_ THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 241 
and so the 18th passed over, leaving the company in very 
uncomfortable circumstances at the Castle and other inns. 
On the zoth the sun shone out for the first time since the 
frost began; a circumstance that has been remarked before 
much in favor of vegetation. All this time the cold was not 
very intense, for the thermometer stood at 29°, 28°, 25°, and 
thereabout; but on the 21st it descended to 20°. The birds 
now began to be in a very pitiable and starving condition. 
Tamed by the season, skylarks settled in the streets of towns, 
because they saw the ground was bare; hares now came into 
men’s gardens, and, scraping away the snow, devoured such 
plants as they could find. 
On the 22d 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 — “a silence that terrified.” 
On the 27th much snow fell all day, and in the evening the 
frost became very intenst. 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 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 1614°', —a most unusual degree of 
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 two degrees below zero; 
viz., thirty-four degrees below the freezing point. 
The thermometer used at Selborne was graduated by Benjamin Mar- 
or tin. — W. 
= «a: 
