250 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



be it remembered that they remained untouched amidst the ge- 

 neral 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. 



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 14th of January the snow was entirely gone ; the tur- 

 nips emerged not damaged at all, save in sunny places ; the 

 wheat looked delicately, and the garden plants were well pre- 

 served ; 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. 



LETTER LXII. To THE HON. DAINES HARRINGTON. 

 THERE were some circumstances attending the remarkable frost 

 in January 1776 so singular and striking, that a short detail of 

 them may not be unacceptable. 



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 followed by 

 rigorous winters. 



January 7th. Snow driving all the day, which was followed 

 by frost, sleet, and some snow, till the 12th, when a prodigious 

 mass overwhelmed all the works of men, drifting over the tops 

 of the gates and filling the hollow lanes. 



* The autumn preceding January 1/68 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 yery 

 high. 



