270 WINTER OF 1776. 



By the fourteenth 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 

 preserved; 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 CVI. 



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 fol- 

 lowed by'frost, sleet, and some snow, till the twelfth, when a 

 prodigious mass overwhelmed all the works of men, drifting 

 over the tops of the gates, and filling the hollow lanes. 



On the fourteenth, the writer was obliged to be much 

 abroad ; and thinks he never before or since encountered such 

 rugged Siberian weather. Many of the narrow roads were 

 now filled above the tops of the hedges ; through which the 

 snow was driven into most romantic and grotesque shapes, so 

 striking to the imagination, as not to be seen without wonder 

 and pleasure. The poultry dared not to stir out of their 

 roosting places ; for cocks and hens are so dazzled and con- 

 founded by the glare of snow, that they would soon perish 



* The autumn preceding January, 1 768, 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 

 very high. 



