85 



The weavil has not yet ascended the high moun- 

 tains. 



A more satisfactory estimate of our cHmate to some, 

 may perhaps be formed, by noting the plants which 

 grow here, subject however to be killed by our sever- 

 est colds. These are the fig, pomegranate, artichoke, 

 and European walnut. In mild winters, lettuce and 

 endive require no shelter; but generally they need a 

 slight covering. I do not know that the want of long 

 moss, reed, myrtle, swamp laurel, hally and cypress, in 

 the upper country, proceeds from a greater degree of 

 cold, nor that they were ever killed with any degree of 

 cold in the lower country. The aloe lived in Williams- 

 burgh, in the open air, through the severe winter of 

 1779, 1780. 



A change in our climate, however, is taking place 

 very sensibly. Both heats and colds are become much 

 more moderate, within the memory even of the middle 

 aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep. They 

 do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, 

 two, or three days, and very rarely a week. They are 

 remembered to have been formerly frequent, deep, and 

 of long continuance. The elderly inform me, the earth 

 used to be covered with snow about three months in 

 every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to 

 freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do 

 so now. 



This change has produced an unfortunate fluctuation 

 between heat and cold, in the spring of the year, which 

 is very fatal to fruits. From the year 1741 to 1769, an 

 interval of twenty-eight years, there was no instance of 

 fruit killed by the frost in the neighbourhood of Monti- 

 cello. An intense cold produced by constant snows, 

 kept the buds locked up till the sun could obtain, in the 

 spring of the year, so fixed an ascendancy as to dissolve 

 those snows, and protect the buds, during their devel- 

 opement, from every danger of returning cold. The 

 accumulated snows of the winter remaining to be dis- 

 solved altogether in the spring, produced those over- 



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