second of February the thaw persisted; and on the 3d swarms of
little insects were frisking and sporting in a court-yard at South
Lambeth, as if they had felt no frost. Why the juices in the small
bodies and smaller limbs of such minute beings are not frozen is a
matter of curious inquiry.
(* At Selborne the cold was greater than at any other place that the
author could hear of with certainty: though some reported at the
time that at a village in Kent, the thermometer fell two degrees
below zero, viz., 34 degrees below the freezing point.
The thermometer used at Selborne was graduated by Benjamin
Martin.)

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 19: at Blackburn, in Lancashire, at 19: and at
Manchester at 21, 20, and 18. Thus does some unknown
circumstance strangely overbalance latitude, and render the cold
sometimes much greater in the southern than in 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