Note 759 — LETTER XXVI.

Since the publication of the first edition of this volume, I have had an opportunity of making some observations which strongly corroborate the above reasoning. The month of October in the present year (1817) set in extremely cold. From the 1st to the 6th, piercing north and north-west winds blew; the thermometer at Hull, though the sun shone brightly, in the day-time was never higher than from 52° to 56°, nor at night than 38°; in fact, on the 1st and 3rd it sunk as low as 34°, and on the 2nd to 31°: and on those days, at eight in the morning, the grass was covered with a white hoar frost; in short, to every one's feelings the weather indicated December rather than October. Here then was every condition fulfilled that the theory I am opposing can require; consequently, according to that theory, such a state of the atmosphere should have driven every hybernating insect to its winter quarters. But so far was this from being the case, that on the 5th, when I made an excursion purposely to ascertain the fact, I found all the insects still abroad which I had met with six weeks before in similar situations.