Fierce frost. Rime hangs all day on the hanger. The hares, press’d by hunger, haunt the gardens & devour the pinks, cabbages, parsley, &c. Cats catch the red-breasts. Timothy the tortoise sleeps in the fruit-border under the wall, covered with a hen-coop, in which is a good armfull of straw. Here he will lie warm, secure, & dry. His back is partly covered with mould.
The woods, & hedges are beautifully fringed with snow. Ordered thomas carefully to beat-off the snow that lodges on the Sought side of the laurels & laurustines.
The conjunction of Jupiter & Saturn is over; & the former, which lately was just below the latter, is now to the E. of him, & in a line parallel with the horizon. These planets are so near the sun at setting as to be visible but a small time: & are so low as not to be seen at all at Selborne, because of the hill.
One way or other we have used most of the grapes.
No hogs have annoyed us this year in my outlet. They usually force-in after the acorns, nuts, beech & maple mast; & occasion much trouble.
The torrent down the stoney-lane as you go towards Rood has run all the spring, summer, & autumn, joining Well-head stream at the bridge.
Lord Howe arrived at Portsmouth with 16 men of war. He was absent just nine weeks. If a frost happens, even when the ground is considerably dry, as soon as a thaw takes place, the paths & fields are all in a batter. Country people say that the frost draws moisture. But the true philosophy is, that the steam & vaours continually ascending from the earth, are bound-in by the frost, & not suffered to escape, ’till released by the thaw. No wonder then that the surface is all in a float; since the quntity of moisture by evaporation that arises daily from every acre of ground is astonishing. Dr Watson, by experiment, found it to be from 1600 to 1900 gallons in 12 hours, according to the degree of heat in the earth, & the quantity of rain new fallen.– See Watson’s Chem. essays: Vol. 3 p. 55. 56
Planted 50 tulips, which I bought of Dan Wheeler, in the border opposite to the great parlor-windows. They are, I think, good flowers.
Men are interrupted in their wheat-sowing in the mornings by hard frost.
I watched the S.E. end of the hanger, hoping to see some house-martins, as they sometimes appear about this day but was disappointed.
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