248 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
ground without any drifting, wrapping up the more humble 
vegetation in perfect security. From the first day to the fifth of 
the new year more snow succeeded ; but from that day the air 
became entirely clear ; and the heat of the sun about noon had a 
considerable influence in sheltered situations. 
It was in such an aspect that the snow on the author's ever- 
greens was melted every day, and frozen intensely every night ; 
so that the laurustines, bays, laurels, and arbutuses looked, in 
three or four days, as if they had been burnt in the fire ; while 
a neighbour's plantation of the same kind, in a high cold situa- 
tion, where the snow was never melted at all, remained un- 
injured. 
From hence I would infer that it is the repeated melting and 
freezing of the snow that is so fatal to vegetation, rather than the 
severity o: the cold. Therefore it highly behoves every planter, 
who wisht to escape the cruel mortification of losing in a few 
days the labour and hopes of years, to bestir himself on such 
emergencies ; and, if his plantations are small, to avail himself 
of mats, cloths, pease-haum, straw, reeds, or any such covering, 
for a short time ; or, if his shrubberies are extensive, to see that 
his people go about with prongs and forks, and carefully dis- 
lodge the snow from the boughs : since the naked foliage will 
shift much better for itself, than where the snow is partly melted 
and frozen again. 
It may perhaps appear at first like a paradox: but doubtless 
the more tender trees and shrubs should never be planted in hot 
aspects ; not only for the reason assigned above, but also because, 
thus circumstanced, they are disposed to shoot earlier in the 
spring, and to grow on later in the autumn, than they woiild 
otherwise do, and so are suflterers by lagging or early frosts. For 
this reason also plants from Siberia will hardly endure our 
climate : because, on the very first advances of spring, they shoot 
away, and so are cut off by the severe nights of March or April. 
Dr. Fothergill and others have experienced the same incon- 
venience with respect to the more tender shrubs from North 
America ; which they therefore plant under north- walls. There 
should also perhaps be a wall to the east to defend them from 
the piercing blasts from that quarter. 
This observation might without any impropriety be carried 
into animal life ; for discerning bee-masters now find that their 
hives should not in the winter be exposed to the hot sun, because 
