LATE FROSTS. 165 
Devon particularly common, occurring to us fre- 
quently in the nights and early mornings of May 
before the sun has risen, and even so far in the 
season as June, when however as elsewhere said, 
vicissitudes of temperature are remarkable for 
their suddenness and extent. In the second week 
of May, 1839, a rather severe frost took place on 
the whole of the southern coast of the county ; it 
destroyed quantities of young apples, the shoots of 
all the early potatoes, the kidney beans, the sting- — 
nettles, a large proportion of the leaves of the 
ash, oak, ivy, and laurel ; it blighted the shoots 
of the laburnum when about to blossom, and in 
numerous cases quite prevented that process, and 
lastly, it killed an abundance of young goose- 
berries, which were strewed beneath the trees 
after they had turned yellow from the frost. The 
effects of the frost upon the young apples was not 
apparent till the occurrence of the long: drought 
which succeeded, when, not encouraged by timely 
showers to protract a questionable sort of existence, 
they forthwith fell off,—sacrifices to a blight, sud- 
den as lightning in its influences and sweeping as 
a pestilence in its course. 
Vallies in particular suffered, and those open to 
the sea, more so than those removed from it; the 
fogs and vapours of the night resting greatly in 
these parts, and requiring the heat of the succeeding 
day to dispel them, thoroughly saturate vegetation, 
and by chilling its energies render it the more 
susceptible to penetrating frost, and keep it bathed 
in this obnoxious medium long after the sun has 
visitedthe hills with his resuscitating beams; whilst, 
regarding those vallies and combes directly open to 
the sea, they are assailed by a double disadvantage,— 
the sea winds themselves acting inimically on plants 
and trees, and of course especially so, when aided 
in their assaults by fogs associated with frost. 
