When piercing colds had burst the brittle stone, And freezing rivers stiffened as they run, He then would prune the tenderest of his trees, Chide the late spring, and lingering western breeze: His bees first swarmed, and made his vessels foam With the rich squeezing of the juicy comb.

Strong of soul that earl, sorrow sharp he bore; To companionship he had care and weary longing, Winter-freezing wretchedness.

It was known to the scientific world that several of the original thermometers, constructed by Mr Sheepshanks (in the course of his preparation of the National Standard of Length) by independent calibration of the bores, and independent determination of the freezing and boiling points on arbitrary graduations, were still preserved at the Royal Observatory.

The mean temperature of the period January 12 to 26 (15 days) was only 24.2°, or 14.7° below the average; the temperature fell below 20° on 10 days, and rose above the freezing point only on 3 days.

" Thereat Rose struck up a familiar ballad-meter of a catching rhythm, and every voice of young and old was soon joining in it: "Behold a silly, tender Babe, In freezing winter night, In homely manger trembling lies; Alas!

He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June, we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December.

They also decrease in volume at the same rate for each degree below 0° C. (the freezing point of water).

The only way to compare the proportional temperatures of bodies, whether on the earth or in space, is therefore by means of a scale beginning at this natural zero, instead of those scales founded on the artificial zero of the freezing point of water, or, as in Fahrenheit's, 32° below it.

The temperature of Mars, with Professor Lowell's data, still comes out far below the freezing-pointstill further below than the increased distance alone would make it.

Now, by the most refined observations with his Bolometer, Mr. Langley was able to determine the temperature of the moon's surface exposed to undimmed sunshine for fourteen days together; and he found that, even in that portion of it on which the sun was shining almost vertically, the temperature rarely rose above the freezing point of water.

It is stated by geographers that in parts of the Great Sahara the surface temperature is sometimes 150° F., while during the night it falls nearly or quite to the freezing pointa difference of 118 degrees in little more than 12 hours.[10]

[A] of the highest temperature (which we may take at the freezing-point, 491° F. abs.), or 154° F. abs., just below the liquefaction point of air.

These three favourable conditions result in a mean temperature of about +60° F. with a range seldom exceeding 40° above or below it, while over more than half the land-surface of the earth the temperature rarely falls below the freezing point.

On the other hand, we have a globe of the same materials and at the same distance from the sun, with a maximum temperature of freezing water, and a minimum not very far from the absolute zero, the monthly mean being probably much below the freezing point of carbonic-acid gasa difference entirely due to the absence of these three favourable conditions.

On the other hand, we have a globe of the same materials and at the same distance from the sun, with a maximum temperature of freezing water, and a minimum not very far from the absolute zero, the monthly mean being probably much below the freezing point of carbonic-acid gasa difference entirely due to the absence of these three favourable conditions.

But the winter temperatures, over the same latitudes in Mars, must be very much lower; and it must require a proportionally larger amount of its feeble sun-heat to raise the surface even to the freezing-point, and an additional very large amount to melt any considerable depth of snow.

If the moon, even at its equator, has not its temperature raised above the freezing-point of water, how can the more distant Mars, with its oblique noon-day sun falling upon the snow-caps, receive heat enough, first to raise their temperature to 32° F., and then to melt with marked rapidity the vast frozen plains of its polar regions?

The final result of this mode of aggregation would be, that the planet would consist of an outer layer of moderate thickness as compared with the central mass, which outer layer would have cooled from a highly heated state to a temperature considerably below the freezing-point, and this would have been all the time contracting upon a previously cold, and therefore non-contracting nucleus.

Now, as basalt begins to soften at about 1400° F. and the surface of Mars has cooled to at least the freezing-pointperhaps very much below itthe contraction would be so great that if the fissures produced were 500 miles apart they might be three miles wide at the surface, and, if only 100 miles apart, then about two-thirds of a mile wide.

It will be seen that this lower rate would bring the temperature of Mars at the equator down to 20° F. below the freezing point of water from this cause alone.

But all enquirers have admitted, that if conditions as to atmosphere were the same as on the earth, its greater distance from the sun would reduce the temperature to-31° F., equal to 63° below the freezing point.

It is therefore certain that the combined effect of both causes must bring the temperature of Mars down to at least 70° or 80°below the freezing point.

(2) But the very low temperatures on the earth under the equator, at a height where the barometer stands at about three times as high as on Mars, proves, that from scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have a temperature as high as the freezing point of water; and this proof is supported by Langley's determination of the low maximum temperature of the full moon.

There had been snow in the afternoon, but at seven o'clock it had ceased, and a freezing wind had sprung up.

If you get this into your pate, you will be a strong man and can boast you were once the pupil of the Marquis Tudesco, of Venice, the exile who has translated in a freezing garret, on scraps of refuse paper, the immortal poem of Torquato Tasso.