SIR,
Read Nov. 9, 1758.
IN a letter I received from my brother, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, he gives an account of a very remarkable storm of hail; which, if you think it worth communicating to the Society, is very much at their service.
It happened on Sunday the 9th of July, about four o’clock in the afternoon, and was preceded by some thunder and lightning. It was a small cloud, that did not seem to threaten much before its breaking, and did not extend a full mile in breadth. It passed over the middle of the town of Williamsburgh, and the skirts of the town had but little of it. Its course was from N. by W. to S. by E. The hail-stones, or rather pieces of ice, were most of them of an oblong square form; many of them an inch and half long, and about three fourths of an inch wide and deep; and from one side of most of them there proceeded sharp spikes, protuberant at least half an inch. He says he cooled his wine, and froze cream, with some of them the next day; and they were not totally dissolved when he went to bed on Monday night. This storm broke every pane of glass on the north side his house, and destroyed all his garden things intirely.
He mentions likewise the heats to have been rather more than usual in that country this summer; and particularly on the 9th of August his thermometer (which is hung on the outside of his house on the north aspect) was at 97, by Fahrenheit’s graduation, and some other days as high as 94 or 95. I am,
SIR,
Your most obedient humble Servant,
Wm. Fauquier.
Jermyn street, 18 October, 1758.
CI. An Account of an extraordinary Case of a diseased Eye; In a Letter to Matthew Maty, M. D. F.R.S. By Daniel Peter Layard, M. D. F.R.S.
Huntingdon, 20th May, 1758.