"I am here retired to a delightful little villa, to contemplate and admire, with my dear Linnaeus, the unalterable laws of vegetation. How ravishing to see the swelling buds disclose the tender leaves! By the public newspapers we were told that with you in Sweden the winter was very severe, the Sound being frozen over. I have no conception of the power of that cold which could fetter the rolling ocean in icy chains. The cold was what we call severe, but not so sharp as in the year 1740. It lasted about a month, to the 21st of January, and then the thaw began and continued. February the 1st and 2d were soft, warm, sunny days, as in April, and so continued, mild and warm, with southerly winds, all the month. This brought on the spring flowers. Feb. 8th, the _Helleborus niger_ made a fine show; the _Galanthus_ and winter aconite by the 15th covered the garden with beauty, among some crocuses and violets, and _Primula veris_, &c. How delightful to see the order of nature! Oh, how obedient the vegetable tribes are to their great Lawgiver! He has given this race of flowers a constitution and fibres to resist the cold. They bloom in frost and snow, like the good men of Sweden. These flowers have some time made their exit; and now, March 7th, a tenderer tribe succeeds. Such, my dear friend, is the order of nature. Now the garden is covered with more than twenty different species of crocuses, produced from sowing seeds, and the _Iris Persica_, _Cyclamen vernale_, and polyanthos. The 16th March, plenty of _Hyacinthus caeruleus_ and _albus_ in the open borders, with anemones; and now my favourites, the great tribe of narcissuses, show all over the garden and fields. We have two species wild in the woods that now begin to flower. Next, the _Tulipa praecox_ is near flowering; and so Flora decks the garden with endless variety, ever charming.