270 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
Be Be TIE Rs Role 
TO THE SAME. 
SINCE the weather of a district is undoubtedly part of its natural 
history, I shall make no further apology for the four following 
letters, which will contain many particulars concerning some of 
the great frosts, and a few respecting some very hot summers, that 
have distinguished themselves from the rest during the course of 
my observations. 
As the frost in January 1768 was, for the small time it lasted, 
the most severe that we had then known for many years, and was 
remarkably injurious to evergreens, some account of its rigour, and 
reason of its ravages, may be useful, and not unacceptable to 
persons that delight in planting and ornamenting ; and may par- 
ticularly become a work that professes never to lose sight of 
utility. 
For the last two or three days of the former year there were con- 
siderable falls of snow, which lay deep and uniform on the ground 
without any drifting, wrapping up the more humble vegetation in 
perfect security. From the first day to the fifth of the new year 
more snow succeeded ; but from that day the air became entirely 
clear, and the heat of the sun about noon had a considerable in- 
fluence in sheltered situations. 
It was in such an aspect that the snow on the author’s evergreens 
was melted every day, and frozen intensely every night ; so that the 
laurustines, bays, laurels, and arbutuses looked, in three or four 
days, as if they had been burnt in the fire; while a neighbour’s 
plantation of the same kind, in a high cold situation, where the 
snow was never melted at all, remained uninjured. 
From hence I would infer that it is the repeated melting and 
freezing of the snow that is so fatal to vegetation, rather than the 
severity of the cold. Therefore it highly behoves every planter, 
who wishes to escape the cruel mortification of losing in a few days 
the labour and hopes of years, to bestir himself on such emergencies; 
and if his plantations are small, to avail himself of mats, cloths, 
