250 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
be it remembered that they remained untouched amidst the ge- 
neral havoc : hence men should learn to ornament chiefly 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 tur- 
nips emerged not damaged at all, save in sunny places ; the 
wheat looked delicately, and the garden plants were well pre- 
served ; 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. 
LETTER LXIl. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON. 
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 every quarter : from whence may be inferred, as 
there is great 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 overwhelmed all the works of men, drifting over the tops 
of the gates and filjing the hollow lanes. 
* The autumn preceding January 1/68 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. 
