NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 1Q3 



To the great credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers, be 

 it remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general havoc : 

 hence men should learn to ornament chiefly with such trees as are able 

 to withstand accidental severities, and not subject themselves to the 

 vexation of a loss which may befal 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 affected that they cast 

 all their leaves. 



I?y 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 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. 



LETTEE LXII. 



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; * 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 over- 

 whelmed all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the gates and 

 filling the hollow lanes. 



On the 14th the writer was obliged to be much abroad ; and thinks 

 he never before or since has 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 - 



* 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 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. 



