APPENDIX. 581 



slightest wound. Nearly all the panes of glass in the hot-house were 

 smashed to atoms. This was about all the injury we received at 

 Walton Hall. My garden and corn-fields, potatoes and turnips, were 

 spared. Not so in the village and the neighbourhood. Whole fields 

 of wheat, barley, oats, turnips, and potatoes have been entirely de- 

 stroyed. The ears of corn were cut from the stalks, and lay on the 

 ground, as completely thrashed as though they had been under the 

 flail. Acres of beans are now lying in absolute ruin, while entire 

 gardens have to deplore the loss of their entire produce. I have 

 almost forgot to mention, that one man in the stable-yard was felled 

 to the ground by a single hailstone. This I had from his own mouth. 

 Numbers of birds perished in the storm ; and you might have seen 

 sparrows in the different villages crawling about with only one half of 

 their plumage. Hares and partridges have suffered severely. It is a 

 wonderful thing that my own garden (saving the glass in the hot- 

 house) and the whole of my farm should have escaped unscathed, 

 whilst those of my immediate neighbours have been scourged in a 

 manner which defies all description by means of pen and ink. 



But it is time to conclude. Excuse this brief and hurried account 

 of a thunder-storm, the destructive effect of which will never be for- 

 gotten in this part of Yorkshire. Edmund and my sisters are quite 

 well, and send their kindest remembrance. Believe me, my dear 

 friend, ever sincerely yours, CHARLES WATERTON. 



To the Same. 



WALTON HALL, April 15, 1860. 



My dear Friend, I have had a fine goosander, and two of your 

 pinnated grouse, sent to me from Canada in ice. Positively, they 

 were as fresh as though they had only been killed the day before 

 they reached Liverpool. Add to these, I have been employed on 

 two monster lobsters, from our Leadenhall market. So, you see, I 

 have had my hands full for sometime past, and that is the chief 

 cause for my not having answered your last letter sooner. We have 

 had a most severe winter, nearly of six months' duration ; with a 

 wind chiefly blowing from the north. Yesterday, it was from the 



