320 NATURAL HISTORY 
By the 14th of January the snow was entirely 
gone; the turnips emerged, not damaged at all, 
save in sunny places ; the wheat looked delicately, 
and the garden plants were well preserved; for 
snow is the most kindly mantle that infant vegeta- 
tion can be wrapped in: were it not for that friend- 
ly meteor, no vegetable life could exist at all in 
northerly regions. Yet in Sweden the earth in 
April is not divested of snow for more than a fort- 
night before the face of the country is covered with 
flowers. 
LETTER LVIII. 
THERE were some circumstances attending the 
remarkable frost in January, 1776, so singular and 
striking, that a short detail of them may not be un- 
acceptable. 
The most certain way to be exact will be to copy 
the passages from my journal, which were taken 
from time to time as things occurred. But it may 
be proper previously to remark, that the first week 
in January was uncommonly wet, and drowned with 
vast rains from every quarter ; from whence may 
be inferred, as there is great reason to believe is 
the case, that intense frosts seldom take place 
till the earth is perfectly glutted and chilled with 
water ;* and hence dry autumns are seldom follow- 
ed by rigorous winters. 
* The autumn preceding January, 1768, was very wet, and 
particularly the month of September, during which there fell at 
Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, six inches and a half of rain. 
And the terrible long frost in 1739-40 set in after a rainy season, 
and when the springs were very high. 
