392 'The Natural History of Selborne 



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 2ist it descended to 20. The 

 birds now began to be in a very pitiable and starving con- 

 dition. 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, scrap- 

 ing 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 terrenf." 



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 3ist 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 in the morning, though 

 in the shade, it sprang up to i6,* a most unusual degree 

 of cold this for the south of England ! During these four 



* At Selborne the cold was greater than at any other place that the 

 author could hear of with certainty : though some reported at the time 

 that at a village in Kent the thermometer fell two degrees below zero, viz , 

 thirty-four degrees below the freezing point. 



The thermometer used at Selborne was graduated by Benjamin Martin. 



