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....' One circumstance noted by White, though not bearing specially on the degree of cold which prevailed on this occasion, is very interesting. 'I must not omit to tell you,' says White, '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.' White's account of this severe frost bears very significantly on the theory that our winter weather has undergone a great change. It is obvious, in the first place, that the situation of his thermometers was such that they were likely to show a low temperature as compared with the indications in other places. It is also clear that the thermometer he used was trustworthy. If it were one of Dollond's it would presumably be a good one, and I do not think that in White's time the trick of marking inferior instruments with the name Dolland had come into vogue. But in any case Adams's scientific instruments were excellent; and, as the account shows, the thermometer used by White indicated the same temperature as Adams's. Now, the lowest temperature recorded was only one degree below zero; and that this was altogether exceptional is shown not only by what White says in the passage I have quoted, but also by his remarking a little later that this frost 'may be allowed, from its effects, to have exceeded any since 1739-40.' Even this is not all. It would certainly prove beyond dispute that our winters were not milder than those of a century ago; for a greater degree of cold than that recorded by White in December, 1784, has been more than once experienced in the same part of England during the last forty years. But it seems from a statement in Miller's 'Gardener's Dictionary,' that the Portugal laurels were untouched in the great frost of 1739-40, which would show that the frost of 1784 was more severe and destructive than that of 1739-40. If this were really so, the frost of 1784 was the severest (though owing to its short duration it did not produce the most remarkable effects in the country at large) of any during the periods noted between the years 1709 and 1788. On the Continent, the frost of December, 1788, was more severe in some places, though rather less severe at Paris, than that of 1709; but I do not know of any records which would enable us to make a direct comparison between the cold in 1709, 1784, and 1788, at any given place in Great Britain.