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, &c. 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.t *We can account for this phenomenon only by the supposition, that these spicule were formed by a thin stratum of vapour passing through the higher regions of the atinosphere; and that they were not dense enough to have the ordinary appearance of snow. We know that snow itself is crystallized vapour, and the distinctness and forms of these crystals will be in proportion to the intensity of the cold at the time. The ordinary cold in this country is seldom such as to produce these, and the snow has usually a flaky appearance. Captain Scoresby mentions having frequently seen snow in a highly crystallized state in the Arctic Regions. In this country there are occasional showers of highly crystallized snow. On the 4th of February, 1830, a fall of this kind was noticed at Cambridge, the thermometer then standing at about twenty-two degrees, and the wind from the east-north-east. Nearly all the snow which fell was of that beautiful stellated form called by Captain Scoresby the "lamellar stelliform crystals." They consisted chiefly of six points, radiating from a centre, forming with each other, at that centre, angles of sixty degrees, and having commonly additional ramifications on the primary ones, in the same plane with them, and forming angles of sixty degrees with the primaries. These, however, consisted of great variety in their arrangement. Some were regular in all their parts, while others were quite eccentric. Some of these were fashioned by the obliteration of the alternate rays, so as to form angles of one hundred and twenty, instead of one hundred and sixty, degrees; the additional ramifications still forming angles of sixty degrees with the primaries. The size of these crystals varied from one-eighth to one-third of an inch in diameter. Scoresby says, that the time when the greatest quantity of crystals fell in the Arctic Seas, was when the thermometer stood between sixteen and twenty-two degrees, and the wind was north-east or north-north-east, which corresponded with what was observed at Cambridge.—ED. + Some animals have the voluntary power of communicating electricity, The torpedo, and electric eel, may be mentioned as well known instances. in the Magazine of Natural History, a correspondent mentions having received several shocks from a caterpillar of the cerura vinula, or pussmoth. These he found on a young poplar. He says, "The cerura shewed decided symptoms of irritation, which particularly drew my attention. It began to contract its body, drawing itself closely together, and, by degrees, elevated and extended its bifurcated tail. There were slowly protruded from out of the points bright red filaments, and irregularly bent to one side. In a short time I felt a sudden tingle along my arms, 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 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 may yet be allowed, from its effects, to have exceeded any since 1739-40.* LETTER CVIII. TO THE HON. 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 inconveniencies that we suffered from some 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 which made me stop with surprise. Suspecting, however, that this might be imaginary, I again proceeded; and shortly after I felt another shock, which made me almost involuntarily throw the twig with the creature upon the ground."-ED. * 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. 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 heats were so great as to render the juices vapid and insipid. The great pests of a garden are wasps, which destroy all the finer fruits just as they are coming into perfection. In 1781, we had none; in 1783, there were myriads, which ⚫ would have devoured all the produce of my garden had we not set the boys to take the nests, and caught thousands with hazel-twigs tipped with bird-lime: we have since employed the boys to take and destroy the large breeding wasps in the spring. Such expedients have a great effect on these marauders, and will keep them under. Though wasps do not abound but in hot summers, yet they do not prevail in every hot summer, as I have instanced in the two years above mentioned.* In the sultry season of 1783, honey-dews were so frequent as to deface and destroy the beauties of my garden. My honeysuckles, which were one week the most sweet and lovely objects that eye could behold, became the next the most loath some, being enveloped in a viscous substance, and loaded with black aphides, or smother-flies. The occasion of this clammy * There is a wonderful provision in the economy of Nature, by which the numbers of these troublesome marauders are kept within moderate bounds, and but for which they would soon overrun the face of the earth. Every wasp's nest is peopled by several thousands of neuters, cr workers. But the neuters, which are first produced, are likewise the first that perish: for not one of them survives the termination of even a mild winter. The female wasps are, however, stronger, and can bear the rigours of winter better than either the males or neuters. But several hundreds of the females of every nest perish before the end of the winter, and, indeed, not more than ten or a dozen of each nest survive that season. These females are destined for the continuation of the species, and each of them becomes the founder of a new republic. It is quite uncertain whether any male wasps survive. Every nest, about the beginning of October, presents a strange scene of what appears anomalous cruelty. The wasps then not only desist from bringing nourishment to their young, but also drag them in the caterpillar state from their cells, and expose them to the weather, where they either die for want of food, or become a prey to birds, or, as is more generally the case, the parent wasps pinch them to death with their forceps. But instead of being cruel and unnatural, this is perhaps an act of mercy, as wasps do not lay up a store of food for the winter, and their progeny would consequently die a painful and lingering death from starvation if left in their cells. So that what appears a transgression of the predominating love of animals for their young is, in fact, a merciful effort of instinct. Ed. appearance seems to be this, that in hot weather, the effluvia of flowers in fields, and meadows, and gardens, are drawn up in the day by a brisk evaporation, and then in the night fall down again with the dews in which they are entangled; that the air is strongly scented, and therefore impregnated with the particles of flowers in summer weather, our senses will inform us; and that this clammy sweet substance is of the vegetable kind, we may learn from bees, to whom it is very grateful; and we may be assured that it falls in the night, because it is always first seen in warm still mornings.* On chalky and sandy soils, and in the hot villages about London, the thermometer has been often observed to mount as high as eighty-three or eighty-four; but with us, in this hilly and woody district, I have hardly ever seen it exceed eighty, nor does it often arrive at that pitch. The reason, I conclude, is, that our dense clayey soil, so much shaded by trees, is not so easily heated through as those above mentioned; and, besides, our mountains cause currents of air and breezes; and the vast effluvia from our woodlands temper and moderate our heats. LETTER CIX. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. THE summer of the year 1783, was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena; for, besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunder-storms, that affrighted and distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze, or smoky fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike any thing known within the memory of man. By my journal, I find that I had noticed this strange occurrence from June twentythird to July twentieth, inclusive, during which period the wind varied to every quarter, without making any alteration in the air. The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms, but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. All the time, the heat was so intense that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten the day after it was killed; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges, that they rendered the horses half frantic, and riding irksome. The * Honey dew is the excrement of the aphides. --- ED. country people began to look with a superstitious awe at the red lowering aspect of the sun; and, indeed, there was reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive, for all the while, Calabria and part of the isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes;* and about that juncture, a volcano sprung out of the sea on the coast of Norway. On this occasion, Milton's noble simile of the sun, in his first book of Paradise Lost, frequently occurred to my mind; and it is indeed particularly applicable, because, towards the end, it alludes to a superstitious kind of dread, with which the minds of men are always impressed by such strange and unusual phenomena : As when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal, misty air, Shorn of his beams; or, from behind the moon, LETTER CX. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. We are very seldom annoyed with thunder-storms; and it is no less remarkable than true, that those which arise in the south have hardly been known to reach this village; for, before they get over us, they take a direction to the east or to the west, or sometimes divide into two, and go in part to one of those quarters, and in part to the other; as was truly the case in summer 1783, when, though the country round was continually harassed with tempests, and often from the south, yet › we escaped them all; as appears by my journal of that summer. The shocks of the dreadful earthquakes here alluded to began on the 5th February, and continued, at different times, till the 1st of March, 1783; during which time, the face of the two Calabrias, lying between the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth degree, were entirely altered; hills had been swallowed up, others lowered; huge mountains split asunder, and parts of them driven to a considerable distance; valleys filled up; the courses of rivers altered; springs dried, and new ones formed. At Laureana, in Calabria Ultra, two tenements, with large plantations, situated in a level valley, were detached by the earthquake, and transplanted, with their trees still remaining in their places, to the distance of about a mile from their first situation; and from the spot on which they formerly stood, hot water, mixed with sand, sprang to a considerable height. It would be difficult to asssign the reason why. Europe generally was much affected in the electrical condition of its atmosphere during this remarkable summer. - ED. |