For a number of years previous to 1878 we had in Pembroke but little or
no severe cold, owing to the prevalence of southeast, south, west, and
especially southwest winds. In many places, fuchsias that were left in
the ground for the entire year had not been frozen to the root within the
memory of man. Some of these plants had grown to be trees five or six
yards in height, and with a trunk the size of one's leg. Now, during the
same series of years, many insects that are common throughout the rest of
Great Britain did not cease to be rare with us, or rather were confined
to certain circumscribed limits. Thus, the Noctuellae, with the exception
of a few species abundant everywhere, were almost wanting, and I know of
no other country where the dearth of common species of nocturnal
butterflies was so great. But during the winter of 1878 there supervened
a radical change. Persistent winds from the northwest, driving back the
currents of warm air from the south, brought on an intense cold that
froze everything; or, when some variation occurred in them, clouds formed
and dissolved into a rain that immediately froze, so that the large roads
remained for weeks covered with a layer of rime from two to four inches
thick.
[Illustration: GREEN WOODPECKER SEARCHING FOR INSECTS.]
The winters of 1879 and 1880 were equally cold; we may even say that the
latter was the severest that had been experienced in fifty years. This
year the sea-sand, along with the ice and snow, formed a thick crust all
along the tide-line--this being something rarely seen along our coast.
The first of these three winters (1878-1879) killed all the arborescent
veronicas and a few sumacs. As for the fuchsias and myrtles, they were
frozen down to the level of the soil.