OF SELBORNE 225 



By the 14th of 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 pre- 

 served ; for snow is the most kindly mantle that infant vegetation 

 can be wrapped in : were it not for that friendly meteor l 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. 2 



TO THE SAME. 



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 ; 3 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. 



On the 1 4th the writer was obliged to be much abroad ; and 

 thinks he never before or since has encountered such ru^ 

 Siberian weather. Many of the narrow roads were now f 



1 [The primary meaning of meteor is high in the air; thus the heavenly bodies 

 and at length any kind of natural phenomenon came to be denoted by this word. 

 White learned from Ray and Derham to call rain, snow, cloud and wind meteors, 

 an usage which is still commemorated by the word meteorology. ~\ 



2 [In orig. this Letter is wrongly numbered LXI., and the rest of the Letters on 

 Natural History, following in regular sequence, bear wrong numbers.] 



3 The autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet, and particularly the month 

 of September, during which there fell at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, six inches 

 and an half oi rain. And the terrible long frost of 1739-40 set in after a rainy 

 season, and when the springs were very high. 



15 



