Part 13

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.

It will be well now to take a wider survey and consider some of the most severe winters experienced in Europe generally.

The winter of 1544 was remarkably severe all over Europe. In Flanders, according to Mézerai, wine froze in casks, and was sold in blocks by the pound weight. The winter of 1608 was also very severe. In the winter of 1709 the thermometer at the Paris Observatory recorded a cold of nearly ten degrees below zero.

Passing over the winter of 1776, of whose effects in England we have learned enough to enable us to judge how severely it must have been felt in those continental countries where the winter is always more severe than with us, we come to the severe winter of 1788-89.

We have seen that in England hard frost began on November 22 and continued till January 13. In France (or rather at Paris) the frost began three days later, but the thaw began on the same day, January 13. There was no intermission except on Christmas Day, when it did not freeze. In the great canal at Versailles the ice was two feet thick. 'The water also froze,' says Flammarion, 'in several very deep wells, and wine became congealed in cellars. The Seine began to freeze as early as November 26, and for several days its course was impeded, the breaking up of the ice not taking place until January 20 (1789). The lowest temperature observed at Paris was seven degrees below zero, on December 31. The frost was equally severe in other parts of France and throughout Europe. The Rhone was quite frozen over at Lyons, the Garonne at Toulouse, and at Marseilles the sides of the docks were covered with ice. Upon the shores of the Atlantic the sea was frozen to a distance of several leagues. The ice upon the Rhine was so thick that loaded wagons were able to cross it. The Elbe was covered with ice, and also bore up heavy carts. The harbour at Ostend was frozen so hard that people could cross it on horseback; the sea was congealed to a distance of four leagues from the exterior fortifications, and no vessel could approach the harbour.'

It was during the frost of 1788-89 that a fair was held on the Thames. The river was frozen as low as Gravesend; but it was only in London that booths were set up. The Thames fair lasted during the Christmas holidays and the first twelve days of January.

At Strasburg, on December 31, a temperature of fifteen degrees below zero was shown. At Berlin on the 20th, and St. Petersburg on the 12th, temperatures of twenty and twenty-three degrees below zero respectively were noted. But in Poland and parts of Germany an even greater degree of cold was recorded. For instance, at Warsaw, 26-1/2 degrees below zero; and at Bremen thirty-two degrees. At Basle, on December 18, the thermometer indicated nearly thirty-six degrees below zero. In the district around Toulouse bread was frozen so hard that it could not be cut till it had been laid before the fire. Many travellers perished in the snow. At Lemburg, in Galicia, thirty-seven persons were found dead in three days towards the end of December. The ice froze so thick in ponds that in most of them all the fish were killed.

The winter of 1794-95 was remarkable in this country as giving the lowest average temperature for a month ever recorded in England. The mean temperature for January, 1795, was only 26.5 degrees; or more than three degrees lower than that of last January. January 25, 1795, is commonly supposed to have been the coldest day ever known. The thermometer in London stood at eight degrees below zero during part of that bitter day; and in Paris, where also there were six consecutive weeks of frost, at 10-3/7 degrees below zero. The Thames was frozen over at Whitehall in the beginning of January. The Marne, the Scheldt, the Rhine, and the Seine were so frozen over that army corps and heavy carriages crossed over them. Perhaps the strangest of all the recorded results of cold weather occurred during the same month. The French General Pichegru, who was then operating in the North of Holland, sent detachments of cavalry and infantry about January 20, with orders to the former to cross the Texel and to capture the enemy's vessels, which were 'imprisoned by the ice.' 'The French horsemen crossed the plains of ice at full gallop,' we are told, 'approached the vessels, called on them to surrender, captured them without a struggle, and took the crews prisoners:' probably the only occasion in history when effective use could have been made of a corps of horse-marines.

The winter of 1798-99 was very cold, but not so exceptionally cold in England as on the Continent. The Seine was completely frozen over from the 29th of December to the 19th of January, from the Pont de la Tournelle to the Pont Royal. Farther east the cold was much greater. The Meuse was frozen over so thickly that carriages could cross it, and at the Hague and at Rotterdam fairs were held on the river. A regiment of dragoons starting from Mayence, crossed the Rhine upon the ice.

The winter of 1812-13 was exceeding cold in November, December and January. It was this unusually early and bitter winter which occasioned the destruction of Napoleon's army in Russia, and the eventual overthrow of his power. (For no one who considers his achievements during the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 can doubt that, had the army with which he invaded Russia been at his command, he would have foiled all the efforts of combined Europe against him.) The cold became very intense in Russia after the 7th of November. On the 17th the thermometer fell to 15 degrees below zero, according to Larrey, who carried a thermometer suspended from his button hole. The retreat from Moscow began on the 18th, Napoleon leaving the still burning city on the 19th, and the evacuation being complete on the 23rd. Everything seemed to conspire against Napoleon and his army. During the march to Smolensk snow fell almost incessantly. Even the only intermission of the cold during the retreat caused additional disaster. On the 18th of November, Russian troops had crossed the frozen Dwina with their artillery. A thaw begun on the 24th, but continued only for a short time; 'so that from the 26th to the 29th the Beresina contained numerous blocks of ice, but yet was not so frozen over as to afford a passage to the French troops.' It was to this circumstance that the terribly disastrous nature of the passage of the Beresina must mainly be attributed.

The winter of 1813-14 was colder in England than on the Continent--I mean, the winter here was colder for England than the winter in any region of continental Europe was for that region. The frost lasted from December 26 to March 21, and the mean temperature of January was only 26.8 degrees. The Thames was frozen over very thickly, and a fair was held on the frozen river.

The winter of 1819-20 was bitter throughout Europe. Mr. Thomas Plant, in an interesting letter to the _Times_ of February 4, says that this winter was one long spell of intense frost from November to March, and was almost as severe as that of 1813-14. In Paris there were forty-seven days of frost, nineteen of which were consecutive, from December 30, 1818, to January 17. 'In France,' says Flammarion, 'the intensity of the cold was heralded by the passage along the coast of the Pas de Calais of a great number of birds coming from the farthest regions of the north by wild swans and ducks of variegated plumage. Several travellers perished of cold; amongst others a farmer near Arras, a gamekeeper near Nogent (Haute Marne) a man and woman in the Côte d'Or, two travellers at Breuil, on the Meuse, a woman and a child on the road from Etain to Verdun, six persons near Château Salins (Meurthe), and two little Savoyards on the road from Clermont to Chalons-sur-Saône. In the experiments made at the Metz School of Artillery, on the 10th of January, to ascertain how iron resisted low temperatures, several soldiers had their hands or their ears frozen.' During this winter the Thames, the Seine, the Rhône, the Rhine, the Danube, the Garonne, the lagoons of Venice, and the Sound, were so far frozen that it was possible to walk across them on the ice.

The winter of 1829-30 was remarkable as the longest winter of the first half of the present century. The cold was not exceptionally intense, but the long continuance of bitter weather occasioned more mischief in the long run than has attended short spells of severer cold. The river Seine was frozen at Paris first for twenty-nine days, from December 28th to January 26th, and then for five days from February 5th to February 10th. The river had not been so many days frost-bound in any winter since 1763. Even at Havre the Seine was frozen over; and at Rouen a fair was held upon the river on January 18th. On January 25, after a thaw of six days, the ice from Corbeil and Melun blocked up the bridge at Choisy, forming a wall 16-1/2 feet high.

The winter of 1837-38 was remarkable for the long frost of January and February, 1838. It lasted eight weeks. Mr. Plant mentions that 'the lowest point of the thermometer during this long and severe frost occurred on January 20, when the readings were from 5 degrees below zero, in this district' (Moseley, near Birmingham), 'to 8 and 10 degrees below zero in more exposed aspects.' 'On the 13th of January, the old Royal Exchange, London, was destroyed by fire; and the frost was so great that, when the fire brigade had ceased playing on one portion of the burning pile, the water in a short time became icicles of such large dimensions, that the effect has been described as grand in the extreme.'

The winter of 1837-38 is not usually included as one among the exceptionally cold winters on the Continent, and the winter of 1840-41, though certainly cold in the British Isles, is not included by Mr. Plant in his list of the coldest winters since 1795. But this winter was exceedingly cold on the Continent. At Paris there were fifty-nine days' frost, twenty-seven of them consecutive--viz. from December 5th, when the cold began, to January 1st. The intermission which began on January 1, lasted only till January 3, when there was another week of frost. There was frost again from January 30 to February 10. One of the most remarkable stories connected with the cold of this winter is thus told by Flammarion:--'On the 15th of December, the ashes of Napoleon, brought back from St. Helena, entered Paris by the Arc de Triomphe. The thermometer in places exposed to nocturnal radiation, had that day marked 6.8 degrees above zero. An immense crowd, the National Guard of Paris and its suburbs, and numerous regiments lined the Champs Elysées, from the early morning until two in the afternoon. Every one suffered severely from the cold. Soldiers and workmen, hoping to obtain warmth by drinking brandy' (the most chilling process they could have thought of), 'were seized by the cold, and dropped down dead of congestion. Several persons perished, victims of their curiosity: having climbed up into the trees to see the procession, their extremities, benumbed by the cold, failed to support them, and they were killed by the fall.'

The winter of 1844-45 was remarkable for the long duration of cold weather. The whole of December was very cold, January not so severe, but still cold, February singularly cold, and the frost so severe in March that on Good Friday (March 21st) the boats, which had been frost-bound for weeks in the canals, were still locked tightly in ice.

Mr. Plant omits to notice in the letter above-mentioned the long winter of 1853-54, which was indeed less severe (relatively as well as absolutely) in England than on the Continent. Still, he is hardly right in saying, that after 1845 there was no winter of long and intense character until January and February 1855. On the Continent the winter of 1853-54 was not only protracted but severe, especially towards the end of December. Several rivers were frozen over. The cold lasted from March till November, with scarcely any intermission.

The winter of 1854-55 was still more severe than its predecessor. The frosts commenced in the east of France in October and lasted till the 28th of April. The mean temperatures for January and February, in England, were 31 degrees and 29 degrees respectively. This year will be remembered as that during which our army suffered so terribly from cold in the Crimea. But our brave fellows would have resisted Generals January and February (in whom the Czar Nicholas expressed such strong reliance), as well as the Russians themselves did, or maybe a trifle better (if we can judge from the way in which Englishmen have borne Arctic winters), had it not been for the gross negligence of the Red Tapists.

The winter of 1857-58 was rather severer than the average, but not much. The Danube and Russian ports in the Black Sea were frozen over in January, 1858.

The frost of December, 1860, and January, 1861, was remarkable. The coldest recorded mean temperature for a month in time (not the coldest month), was that for the thirty days ending January 16, 1861,--namely, 26 degrees. Mr. Plant remarks that 'the intense cold on Christmas-eve, 1860, finds no equal in his records, since January 20, 1838. The thermometer registered 34 degrees of frost, and in the valley of the Rea, five to seven degrees below zero. Strangely enough, Flammarion makes no mention of this bitter winter in his list of exceptionally cold winters.

The winter of 1864-65 lasted from December to the end of March, all of which four months, Mr. Plant notes, were of the true winter type. The Seine was frozen over at Paris, and people crossed the ice near the Pont des Arts.

The winter of 1870-71 will always be remembered as that during which the siege of Paris was carried on, and the last scenes of the Franco-Prussian war took place. As Flammarion justly remarks, this winter will be classed among severe winters, because of the extreme cold in December and January (notwithstanding the mild weather of February), and also because of the fatal influence which the cold exercised upon the public health at the close of the war with Germany. 'The great equatorial current,' he proceeds (meaning, no doubt, the winds which blow over the prolongation of the Gulf Stream), 'which generally extends to Norway, stopped this year at Spain and Portugal, the prevailing wind being from the north. On the 5th of December there was a temperature of 5 degrees, and on the 8th, at Montpellier, the thermometer stood at 17.6 degrees. A second period of cold set in on the 22nd of December, lasting until the 5th of January. In Paris the Seine was blocked with ice, and seemed likely to become frozen over. On the 24th there were 21.6 degrees of frost, and at Montpellier, on the 31st, 28.8 degrees. It is well known that many of the outposts around Paris, and several of the wounded who had been lying for fifteen hours upon the field, were found frozen to death. From the 9th to the 15th of January a third period of cold set in, the thermometer marking 17.6 degrees' (14.4 degrees of frost) 'at Paris, and 8.6 degrees at Montpellier. The most curious fact was that the cold was greater in the south than in the north of France. At Brussels the lowest temperatures were 11.1 degree in December and 8.2 degrees in January. There were forty days' frost at Montpellier, forty-two at Paris, and forty-seven at Brussels during these two months. Finally, the winter average (December, January, and February) was 35.2 degrees in Paris, whereas the general average is 37.9 degrees.' In the north of Europe this was also a very hard winter, though the cold set in at a different time than that noted for France. There were forty degrees of frost at Copenhagen on February 12--that is, the temperature was 5 degrees below zero. By the documents which M. Renon furnished Flammarion with for France, 'I discover,' says the latter, 'a minimum of 9.4 degrees below zero at Périgueux, and of 13 degrees below zero at Moulins! I find by the documents supplied me by Mr. Glaisher,' he proceeds, 'that he also considers the winter of 1870-71 as appertaining to the class of winters memorable for their severity.' Lastly, in the winter which as I write (February 10, 1879) seems to be nearly over, we have had for December a mean temperature of only 31 degrees in the midlands--the coldest December known there, followed by a January so cold that the mean temperature for the midlands was only 29.8 degrees. Mr. G.J. Symons, the well-known meteorologist, says of the past winter, that January was the coldest for at least twenty-one, and he believes for forty-one years, following a December which was also, with one exception, the coldest for twenty-one years.' He gives an abstract of the temperatures (both maximum and minimum) for November, December, and January during the last twenty-one years, from which it appears:--

1. That the average _maximum_ temperature of November was the lowest during the period with two exceptions, that of December the lowest with one exception, and that of January the lowest of the whole period.

2. That the average _minimum_ of November was the lowest during the period with four exceptions, that of December the lowest with one exception, and that of January the lowest.

3. That the mean temperature of the three months was not only five degrees below the average, but also lower than in any previous year out of the twenty-one.

On the whole, the winter of 1878-79 must be regarded as the coldest we have had during at least the last score of years, and probably during twice that time. It was not characterised by exceptionally severe short periods of intense cold, like those which occurred during the winters of 1854-55, 1855-56, and 1860-61; but it has been surpassed by few winters during the last two centuries for constant low temperature and long-continued moderate frost. During the last ninety years there have been only four winters matching that of 1878-79 in these respects.

* * * * *

Since the preceding pages were written the weather record for February 1879 has been completed. Like the three preceding months, February showed a mean temperature below the average, though the deficit was not quite so great as in those months. The following table, drawn out by Mr. Plant, shows the mean temperature at Moseley for four winter months of 1878-79, and the average temperature for those months at Moseley during the last twenty years:--

1878-79 Deg. November 37.0 December 31.0 January 29.8 February 35.8 ---- Mean of the four months in 33.4

Average of 20 years Deg. November 41.5 December 39.0 January 35.5 February 39.0 ---- Average of four months in 20 years observations 38.8

_OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE ROWING._

The records of the last eighteen boat-races between Cambridge and Oxford indicate clearly enough the existence of a difference of style in the rowing of the two universities, a circumstance quite as plainly suggested by the five successive victories of Cambridge in the years 1870-74, as by the nine successive victories of Oxford which preceded them. For it is, or should be, known that the victories of Cambridge only began when Morrison, one of the finest Oxford oarsmen, had taught the Cambridge men the Oxford style, so far as it could be imparted to rowers accustomed, for the most part, in intercollegiate struggles, to a different system. With regard to the long succession of Oxford victories which began in 1861, and which, be it noticed, followed on Cambridge successes obtained when the light-blue stroke rowed in the Oxford style, I may remark that, viewing the matter as a question of probabilities, it may safely be said that the nine successive victories of Oxford could not reasonably be regarded as accidental. The loss of three or four successive races would not have sufficed to show that there was any assignable difference in the conditions under which the rival universities encountered each other on the Thames. In cases where the chance of one or other of two events happening is exactly equal, there will repeatedly be observed recurrences of this sort. But when the same event recurs so often as nine successive times, it is justifiable to infer that the chances are _not_ precisely--or perhaps even nearly--equal. I believe I shall be able to indicate the existence of a cause quite sufficient to account for the series of defeats sustained in the years 1861-69 by Cambridge, and for the change of fortune experienced when for a while the Cambridge oarsmen adopted the style of rowing which has prevailed for many years at the sister university.