NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 277 



starving condition. Tamed by the season, skylarks 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 horse's 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 11, 

 7, 6, 6; and at Selborne to 7, 6, 10; and on the 

 31st 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 ! 



* 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. 



