274 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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 ne 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. 



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 1 1, 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 



