118 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The grandest sight was on Monday, January 7, 1889. 

 During the morning the fog, which had enshrouded everything 

 more or less for the two previous days, lifted, and the sun 

 illumined a perfect fairyland of hoar-frost. In the town of 

 King's Lynn the overhead telephone-wires were broken down in 

 all directions by the sheer weight of the rime. In the country 

 the trees and hedges almost baffled description. One striking 

 feature was that the icy crystals were deposited in almost every 

 instance unilaterally — on one side of the twigs only. To such 

 an extent did this occur that instead of being round they appeared 

 flat. I measured the depth of this hoar-frost fringe on several trees 

 at Wolferton, and found it varied from one and a half to two 

 inches. The fringes all pointed in the same direction — southward. 

 A galvanised wire netting, not usually an attractive object from 

 an aesthetic point of view, was transformed into a gigantic honey- 

 comb of hoar-frost crystals, the cells of which were an inch or 

 more deep. The Fir-trees were pyramids of ice, and the telegraph- 

 wires became flat ribbons of icy crystals. On the 8th came the 

 thaw, and on the 9th one was able to observe accurately what 

 mischief had been done to the trees. 



The first tree to attract my attention was the Birch. One 

 small individual near Wolferton Station had a branch amounting 

 to nearly one-third of the tree broken quite off and lying on the 

 ground. More generally, however, it was the smaller branches 

 at the top of trees which suffered. These were in most cases 

 split off, but still remaining attached to the tree. On South 

 Wootton Heath almost all the isolated trees suffered more or less. 

 The branches on the south side of the trees suffered most. A 

 clump of Birches at Wolferton looked as if a mischievous boy had 

 climbed up and twisted off a number of the upper branches. 



But the tree which suffered most of all with us was the Elm. 

 It is the most abundant hedgerow tree. Branches of all sizes were 

 broken off ; the smaller ones, as a rule, remained attached to 

 the trees, but in many instances large arms were broken off. 

 On the morning of the 8th some of the early travellers — notably 

 the carriers' carts — coming to Lynn market were so impeded by 

 the fallen branches that they had to dismount and clear the road 

 before the carts could pass. 



Amongst the finest — if not the finest — Elms in West 

 Norfolk are a row of seven opposite Middleton Hall. These lost 

 many limbs and branches. The Hon. Miss Milles measured one 



