NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
To the great credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers, be 
it remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general havoc : 
hence men should learn to ornament chieflj^ with such trees as are able 
to withstand accidental severities, and not subject themselves to the 
vexation of a loss which may befal them once perhaps in ten years, 
yet may hardly be recovered through the whole course of their lives. 
As it appeared afterwards, 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. 
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 face of the country is covered 
with flowers. 
LETTEE LXII. 
TO THE SAME. 
There 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 proper previously to remark that the first week in 
January was uncommonly wet, and drowned with vast rains from everj 
quarter : from whence may be inferred, as there is ^reat reason to 
believe is the case, that intense frosts seldom take place till the earth 
is perfectly glutted and chilled with water; ^ and hence dry autumns 
are seldom followed by rigorous winters. 
January 7th. — Snow driving all the day, which was followed by frost, 
sleet, and some snow, till the 12th, when a prodigious mass over- 
whelmed all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the gates and 
filling the hollow lanes. 
On the 14th the writer was obliged to be much abroad ; and thinks 
he never before or since has encountered such rugged Siberian weather. 
Many of the narrow roads were now filled above the tops of the hedges ; 
through which the snow was driven into most romantic and grotesque 
shapes, so striking to the imagination as not to be seen without wonder 
and pleasure. The poultry dared not to stir out of their roosting- 
* The autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet, and particularly the 
month of September, during which there fell at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, 
six inches and a half of rain. And the terrible long frost in 1739-40 set in after a 
rainy season, and when the springs were very high. 
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