AQUEOUS ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA. 



477 



tion which he must have had of their approach." The spaniels of the St. Bernard have 



become celebrated through the civilized 

 world for the fine intelligence they dis 

 play in discovering and aiding the pe 

 rishing traveller, scenting his person lying 

 many feet below the snow, scratching 

 away the drift, rousing the victim from 

 his stupefying sleep, and informing their 

 human allies of the discovery by com 

 mencing their peculiar bark. One of 

 these dogs, during his career, saved the 

 lives of forty persons, and is known to 

 fame, by finding a child in a frozen state, 

 succeeding in restoring animation, and then 

 bearing him upon his back to the hospice. 

 In North Britain, in severe winters, the fall of snow in storms, with its long continuance 

 on the ground, has often led to melancholy disasters to man and beast. In Scotch annals 

 the "thirteen drifty days," in the year 1620, designate a dismal snow-storm, the memory 

 of which long survived in the traditionary stories of the shepherds, and was oft recurred 

 to at their hearths. The snow fell during thirteen days and nights with very little in 

 termission, accompanied with great cold, and a keen biting wind. About the fifth and 

 sixth days the young sheep fell into a torpid state and died ; and about the ninth and 

 tenth days, the shepherds began to build up large semicircular walls of their dead, in 

 order to afford some shelter for the living ; but the protection was of little service. Im 

 pelled by hunger, the sheep were frequently seen tearing at one another's wool with their 

 teeth. On the fourteenth day from the commencement of the storm, when it began to 

 abate, there was on many a high-lying farm, not a survivor of extensive flocks to be found. 

 Large misshapen walls of dead, surrounding a small prostrate group, likewise dead, and 

 stiffly frozen in their lairs, met the eye of the forlorn shepherd and his master. Of 

 upwards of twenty thousand sheep maintained in the extensive pastoral district of 

 Eskdale moor, only about forty-five were left alive. The years 1709, 1740, and 1772, 

 were also remarkable for their snows and consequent calamities. In the latter year, the 

 soil was not once exposed from the middle of December to the middle of April, but 

 retained its covering throughout of hard frozen snow. The south of Scotland, between 

 Crawford-muir and the border, was the scene or a violent storm in the year 1795, when 

 whole flocks were overwhelmed in a few hours by the drifting snows, and seventeen 

 shepherds perished. After the thaw, and the subsidence of the flood it occasioned, there 

 were found, in a place called the beds of Esk, where the tide of the Solway throws up 

 what has been brought into it by the rivers, the carcasses of 1840 sheep, nine black cattle, 

 three horses, two men, one woman, forty-five dogs, and a hundred and eighty hares, 

 besides a number of smaller animals. But these are evils incidentally connected with a 

 natural production of great utility. Owing to the snow being an imperfect conductor of 

 heat, the earth beneath it is kept at a higher temperature than that of the exterior air, 

 and the bulbs and roots of plants are sheltered from the ungenial cold. Hence also it 

 offers a bed to the polar traveller warmer than the atmosphere, and furnishes a ready- 

 made material to the Esquimaux for the construction of an abode, whose walls will screen 

 him from the cold blast without, and not minister to the abstraction of the heat from 

 within. There are several remarkable instances on record, of unquestionable authority, 

 of persons having been kept alive for a considerable period when completely buried in 

 snow, a result to which its imperfect conduction of heat has contributed. Hearne 



