The Natural History of Selborne 375 



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 2 ist 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 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 16^-,* a 

 most unusual degree of cold this for the south of England ! 

 During these four nights the cold was so penetrating that it 

 occasioned ice in warm chambers and under beds ; and in the 



* 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. 



