cularly become a work that
professes never to lose sight of utility.

For the last two or three days of the former year there were considerable
falls of snow, which lay deep and uniform on the 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 evergreens 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 situation, where the snow was never melted
at all, remained uninjured.

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 of the
cold. Therefore it highly behoves every planter, who wishes 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-haulm, 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 dislodge 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 would otherwise do, and so are sufferers 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 inconvenience 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