themselves to the vexation of a loss which may befall 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.



Letter LXII
To The Honourable 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.