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I am, etc.
Letter LX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
In reading Dr. Huxham's Observationes de Aere, etc., written at
Plymouth, I find by those curious and accurate remarks, which
contain an account of the weather from the year 1727 to the year
1748, inclusive, that though there is frequent rain in that district of
Devonshire, yet the quantity falling is not great; and that some
years it has been very small: for in 1731 the rain measured only
17.266 in. and in 1741, 20.354 in.; and again in 1743 only 20.908
in. Places near the sea have frequent scuds, that keep the
atmosphere moist, yet do not reach far up into the country; making
thus the maritime situations appear wet, when the rain is not
considerable. In the wettest years at Plymouth the Doctor measured
only once 36 in.; and again once, viz., 1734, 37.114 in.: a quantity
of rain that has twice been exceeded at Selborne in the short period
of my observations. Dr. Huxham remarks, that frequent small rains
keep the air moist; while heavy ones render it more dry, by beating
down the vapours. He is also of opinion that the dingy, smoky
appearance of the sky, in very dry seasons, arises from the want of
moisture sufficient to let the light through, and render the
atmosphere transparent; because he had observed several bodies
more diaphanous when wet than dry; and did never recollect that
the air had that look in rainy seasons.
My friend who lives just beyond the top of the down, brought his
three swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with their muzzles
towards the Hanger, supposing that the report would have had a
great effect; but the experiment did not answer his expectation. He
then removed them to the Alcove on the Hanger: when the sound,
rushing along the Lythe and Combwood, was very grand: but it was
at the Hermitage that the echoes and repercussions delighted the
hearers; not only filling the Lythe with the roar, as if all the
beeches were tearing up by the roots; but, turning to the left, they
pervaded the vale above Combwood-ponds; and after a pause
seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend round Harteley-
hangers, and to die away at last among the coppices and coverts of
Ward le ham. It has been remarked before that this district is an
Anathoth, a place of responses or echoes, and therefore proper for
such experiments: we may further add that the pauses in echoes,
when they cease and yet are taken up again, like the pauses in
music, surprise the hearers, and have a fine effect on the
imagination.
The gentleman above mentioned has just fixed a barometer in his
parlour at Newton Valence. The tube was first filled here (at
Selborne) twice with care, when the mercury agreed and stood
exactly with my own; but being filled again twice at Newton, the
mercury stood, on account of the great elevation of that house,
three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at this village,
and so continues to do, be the weight of the atmosphere what it
may. The plate of the barometer at Newton is figured as low as 27;
because in stormy weather the mercury there will sometimes
descend below 28. We have supposed Newton-house to stand two
hundred feet higher than this house: but if the rule holds good,
which says that mercury in a barometer sinks one-tenth of an inch
for every hundred feet elevation, then the Newton barometer, by
standing three-tenths lower than that of Selborne, proves that
Newton-house must be three hundred feet higher than that in which
I am writing, instead of two hundred.
It may not be impertinent to add, that the barometers at Selborne
stand three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at South
Lambeth; whence we may conclude that the former place is about
three hundred feet higher than the latter; and with good reason,
because the streams that rise with us run into the Thames at
Weybridge, and so to London. Of course therefore there must be
lower ground all the way from Selborne to Sough Lambeth; the
distance between which, all the windings and indentings of the
streams considered, cannot be less than an hundred miles. I am,
etc.
Letter LXI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Since the weather of a district is undoubtedly part of its natural
history, I shall make no further apology for the four following
letters, which will contain many particulars concerning some of the
great frosts and a few respecting some very hot summers, that have
distinguished themselves from the rest during the course of my
observations.
As the frost in January 1768 was, for the small it lasted, the most
severe that we had then known for many years, and was
remarkably injurious to evergreens, some account of its rigour, and
reason of its ravages, may be useful, and not unacceptable to
persons that delight in planting and ornamenting; and may
particularly become a work that professes never to lose sight of
utility.
For the last two or three days of the former year there were
considerable falls of snow, which lay deep and uniform on the
ground without any drifting, wrapping up the more humble
vegetation in perfect security. From the first day to the fifth of the
new year more snow succeeded; but from that day the air became
entirely clear; and the heat of the sun about noon had a
considerable influence in sheltered situations.
It was in such an aspect that the snow on the author's evergreens
was melted every day, and frozen intensely every night; so that the
laurustines, bays, laurels, and arbutuses looked, in three or four
days, as if they had been burnt in the fire; while a neighbour's
plantation of the same kind, in a high cold situation, where the
snow was never melted at all, remained uninjured.
From hence I would infer that it is the repeated melting and
freezing of the snow that is so fatal to vegetation, rather than the
severity of the cold. Therefore it highly behaves every planter, who
wishes to escape the cruel mortification of losing in a few days the
labour and hopes of years, to bestir himself on such emergencies;
and, if his plantations are small, to avail himself of mats, cloths,
pease-haum, straw, reeds, or any such covering, for a short time;
or, if his shrubberies are extensive, to see that his people go about
with prongs and forks, and carefully dislodge the snow from the
boughs, since the naked foliage will shift much better for itself,
than where the snow is partly melted and frozen again.
It may perhaps appear at first like a paradox; but doubtless the
more tender trees and shrubs should never be planted in hot
aspects; not only for the reason assigned above, but also because,
thus circumstanced, they are disposed to shoot earlier in the spring,
and grow on later in the autumn than they would otherwise do, and
so are sufferers by lagging or early frosts. For this reason also
plants from Siberia will hardly endure our climate: because, on the
very first advances of spring, they shoot away, and so are cut off by
the severe nights of March or April.
Dr. Fothergill and others have experienced the same inconvenience
with respect to the more tender shrubs from North America; which
they therefore plant under north walls. There should also perhaps
be a wall to the east to defend them from the piercing blasts from
that quarter.
This observation might without any impropriety be carried into
animal life; for discerning bee-masters now find that their hives
should not in the winter be exposed to the hot sun, because such
unseasonable warmth awakens the inhabitants too early from their
slumbers; and, by putting their juices into motion too soon,
subjects them afterwards to inconveniences when rigorous weather
returns.
The coincidents attending this short but intense frost were, that the
horses fell sick with an epidemic distemper, which injured the
winds of many, and killed some; that colds and coughs were
general among the human species; that it froze under people's beds
for several nights; that meat was so hard frozen that it could not be
spitted, and could not be secured but in cellars; that several
redwings and thrushes were killed by the frost; and that the large
titmouse continued to pull straw lengthwise from the eaves of
thatched houses and barns in a most adroit manner, for a purpose
that has been explained already.*
(* See Letter XLI to Mr. Pennant.)
On the 3d of January, Benjamin Martin's thermometer within
doors, in a close parlour where there was no fire, fell in the night to
20, and on the 4th to 18, and the 7th to 17.5, a degree of cold
which the owner never since saw in the same situation; and he
regrets much that he was not able at that juncture to attend his
instrument abroad. All this time the wind continued north and
north-east; and yet on the eighth roost-cocks, which had been
silent, began to sound their clarions, and crows to clamour, as
prognostic of milder weather; and, moreover, moles began to heave
and work, and a manifest thaw took place. From the latter
circumstance we may conclude that thaws often originate under
ground from warm vapours which arise; else how should
subterraneous animals receive such early intimations of their
approach? Moreover, we have often observed that cold seems to
descend from above; for, when a thermometer hangs abroad in a
frosty night, the intervention of a cloud shall immediately raise the
mercury ten degrees; and a clear sky shall again compel it to
descend to its former gauge.
And here it may be proper to observe, on what has been said above,
that though frosts advance to their utmost severity by somewhat of
a regular gradation, yet thaws do not usually come on by as regular
a declension of cold; but often take place immediately from intense
freezing; as men in sickness often mend at once from a paroxysm.
To the great credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers, be it
remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general
havoc: hence men should learn to ornament chiefly with such trees
as are able to withstand accidental severities, and not subject
themselves to the vexation of a loss which may befall them once
perhaps in ten years, yet may hardly be recovered through the
whole course of their lives.
As it appeared afterwards the ilexes were much injured, the
cypresses were half destroyed, the arbutuses lingered on, but never
recovered; and the bays, laurustines, and laurels, were killed to the
ground; and the very wild hollies, in hot aspects, were so much
affected that they cast all their leaves.
By the 14th of January the snow was entirely gone; the turnips
emerged not damaged at all, save in sunny places; the wheat
looked delicately, and the garden plants were well preserved; for
snow is the most kindly mantle that infant vegetation can be
wrapped in; were it not for that friendly meteor no vegetable life
could exist at all in northerly regions. Yet in Sweden the earth in
April is not divested of snow for more than a fortnight before the
face of the country is covered with flowers.
Letter LXII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
There were some circumstances attending the remarkable frost in
January 1776 so singular and striking, that a short detail of them
may not be unacceptable.
The most certain way to be exact will be to copy the passages from
my journal, which were taken from time to time as things occurred.
But it may be proper previously to remark that the first week in
January was uncommonly wet, and drowned with vast rains from
every quarter: from whence may be inferred, as there is great
reason to believe is the case, that intense frosts seldom take place
till the earth is perfectly glutted and chilled with water;* and hence
dry autumns are seldom followed by rigorous winters.
(* The autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet, and
particularly the month of September, during which there fell at
Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, six inches and an half of rain.
And the terrible long frost of 1739-40 set in after a rainy season,
and when the springs were very high.)
January 7th. -- Snow driving all the day, which was followed by
frost, sleet, and some snow, till the 12th, when a prodigious mass
overwhelmed all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the
gates and filling the hollow lanes.
On the 14th the writer was obliged to be much abroad; and thinks
he never before or since has encountered such rugged Siberian
weather. Many of the narrow roads were now filled above the tops
of the hedges; through which the snow was driven into most
romantic and grotesque shapes, so striking to the imagination as
not to be seen without wonder and pleasure. The poultry dared not
to stir out of their roosting-places; for cocks and hens are so
dazzled and confounded by the glare of snow that they would soon
perish without assistance. The hares also lay sullenly in their seats,
and would not move until compelled by hunger; being conscious,
poor animals, that the drifts and heaps treacherously betray their
footsteps, and prove fatal to numbers of them.
From the 14th the snow continued to increase, and began to stop
the road waggons and coaches, which could no longer keep on
their regular stages; and especially on the western roads, where the
fall appears to have been deeper than in the south. The company at
Bath, that wanted to attend the Queen's birth-day, were strangely
incommoded: many carriages of persons, who got, in their way to
town from Bath, as far as Marlborough, after strange
embarrassments, here met with a ne plus ultra. The ladies fretted,
and offered large rewards to labourers, if they would shovel them a
track to London; but the relentless heaps of snow were too bulky to
be removed; and so the 18th passed over, leaving the company in
very uncomfortable circumstances at the Castle and other inns.
On the 20th the sun shone out for the first time since the frost
began; a circumstance that has been remarked before much in
favour of vegetation. All this time the cold was not very intense,
for the thermometer stood at 29, 28, 25, and thereabout; but on the
21st it descended to 20. The birds now began to be in a very
pitiable and starving condition. Tamed by the season, skylarks
settled in the streets of towns, because they saw the ground was
bare; rooks frequented dunghills close to houses; and crows
watched horses as they passed, and greedily devoured what
dropped from them; hares now came into men's gardens, and,
scraping away the snow, devoured such plants as they could find.
On the 22nd the author had occasion to go to London through a
sort of Laplandian-scene, very wild and grotesque indeed. But the
metropolis itself exhibited a still more singular appearance than the
country; for, being bedded deep in snow, the pavement of the
streets could not be touched by the wheels or the horses' feet, so
that the carriages ran about without the least noise. Such an
exception from din and clatter was strange, but not pleasant; it
seemed to convey an uncomfortable idea of desolation:
... ipsa silentia terrent.
On the 27th much snow fell all day, and in the evening the frost
became very intense. At South Lambeth, for the four following
nights, the thermometer fell to 11, 7, 6, 6; and at Selborne to 7, 6,
10; and on the 31st January, just before sunrise, with rime on the
trees and on the tube of the glass, the quicksilver sunk exactly to
zero, being 32 degrees below the freezing point; but by eleven in
the morning, though in the shade, it sprung up to 16.5 * -- a most
unusual degree of cold this for the south of England! During these
four nights the cold was so penetrating that it occasioned ice in
warm chambers and under beds; and in the day the wind was so
keen that persons of robust constitutions could scarcely endure to
face it. The Thames was at once so frozen over both above and
below bridge that crowds ran about on the ice. The streets were
now strangely incumbered with snow, which crumbled and trod
dusty; and, turning grey, resembled bay-salt; what had fallen on the
roofs was so perfectly dry that, from first to last, it lay twenty-six
days on the houses in the city; a longer time than had been
remembered by the oldest housekeepers living. According to all
appearances we might now have expected the continuance of this
rigorous weather for weeks to come, since every night increased in
severity; but behold, without any apparent cause, on the 1st of
February a thaw took place, and some rain followed before night;
making good the observation above, that frosts often go off as it
were at once, without any gradual declension of cold. On the
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
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.
Letter LXIII
To The Honourable 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 7th, with the barometer at 28-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 9th 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 9th 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 Dollond, which soon began to show us what we
were to expect; for, by ten o'clock, they fell to 21, and at eleven to
4, when we went to bed. On the 10th, in the morning, the
quicksilver of Dollond'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 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.)
We had steady frost on to the 25th, when the thermometer in the
morning was down to 10 with us, and at Newton only to 21. Strong
frost continued till the 31st, when some tendency to thaw was
observed, and, by January the 3rd, 1785, the thaw was confirmed,
and some rain fell.
A circumstance that I must not omit, because it was new to us, is,
that on Friday, December the 10th, being bright sun-shine, the air
was full of icy spiculae, floating in all directions, like atoms in a
sun-beam let into a dark room. We 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
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, etc., 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.
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 a
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 yet it may be
allowed from its effects to have exceeded any since 1739 - 40.
Letter LXIV
To The Honourable 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 inconveniences that
we suffered from 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
continuance. During 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
circumstance put me in mind of what I have heard travellers assert,
that they never ate a good apple or apricot in the south of Europe,
where the beats were so great as to render the juices vapid and
insipid.
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