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WINDS, AND THEIR CURRENT EFFECTS ON VEGETATION. 
When any great peculiarity distinguishes the weather, so as to exercise an 
observable influence on vegetable life, it is a maxim worthy of the consideration of 
horticultural writers, that no deferred remarks concerning its phenomena and 
agency can be of such genuine benefit to cultivators, as if they were published 
immediately after its occurrence. Deductions based on the reminiscences of a 
remote event, lose nearly all their force on account of the defectiveness of the 
faculty of memory in many individuals to corroborate and complete them. But 
those that are placed before the mind while the incidents from which they are 
drawn are yet brightly imaged on the brain, have the advantage of these recent 
impressions to establish their propriety, and strengthen their desired operation. 
Our present dissertation is the oflEpring of this reflection. We wish to seize 
on everything of moment as it passes, and from it either elaborate or confirm 
princii)les of future and permanent value. Looking back through the late month 
of March, we perceive that what the frosts of December had no power to 
accomplish, the piercing winds which have followed at a period more generally 
genial have at length eff*ected ; multitudes of common border plants having been 
destroyed, while, in some places, hardy evergreen shrubs are greatly damaged. 
If it be recollected that the thermometer ranged much higher on the latter 
occasion, the injury sustained by plants is, on a superficial view, a curious circum- 
stance ; inexplicable, though, from its keeping with prior experience, not surprising to 
the mere practical man ; but at once traceable to a fixed law by the more scientific. 
Winds, though doubtless originally generated by heat, are universally known to 
be, with few exceptions, the means of abstracting and wafting it away ; and, as 
well in proportion to their violence as to the temperature of the regions through 
which they have passed, cause a palpable decrement of sensible heat in bodies 
exposed to their action, this diminution never being indicated by a thermometer in 
a corresponding degree, partly because that instrument is not usually placed in a 
thoroughly unsheltered situation, but chiefly because the thermometer registers 
the actual temperature of the air alone, without reference to any further conditions 
by which the radiation of heat from other substances is facilitated. 
Of the tendency of winds to lower the temperature of the human body, all are 
cognizant ; as every person feeh the difference between an atmosphere in a secluded 
spot and that on an exposed eminence at the same period. Proper investigations 
render it certain that plants are acted upon in this respect similarly to animal 
being. 
All living things engender an internal heat, which, while vitality lasts, will 
ever maintain them at a temperature relatively superior to the ordinary heat of the 
VOL. VII. NO. LXXVI. M 
