274 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
From the 14th the snow continued to increase, and began to 
stop the road wagons, and coaches, which could no longer keep on 
their regular stages ; and especially on the western roads, where 
the fall appears to have been deeper than in the south. The 
company at Bath, that wanted to attend the Queen’s birth-day, 
were strangely incommoded: many carriages of persons, who got 
in their way to town from Bath as far as Marlborough, after 
strange embarrassments, here met with a ze plus ultra. The ladies 
fretted, and offered large rewards to labourers if they would shovel 
them a track to London; but the relentless heaps of snow were 
too bulky to be removed ; and so the 18th passed over, leaving the 
company in very uncomfortable circumstances at the Castle and 
other inns. 
On the 2oth the sun shone out for the first time since the frost 
began ; a circumstance that has been remarked before much in 
favour of vegetation. All this time the cold was not very intense, 
for the thermometer stood at 29°, 28°, 25°, and thereabout ; but on 
the 21st it descended to 20°. The birds now began to be in a very 
pitiable and starving condition. ‘Tamed by the season, sky-larks 
settled in the streets of towns, because they saw the ground was 
bare; rooks frequented dunghills close to houses; and crows 
watched horses as they passed, and greedily devoured what dropped 
from them; hares now came into men’s gardens, and, scraping 
away the snow, devoured such plants as they could find. 
On the 22nd the author had occasion to go to London through 
a sort of Laplandian scene, very wild and grotesque indeed. But 
the metropolis itself exhibited a still more singular appearance than 
the country ; for being bedded deep in snow, the pavement of the 
streets could not be touched by the wheels or the horses’ feet, so 
that the carriages ran about without the least noise. Such an 
exemption from din and clatter was strange, but not pleasant; it 
seemed to convey an uncomfortable idea of desolation :— 
«<< 
—— — Ipsa silentia terrent.” 
On the 27th much snow fell all day, and in the evening the frost 
became very intense. At South Lambeth, for the four following 
nights, the thermometer fell to 11°, 7°, 6°, 6°, and at Selborne to 7°, 
6°, 10°, and on the 31st of January, just before sunrise, with rime 
on the trees and on the tube of the glass, the quicksilver sunk 
exactly to zero, being 32° below the freezing point; but by eleven 
