NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 193 



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 in- 

 commoded : 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 relqntless heaps of 

 snow were too bulky to be removed ; and so the i8th passed 

 over, leaving the company in very uncomfortable circum- 

 stances at the Castle and other inns. 1 



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 

 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. 



1 To Bell's edition (vol. i. p. 265, note) Professor Newton contributes a very 

 interesting quotation from Mrs. John Herschel's book. [R. B. S.] 



VOL. II. 2 B 



