WINTER 1879-80 UPON TEEES AND SHEUBS. 67 



Frost, as seen from the effects of the several severe winters 

 we have named, is very decided and marked in its immediate 

 action ; and the results to vegetation generally, and to recently 

 introduced shrubs and trees from strange countries, arising from 

 an unusually low and abnormal temperature occurring in the 

 land of their translation, are, by all the experience of these 

 several memorable winters, most destructive and severe. The 

 modifying conditions are the nature of the soil, subsoil, situation, 

 and altitude, governed by the quantity of moisture in the soil 

 and atmosphere ; and in no instance were the beneficial effects 

 of these surroundings more apparent than during the past winter 

 1879-80, when we find that in every case, in low situations, in 

 heavy soils, with damp subsoils, even where such conditions 

 w^ere accompanied with shelter and mild exposure, far more 

 injury was sustained than by the same species of trees and 

 slinibs with northerly exposures on lighter and dry soils and at 

 liiaher altitudes. The shorter and smaller shoots made under 

 the unfavourable auspices of the sunless summer of 1879 in 

 such situations proved themselves more independent of the 

 absence of the climatal conditions necessary for ripening the 

 young wood, for wdiich the ensuing autumn was so conspicuous. 



The peculiarity, however, of the effects of the very low tem- 

 peratures recorded in December 1879 was not that the winter's 

 ravages were most apparent and severe upon the newer intro- 

 duced species of trees and shrubs, but it has been observed that 

 the injury done last winter has been quite unusual and hitherto 

 unrecorded to anything like the same extent amongst the 

 common hard-w^ood trees of large size and considerable age, 

 hithert© considered quite impervious to any amount of frost, 

 and some of them even known to be indigenous to our country. 

 Tlius we find, where the lowest readings of the thermometer 

 have been accurately recorded, even the common oaks, of two or 

 three hundred years' growth and in pristine vigour of constitu- 

 tion and habit, have had their young wood of four and five years' 

 growth killed outright. Hollies of GO feet in height perished 

 entirely; and even the common elder, tree box, ivy, privet, lilac, 

 hazel, spiruBa, were most severely injured, and in some instances 

 are now quite dead, having been unable to throw off the scathinj; 

 effects of the frost from their young branches, so as to push forth 

 buds afresh this season. Many other varieties of forest trees of 

 large size, in various localities, notably the English elms, walnuts, 

 beeches, and horse chestnuts, are showing very scant foliage this 

 summer, and the many dead twigs of young wood all over the 

 trees, and especially on those sides which had been exposed to 

 the prevailing cold current of air during the winter, evince the 

 weakness of nature's recuperative powers after so very severe a 

 tiial, and plainly indicate that it will recjuire several genial 



