Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/315

 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. 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. (* 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 an half of rain. And the terrible long frost of 1739-40 set in after a rainy season, and when the springs were very high.)

January 7th. --