Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/298

276 be it remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general 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. 2

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 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.

1 The winter of 1878-9 will long be remembered for its unexampled severity. There were 34° and 35° of frost several nights running in Northumberland. Some tench and eels were frozen in a shallow pond and died. Some gold-fish I had were exposed to the cold one night, and in the morning they were all lying at the bottom of the water motionless, and apparently dead; but on being put in a warmer place four out of seven gradually recovered, but three died.

2 At the same time the snow fell so fast and in such quantity, and lay so long, that all the thick shrubs were bent to the ground with its weight, and unless the snow was constantly shaken off the branches they perished.