EXTERMINATION OF ANIMAL LIFE. 289 



the spawning-beds, and to destroy the whole of one year's crop 

 of eggs.* 



Plants are, as well known, particularly sensitive to these 

 visitations. M. de Lanessan remarks : " None will be ignorant 

 of the terrible havoc which an unseasonable cold produces on 

 fruit-trees. The least hoar-frost occurring at the time when the 

 shoots of the vine begin to expand is sufficient to destroy that 

 year's vintage. An intense frost occurring at the same time 

 would decree the death of the plant itself." t A winter storm at 

 the end of December, 1886, was especially disastrous to junipers. 

 Snow came on early in the evening when the thermometer was 

 barely at freezing-point, and there was no wind. It hung on the 

 trees in clogging masses, with a lowering temperature that was 

 soon below freezing. The snow, still falling, loaded them more 

 and more ; then came the fatal wind, and all through that night 

 was heard the breaking trees. When morning came there were 

 eighteen inches of snow on the ground, and all the trees that 

 could be seen, mostly Scotch-fir, seemed to be completely 

 wrecked. Some were entirely stripped of branches, and stood 

 up bare like scaffold-poles. This refers to only one spot in 

 England.! We all remember Gilbert White's account of the 

 January frost in 1768 : " 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. "§ Of the 

 December frost in 1784, the same writer states: " The frost 

 killed all the furze and most of the ivy, and in many places 

 stripped the hollies of all their leaves." [| The study of fossil 

 flora discloses the fact that the temperature of the globe has 

 been always on the decline ; in ancient epochs it was very high.1T 



Dr. John Murray, in discussing the undoubted resemblances 



* " The Trout " (' Fur, Feather, and Fin Series '), p. 170. 



f Quoted by Coe, ' Nature versus Natural Selection,' p. 67. 



\ Cf. Gertrude Jekyll, ' Wood and Garden ' (ed. 1899), p. 27. 



§ « Nat. Hist. Selborne ' (Harting's edit.), p. 302. 



|| Id., loc. cit., p. 308. 



IF Cf. M. Quinton (English transl.), Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 6, vol. 



xviii. p. 64. 



