Although it is manifest that the weather of January, 1776, was severe, yet the remarks italicised show that such weather was regarded a century ago as altogether exceptional. Again, the cold lasted only about three weeks. And it may be doubted whether in actual intensity it even equalled that which was experienced in London and the south of England generally during the first week of 1855. Certainly the evidence afforded by such remarks as I have italicised in the above-quoted passage tends more to prove that winter weather in England a hundred years hence was on the average much like winter at present, than the unusual severity of the weather during about twenty-four days in January, 1776, tends to suggest that a marked change has taken place. Similar evidence is afforded by White's remarks respecting the severe cold of December, 1784. As in January, 1776, so in December, 1784--a week of very wet weather heralded the approach of severe cold. 'The first week of December,' says White, 'was very wet, with the barometer very low. On the 7th, with the barometer at 28.5, 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' (there is something quite Homeric in White's use of this favourite expression), '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 Dolland' (probably Dollond), 'which soon began to show 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 10th 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 10th, 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 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 phenomena 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 seventeen, and the next morning at twenty-two, when mine was at ten! We were so disturbed at this unexpected reverse of comparative cold that we sent one of my glasses up, thinking that of Mr. ---- must somehow be wrongly constructed.