NEW ENGLAND CLIMATE. 159 



Tfintcr, says Lindley, was this : that in those places where the 

 cold was very severe, the more plants were exposed, the less 

 they suffered, while the more they were sheltered without being 

 fully protected, the more extensively they were injured. Of 

 this, he proceeds to give several striking instances. Had he 

 experienced a few of our changeable winters, he would scarcely 

 have thought the fact extraordinary. It seems to be a settled 

 principle that all tender plants which can bear our winter 

 weather at all, are safer in a northern exposure than any other ; 

 and that the winter's sun is, with respect to all those plants 

 which are called half-hardy, far more dangerous than the winter 

 frost. 



It is impossible to read Lindley's Essay, without being con- 

 vinced that much of the devastation which it commemorates, 

 was owing, not to the actual severity of the cold alone, but to 

 the fact that this cold was preceded by an uncommonly warm 

 winter. The cold was certainly such as is rare in any part of 

 England, but in all probability, as Lindlcy himself intimates, far 

 from unprecedented. But the preceding weather had kept the 

 fluids of the trees in activity, and the sudden check was suffi- 

 cient to test their powers of endurance to the utmost. Lindley 

 himself does not seem to adopt this conclusion, or, at least, 

 to state it distinctly, but rather to consider the actual degree 

 of cold as the prime and sufficient agent. Doubtless, there is a 

 limit in every exotic to its power of enduring cold, however 

 prepared by the previous state of the weather. But when we 

 find that our hardy ash [Fraxinus Americana) was severely in- 

 jured by a temperature of four and one-half degrees below zero ; 

 while with us it seldom passes a winter without experiencing this 

 degree of cold, and is often called to meet one much more 

 severe, it seems impossible to deny that no injury would have 

 occurred, had not the tree been strongly and unnaturally ex- 

 cited by the previous warm weather. 



On the subject of acclimating plants, that is of rendering a 

 tender species hardy by repeated raisings from the seed, 

 Professor Lindley's language is very decided on the negative 

 side. Acclimating, says he, in the strict sense of the word, 

 seems to be a chimera, and quotes the bean as a plant which 

 has been raised from the seed in cold climates for centuries, 



