80 J. NATURAL HISTORY 



and thereabouts; but on the 21st it descended to 20. The 

 birds now began to be in a very pitiable and starving con- 

 dition. 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 imbedded 

 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 ex- 

 emption from din and clatter was strange, but not pleasant ; 

 it seemed to convey an uncomfortable idea of desolation : 



ipsa silentia terrer.t." 



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 31st of January, 

 just before sunrise, with rime on the trees and on the tubes 

 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 sprung up to 16 f l 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 day the 

 wind was so keen that persons of robust constitution could 

 scarcely endure to face it. The Thames was at once so 

 frozen over, both above and below bridge that crowds ran 



1 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 2 below zero, viz., 34 

 below the freezing point. 



The thermometer used at Selborne was graduated by Benjamin 

 Martin. G. W. 



