244 The Natural History 



The most certain way to be exact will be to copy the 

 passages from my journal, which were taken from time to 

 time as things occurred. But it may be proper previously 

 to remark that the first week in January was uncommonly 

 wet, and drowned with vast rains from every quarter : 

 from whence may be inferred, as there is great reason to 

 believe is the case, that intense frosts seldom take place 

 till the earth is perfectly glutted and chilled with water ; ^ 

 and hence dry autumns are seldom followed by rigorous 

 winters. 



January 7th. — Snow driving all the day, which was 

 followed by frost, sleet, and some snow, till the 12 th, 

 when a prodigious mass overwhelmed all the works of 

 men, drifting over the tops of the gates and filling the 

 hollow lanes. 



On the 14th 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 until 

 compelled by hunger ; being conscious, poor animals, 

 that the drifts and heaps treacherously betray their foot- 

 steps, and prove fatal to numbers of them. 



From the 14th the snow continued to increase, and 

 began to stop the road waggons 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, 



^ The autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet, and particu- 

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

 the county of Rutland, six inches and an half of rain. And the 

 terrible long frost of 1 739-40 set in after a rainy season, and when 

 the springs were very high. 



