NEW ENGLAND CLIMATE. 157 



endure two or three days of such weather, would sink under a 

 longer continuance of it. This occasional degree of cold alone 

 would be sufficient to deprive us of many of the shrubs which 

 ornament the gardens of every part of England. But our 

 winters would probably be far less dangerous to vegetable life 

 if our climate, severe as it is, were more uniform. On the con- 

 trary, it deserves any other title. The average range of our 

 thermometer in the three winter months of December, January 

 and February, is not less than sixty degrees, while that of a 

 London winter is less than forty, and the change in the course 

 of one of our winter days, sometimes amounts to thirty degrees. 

 The difference between the greatest degree of heat and cold in 

 our spring months, (March, April, and May,) the most critical 

 of the whole year, so far as vegetation is concerned, is not less, 

 on an average, than seventy-four degrees. When these facts 

 are considered, it will seem much more surprising that the list 

 of exotics which habitually endure our winters should be so 

 large as it is, than that we should be compelled to exclude 

 from this list so many of the ornamental plants of Europe. 



Our extremes of heat are equally striking as those of cold. 

 They occur with equal suddenness, and with more frequency. 

 The number of days in each year in which our thermometer 

 rises above ninety degrees, a heat all but unknown in England, 

 is not less on an average, than ten annually. These occurring 

 as they do near midsummer, produce much less effect of a per- 

 manent kind upon vegetation, than days of extreme cold, and 

 are of little moment to the farmer or gardener, except as they 

 serve to increase our summer drought. 



No country, however, is entirely exempted from these extra- 

 ordinary visitations of severe and changeable seasons, which 

 overleap the usual boundaries of heat and cold, and occurring 

 as they do, once, perhaps, in a score of years, destroy in 

 many instances the growth of a generation. Such a season 

 occurred in England, in the winter of 1837, which, for the 

 greatness and suddenness of its changes, might fairly be 

 denominated a New England winter. This resemblance must 

 give additional interest to any full and accurate account of its 

 effects on the vegetable kingdom, and such an account has been 



