Climate : an inquiry into the causes of its differences, and into its influence on vegetable life : comprising the substance of four lectures delivered before the Natural History Society, at the Museum, Torquay, in February, 1863 / by C. Daubeny.

  • Daubeny, Charles Giles Bridle, 1795-1867.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Climate : an inquiry into the causes of its differences, and into its influence on vegetable life : comprising the substance of four lectures delivered before the Natural History Society, at the Museum, Torquay, in February, 1863 / by C. Daubeny. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [lect. however, are sure to recur within a certain cycle of years, and to entail the destruction of all those denizens of a more tem- perate climate, which, rashly presuming u]3on the mildness of many preceding winters, had begun to regard this as their home. In the season to which I allude the thermometer fell in Cambridgeshire to — 15^ below zero ; in several of the mid- land counties to — 12^; in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire to — 2°; and even at Dawlish to the unusual point of 8^ of Fahrenheit. 1^0 winter at all approaching this in point of severity occurred in England since that of 1837-8, when the thermo- meter at Walton, near Claremont, is quoted at — 14^; at Bicton, in Devonshire, at 18^; and at Binstead, in the Isle of Wight, at 15« of Fahr. In that year the temperature in Cambridgeshire is stated to have been — 3o; at Chiswick, — 4«; in Norfolk, — 3''; and in Surrey as low as — 14'^. These occasional invasions of extreme cold tend, of course, to curtail the number of trees and shrubs which can be in- troduced from more southern latitudes, even though capable of enduring without injury the ordinary severity of an Eng- lish winter. But the destruction of tender evergreens and other plants on the late occasion seems to have been out of proportion to the difference between the cold in this and in former severe seasons. In both cases, indeed, the Laurels of all kinds—Arhiitus unedo, Photinias, Edicardsias; Finns longifolia, insignis, halepensis, and others, were killed to the ground; but in the instance alluded to we had to deplore in many of our midland counties the probable loss of the Deodaras, which we had flattered ourselves would have been a perma- nent accession to British timber-trees, and of several which had lived for many years past in the Oxford Botanic Grarden, such as the Judas-tree, the Arhutus Andrachne, &c. It was the peculiar severity of a few days in this winter, rather than the greater coldness of the year itself as com- pared to others, that caused this destruction of the cultivated plants in our gardens and pleasure-grounds, for the mean