THAWS. 269 



frosty night, the intervention of a cloud shall immediately raise 

 the mercury ten degrees ; and a clear sky shall again compel 

 it to descend to its former gage. 



And here it may be proper to observe, on what has been 

 said above, that though frosts advance to their utmost severity 

 by somewhat of a regular gradation, yet thaws do not usually 

 come on by as regular a declension of cold ; but often take 

 place immediately from intense freezing ; as men in sickness 

 often mend at once from a paroxysm. * 



To the great credit of Portugal laurels and American 

 jumpers, be it remembered, that they remained untouched 

 amidst the general havock : hence men should learn to orna- 

 ment chiefly with such trees as are able to withstand accidental 

 severities, and not subject themselves to the vexation of a loss 

 which may befall 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 aifected, that they cast all their leaves.f- 



* About the middle of November, 1831, the winter set in at Edinburgh 

 with considerable severity, and was followed up by a fall of snow. It lay 

 on the ground for some days, and had been raked up in heaps along the 

 sides of the street. It continued freezing hard, on the evening of the 

 twenty -first, at six o'clock, when we were out of doors. We had occasion 

 to be out again a little after midnight, and, the moment we set our face 

 out of doors, we were astonished at the extreme warmth of the atmosphere, 

 which felt like a genial summer mid-day breeze, the wind blowing gently 

 from the south, and the whole snow had disappeared. So rapid was the 

 thaw, that the atmosphere seemed incapable of properly taking up the 

 moist vapour, and next day the walls of all the houses in Edinburgh 

 ran down with condensed vapour : those which were painted with size 

 appeared as wet as if they had been newly washed, and it was some days 

 before they were thoroughly dry. ED. 



f The winter of 1830-31, remarkable for the great quantity of snow 

 that fell in some parts of the kingdom, as well as for the severity of the 

 frost, caused very great devastation among the evergreens, particularly 

 in Ireland. At Headford, in the county of Galway, several very large 

 trees of the arbutus unedo, which had already flourished for many years, 

 and attained a diameter of nearly a foot, were destroyed down to the root. 

 In the vicinity of Clogher, in the county of Tyrone, most of the laurustines, 

 bays, and laurels, and many of the evergreens, were entirely destroyed ; 

 nor were the Portugal laurels entirely exempted. In one shrubbery, in 

 particular, the decay was so rapid as to produce an almost overpowering 

 smell. ED. 



