302 NATURAL HIS TO BY 
As it appeared afterwards tlie ilexes were mucli injured, 
tlie 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. 
By 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 
I face of the country is covered with flowers. 
LETTER LXII. 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BAERINGTON. 
HERE 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 pro- 
per 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 sel- 
dom take place till the earth is perfectly glutted and chilled 
with water,^ and hence dry autumns are seldom followed by 
rigorous winters. 
' The autumn preceding January, 1768, was very wet, and particu- 
larly the month of September, during which there fell at Lyndon in the 
