheese frozen.

I must not omit to tell you, that, during those two Siberian days, my parlour cat was so electric, that had a person stroked her, and been properly insulated, the shock might have been given to a whole circle of people.†

* We can account for this phenomenon only by the supposition, that these spicule were formed by a thin stratum of vapour passing through the higher regions of the atinosphere; and that they were not dense enough to have the ordinary appearance of snow. We know that snow itself is crystallized vapour, and the distinctness and forms of these crystals will be in proportion to the intensity of the cold at the time. The ordinary cold in this country is seldom such as to produce these, and the snow has usually a flaky appearance. Captain Scoresby mentions having frequently seen snow in a highly crystallized state in the Arctic Regions. In this country there are occasional showers of highly crystallized snow. On the 4th of February, 1830, a fall of this kind was noticed at Cambridge, the thermometer then standing at about twenty-two degrees, and the wind from the east-north-east. Nearly all the snow which fell was of that beautiful stellated form called by Captain Scoresby the "lamellar stelliform crystals." They consisted chiefly of six points, radiating from a centre, forming with each other, at that centre, angles of sixty degrees, and having commonly additional ramifications on the primary ones, in the same plane with them, and forming angles of sixty degrees with the primaries. These, however, consisted of great variety in their arrangement. Some were regular in all their parts, while others were quite eccentric. Some of these were fashioned by the obliteration of the alternate rays, so as to form angles of one hundred and twenty, instead of one hundred and sixty, degrees; the additional ramifications still forming angles of sixty degrees with the primaries. The size of these crystals varied from one-eighth to one-third of an inch in diameter. Scoresby says, that the time when the greatest quantity of crystals fell in the Arctic Seas, was when the thermometer stood between sixteen and twenty-two degrees, and the wind was north-east or north-north-east, which corresponded with what was observed at Cambridge. —ED.

+ Some animals have the voluntary power of communicating electricity, The torpedo, and electric eel, may be mentioned as well known instances. In the Magazine of Natural History, a correspondent mentions having received several shocks from a caterpillar of the cerura vinula, or pussmoth. These he found on a young poplar. He says, "The cerura shewed decided symptoms of irritation, which particularly drew my attention. It began to contract its body, drawing itself closely together, and, by degrees, elevated and extended its bifurcated tail. There were slowly protruded from out of the points bright red filaments, and irregularly bent to one side. In a short time I felt a sudden tingle along my arms,

I forgot to mention before, that, during the two severe days, two men, who were tracing hares in the snow, had their feet frozen; and two men, who were much better employed, had their fingers so affected by the frost, while they were thrashing in a barn, that mortification followed, from which they did not recover for many weeks.

This frost killed all the furze and most of the ivy, and in many places stripped the hollies of all their leaves. It came at a very early time of the year, before old November ended, and may yet be allowed, from its effects, to have exceeded any

since 1739-40.*

LETTER CVIII.

TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.

As the effects of heat are seldom very remarkable in the northerly climate of England, where the summers are often so defective in warmth and sunshine, as not to ripen the fruits of the earth so well as might be wished, I shall be more concise in my account of the severity of a summer season, and so make a little amends for the prolix account of the degrees of cold, and the inconveniencies that we suffered from some late rigorous winters.

The summers of 1781 and 1783, were unusually hot and dry; to them, therefore, I shall turn back in my journals, without recurring to any more distant period. In the former of these years, my peach and nectarine trees suffered so much from the heat, that the rind on the bodies was scalded and came off; since which, the trees have been in a decaying state. This may prove a hint to assiduous gardeners to fence and shelter their wall-trees with mats or boards, as they may easily do, because such annoyance is seldom of long continuDuring that summer, also, I observed that my apples were coddled, as it were, on the trees; so that they had no quickness of flavour, and would not keep in the winter. This which made me stop with surprise. Suspecting, however, that this might be imaginary, I again proceeded; and shortly after I felt another shock, which made me almost involuntarily throw the twig with the creature upon the ground."-Ed.

ance.

* 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.