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 10th, at eleven at night, though the air was perfectly still,
Dollond'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 phaenomena, in so elevated a region, at two
hundred feet or more above my house. But, behold! on the 10th, at
eleven at night, it was down only to 17, and the next morning at 22,
when mine was at 10. 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 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 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!
(* 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.)