374 The Natural History of Selborne 



the earth is perfectly glutted and chilled with water;* and hence dry 

 autumns are seldom followed by rigorous winters. 



January yth. Snow driving all the day, which was followed by 

 frost, sleet, and some snow, till the i2th, when a prodigious mass 

 overwhelmed all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the 

 gates and filling the hollow lanes. 



On the 1 4th the writer was obliged to be much abroad ; and 

 thinks he never before or since has encountered such rugged 

 Siberian weather. Many of the narrow roads were now filled 

 above the tops of the hedges ; through which the snow was driven 

 into most romantic and grotesque shapes, so striking to the 

 imagination as not to be seen without wonder and pleasure. The 

 poultry dared not to stir out of their roosting-places ; for cocks 

 and hens are so dazzled and confounded by the glare of snow 

 that they would soon perish without assistance. The hares also 

 lay sullenly in their seats, and would not move till compelled by 

 hunger; being conscious poor animals that the drifts and heaps 

 treacherously betray their footsteps, and prove fatal to numbers of 

 them. 



From the I4th 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 m '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 i8th passed over, leaving the 

 company in very uncomfortable circumstances at the Castle and 

 other inns. 



* The autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet, and particularly the 

 month of September, during which there fell at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, 

 six inches and a half of rain. And the terrible long frost in 1739-40 set in after 

 a rainy season, and when the springs were very high. 



