390 PECULIARITIES OF 



us, though we may be fully sensible that no con- 

 clusions can safely be drawn from them, a variety 

 of circumstances not known, or not comprehended, 

 combining to produce results beyond our means of 

 calculation. There have been times when such re- 

 collections brought no pleasure with them, by dis- 

 playing the injuries and sufferings that hurricanes 

 and floods have occasioned ; and thus we who were 

 witnesses of the distress occasioned by the lamenta- 

 ble rains of 1793, and the several successive years, 

 when every wheat-sheaf presented a turf of verdant 

 vegetation, cannot recollect it without sorrow, or 

 ever forget that famine in our land. Yet it is 

 amusing, on some occasions, to note the extremes of 

 weather that our island has experienced ; for though 

 in general our seasons pass away without any very 

 considerable dissimilitude, still we have known pe- 

 riods of great irregularity, drought or moisture, 

 cold or heat. The freezing of great rivers, with 

 the roasting of animals and passage of carriages 

 upon the ice, our calendars and diaries relate ; but 

 instances of an opposite temperature, affording less 

 striking events, are not so fully detailed as might 

 be wished. The winter of 1661 appears to have 

 been remarkable for its mildness ; and it is rather 

 curious that, in the century following, the winter 

 of 1761 should have been equally notable for the 

 mildness of its temperature. The winter of 1795 

 seems to have partaken of none of the severity usual 

 to the season ; and the summer of 1765 was re- 

 markable for its heat and dryness, and all vegeta^ 



