go PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1684. 



It need not seem improbable, that ice should be able to tear the oaks or other 

 trees, when we consider its great force and elastic power ; as appears from many 

 experiments of Mr. Boyle, in his history of cold ; for strong vessels of several 

 kinds of metals, being filled with water, close stopped and exposed to the cold, 

 could not withstand the expansive force of the inclosed ice, but were found 

 cleft and broken ; as for instance, a strong barrel of a gun close stopped, with 

 water in it, and frozen, has been rent longwise, and never across, just like 

 the bodies of the trees. 



Some trees and shrubs seem to have their vessels and passages so straightened, 

 that they seem as it were shrunk with cold. Thus we see trees with their bark 

 shrivelled, and their passages half stopped, whose sap now only squeezes, and 

 with difficulty passes through the dried and narrow pores and passages of the 

 body and branches. And sometimes this distemper is so prevalent, that whole 

 branches of a tree are killed, when the other part is indifferent well. Some 

 liquids, such as essential oils, do rather shrink than expand by freezing; and 

 empyreumatic oils will hardly freeze at all, but waste ; which may suggest what 

 some trees are made of, or abound in ; as firs, pines, &c. which are capable of 

 enduring the cold of Norway and other such countries. 



Yew and holly were in some places quite killed, and in many places they lost 

 their leaves, and their bark was damaged. The furze in many places was quite 

 killed. Common broom proves a degree hardier. In some places the sunny 

 side of a juniper bush proves scorched between sun and cold, but that proves 

 one of the most hardy of our native greens ; so that it is hard to say what is 

 winter-proof, even among our natives, except box and ivy, which stand in 

 defiance of all. 



In gardens, which generally are nurseries of exotics, this calamity principally bent 

 its force against winter-greens, such as alaternus, commonly known by the name 

 of phillyrea, and the true phillyrea also, which are generally killed, though some 

 upon cutting down spring again. Also common bays in most places are killed, 

 and laurel too in some places killed, or half dead. Rosemary, laurustine, hali- 

 mus, arbutus, white jessamine, and others which seldom fail, are generally killed 

 tVirough the whole country. But if for the future, in such times of extremity, 

 the surface of the ground, the bodies of such things as are here recited, and 

 fig-trees, were well covered with straw, to keep off the frost, it might so pre- 

 serve them to the following spring; though their tops, being too large and high 

 to be capable of such covering, might lose their present leaves and beauty. 



Several among those with deciduous leaves, have been sufferers ; as arbor 

 vitae, the young plane trees, paliurus, the Aleppo ash, in some places the locust 

 tree, and in most hedges the common large bramble, and some others, which 



