276 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



be it remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general 

 havoc : hence men should learn to ornament chiefly with such 

 trees as are able to withstand accidental severities, and not subject 

 themselves to the vexation of a loss which may befal them once 

 perhaps in ten years, yet may hardly be recovered through the 

 whole course of their lives. 2 



As it appeared afterwards, the ilexes were much injured, the 

 cypresses were half destroyed, the arbutuses lingered on, but never 

 recovered ; and the bays, laurustines, and laurels, were killed to 

 the ground ; and the very wild hollies, in hot aspects, were so 

 much affected that they cast all their leaves. 



By the 1 4th 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 vegetation can be 

 wrapped in : were it not for that friendly 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 fortnight before 

 the face of the country is covered with flowers. 



NOTES TO LETTER LXI. 



1 The winter of 1878-9 will long be remembered for its unexampled severity. 

 There were 34 and 35 of frost several nights running in Northumberland. 

 Some tench and eels were frozen in a shallow pond and died. Some gold-fish I 

 had were exposed to the cold one night, and in the morning they were all 

 lying at the bottom of the water motionless, and apparently dead ; but on being 

 put in a warmer place four out of seven gradually recovered, but three died. 



2 At the same time the snow fell so fast and in such quantity, and lay so long, 

 that all the thick shrubs were bent to the ground with its weight, and unless 

 the snow was constantly shaken off the branches they perished. 



