is affected by cold.  It is well known that water increases in density down to 40 degrees, below which temperature it begins to expand, and this expansion continues until it reaches the freezing-point, so that in severe frosts there will be strata of different temperatures from 32 degrees to 40 degrees.  Again, he says that “the crystals of ice are intercepted by the interstices of the stones, and then become heaped together in thick beds;” but if my observations are correct, these depositions begin first round the large stones, which are not likely to stop small spiculae any more than are the water-gates of mills, where, he says, the accumulations also take place.

Anchor frosts are most common in the rapid streams occurring below deeps in rivers, and I have seen a weir on the river Wharfe which had a wall of ice four feet high formed upon it in a single night by a sharp north wind.  In my opinion a sufficient explanation of this freezing at the bottom of rivers is to be found in the fact that water when kept still may be cooled down below the freezing-point without being congealed; but if the vessel in which it is kept be shaken, a portion of it will be converted into a porous, spongy ice, and the temperature immediately rises to 32 degrees.  In the deeps of rivers the same cooling below the freezing-point takes place without congelation, but as soon as this water reaches the stream below, the agitation immediately converts a portion of it into ice, which collects round the large stones at the bottom in the same way that crystallization commences in a solution of salt or sugar around a piece of thread or other substance which may be suspended in it.  If a severe frost is followed by a bright day, thousands of these detached pieces of spongy ice may be seen rising from the stones which have served as nuclei for them; which proves that the detention of them is not merely mechanical, but that precipitation (if I may be allowed to call it so) takes place in the first instance, the stone serving as a nucleus, and that this adhesion is destroyed by the action of the sun’s rays.

I have never seen any attempt to explain the phenomenon of bottom-frosts before this of J. M.’s, and I am not philosopher enough to speak positively on the subject; but the above is the way in which I have always endeavoured to account for it.  Perhaps some of your scientific readers may be able to give much better reasons for it than have been offered either by J. M. or myself. (January 17th, 1832.)

Another writer (J.  Carr, of Alnwick,) says that anchor frosts are merely long and severe ones where long masses of ice are frozen to the stones at the bottom of rapid streams, and this is simply owing to these stones acquiring a degree of cold far below the freezing-point, and the water in contact with them freezing and spreading into large sheets of ice, which are sometimes torn up and carry away the gravel adhering to the under surface.