Disastrous as our winters usually have been the past few years, yet we are not wholly alone in our misfortunes the past season. In England, on the 24th and 25th of December, the mercury fell in two places - at Chatteris in Cambridgeshire, and at Cheadle in Staffordshire - to fifteen degrees below zero; and even in London, and generally throughout the kingdom, to several degrees below. The result there upon vegetation has been more fatal than at any other period within the present century. The young shoots and spurs on peaches, apricots, nectarines, cherries, and even some pears, are quite destroyed, and even the old wood is injured.

Evergreen Oaks, Hollies, (fifty years old,) Phillyreas, Laurustinus, are killed to the ground. The destruction has been so complete, that in highly ornamental grounds the exhalation from the frozen plants has been positively offensive.

Various ornamental flowering shrubs, usually requiring the protection of a wall, have been unable to withstand the severity of the cold. Most of the Magnolias, even old and well-established plants, have been killed in an eastern exposure, and in a western so much injured as to render their recovery hopeless. The newer conifers as well as older varieties have all suffered to a greater or less extent. In fact, our own winter, bad as it has been, has proved the safer of the two, and for a much greater variety of plants. Although with us the mercury has fallen as low as nineteen degrees below zero in this place, and in many parts of the country to twenty-three and even thirty degrees, yet I believe the only effect has been to destroy the fruit-buds. I do not observe here, nor have I heard elsewhere, of any loss of young wood.

Could we have escaped the two excessively cold days in January, when the glass ranged from nineteen to twenty-one degrees below in this neighborhood, our winter would have been less destructive than usual; and though the mercury fell four or five degrees lower here than in England, yet the damage there was infinitely greater, adding another proof that the cold is not of so much importance as the condition of the plant at the time. Our wood, from our warm, dry autumns, is always much better ripened than the English, and consequently goes into the winter campaign much better prepared to resist cold.

This was particularly the case the past year, when, from the unprecedented quantity of rain and little sun in England, the summer's growth was very imperfectly ripened, and in the worst possible condition to endure even the ordinary frost. Thus Lilacs and Weigelas, which are always regarded perfectly hardy here, were in England very badly injured. Many plants growing with great vigor have been utterly destroyed, while the same variety of plants, when removed in early autumn, if ever so much exposed, have suffered comparatively little, the supply from the roots having been diminished; the system was relieved of excessive moisture by evaporation, and in consequently a much better state to resist cold. Among the conifers, varieties which are unquestionably hardy, (never in this place at least having suffered,) have completely perished in England, such as Pinus Benthamiana and Pyrenaica. Even Thuiopsis borealis is badly injured, though with us it stands like our common Arbor Vitae. Most of the younger Arauca-rias, Deodars, and even Cedars of Lebanon, are either killed or injured, while specimens of twenty years' growth have comparatively escaped, the wood being better ripened.

In my own neighborhood, as I have before mentioned, the effects of the winter have been much less severe than usual; nearly, in fact, all the evergreens which I have in former years reported as hardy, continue to deserve this reputation. In addition to the previous list, I would add, as perfectly uninjured by nineteen degrees below zero:

Picea Amabilis, Nobilis

Picea Amabilis, Nobilis, grand is, and Parsonii or Lasciocarpa. In addition to the previously mentioned Abies, are Taxifolia, Jezoensis, Whittmaniana, and Pat-tonii.

Cryptomeria Japonica

Cryptomeria Japonica, both the common variety and Lobbii, seem to have become acclimatized, and are hardly touched.