Cold Days

‘Monday 30 March 1663

Up betimes and found my weather-glass sunk again just to the same position which it was last night before I had any fire made in my chamber, which had made it rise in two hours time above half a degree…’

Samuel Pepys used a weather-glass, as he records in his diary, which was largely developed within the century Pepys lived in (17^th).  By Walter Scott’s time, the term thermometer, first introduced in 1624, was in common use.  Scott commented on the temperature more than once in his journal, including this entry:

January 15 [1826]--Like yesterday, a hard frost. Thermometer at 10; water in

my dressing-room frozen to flint; yet I had a fine walk yesterday, the

sun dancing delightfully on "grim Nature's visage hoar."