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Title: The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2

Author: Gilbert White

Editor: Henry Morley

Release Date: March 29, 2007 [eBook #20934]
[Most recently updated: October 24, 2021]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: Les Bowler

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, VOL. 2 ***




                        CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.





                                   THE
                             NATURAL HISTORY
                                    OF
                                 SELBORNE.


                                    BY
                         THE REV. GILBERT WHITE, A.M.

                                  VOL. II.

                           CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
                 _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
                                    1887.




INTRODUCTION.


Gilbert White's home in the quiet Hampshire village of Selborne is an old
family house that has grown by additions, and has roofs of nature's
colouring, and creeping plants on walls that have not been driven by
scarcity of ground to mount into the air.  The house is larger, by a
wing, now than when White lived in it.  A little wooded park, that
belongs to it, extends to a steep hill, "The Hanger," clothed with a
hanging wood of beech.  The Hanger and the slope of Nore Hill place the
village in a pleasant shelter.  A visit to Selborne can be made by a walk
of a few miles from Alton on the South Western Railway.  It is a country
walk worth taking on its own account.

The name, perhaps, implies that the place is wholesome.  It was a village
in Anglo-Saxon times.  Its borne or burn is a brook that has its spring
at the head of the village, and "sael" meant prosperity or health of the
best.  It is the "sel" in the German "Selig" and the "sil" in our
"silly," which once represented in the best sense well-being of the
innocent.  So our old poets talk of "seely sheep;" but as the guileless
are apt prey to the guileful, silliness came to mean what "blessed
innocence" itself now stands for in the language of men who, poor
fellows, are very much more foolish.  So Selborne has a happy old
pastoral name.  The fresh, full spring, called the "Well Head," which
gives its name to Selborne, doubtless brought the village to its side by
the constant water supply that it furnished.  The rivulet becomes at
Oakhanger a considerable stream.

The Plestor, mentioned in the second letter as having once had a great
oak in it which was blown down in the great storm of 1703--a storm of
which Defoe collected the chief records into a book--bears witness also
to the cheerful village life of old.  The name is a corruption of Play-
stow; it was the playground for the village children.  That oak blown
down in 1703, which the vicar of the time vainly endeavoured to root
again, was said to have lived 432 years before the time of its overthrow.
The old yew in the churchyard has escaped all storms.

Gilbert White wrote three or four pieces of verse.  Of one of them, "An
Invitation to Selborne," these are the closing lines:--

   "Nor be that Parsonage by the Muse forgot;
   The partial bard admires his native spot;
   Smit with its beauties, loved, as yet a child,
    (Unconscious why) its scapes grotesque and wild.
   High on a mound th' exalted garden stands,
   Beneath, deep valleys, scooped by Nature's hand.
   A Cobham here, exulting in his art,
   Might blend the General's with the Gardener's part;
   Might fortify with all the martial trade
   Of rampart, bastion, fosse, and palisade;
   Might plant the mortar with wide threatening bore,
   Or bid the mimic cannon seem to roar.
   Now climb the steep, drop now your eye below,
   Where round the blooming village orchards grow;
   There, like a picture, lies my lowly seat,
   A rural, sheltered, unobserved retreat.
   Me, far above the rest, Selbornian scenes,
   The pendent forests, and the mountain greens,
   Strike with delight; there spreads the distant view,
   That gradual fades till sunk in misty blue;
   Here Nature hangs her slopy woods to sight,
   Rills purl between, and dart a quivering light."

H. M.




LETTERS TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.


LETTER XV.


SELBORNE, _July_ 8_th_, 1773.

Dear Sir,--Some young men went down lately to a pond on the verge of
Wolmer Forest to hunt flappers, or young wild-ducks, many of which they
caught, and, among the rest, some very minute yet well-fledged wild-fowls
alive, which upon examination I found to be teals.  I did not know till
then that teals ever bred in the south of England, and was much pleased
with the discovery: this I look upon as a great stroke in natural
history.

We have had, ever since I can remember, a pair of white owls that
constantly breed under the eaves of this church.  As I have paid good
attention to the manner of life of these birds during their season of
breeding, which lasts the summer through, the following remarks may not
perhaps be unacceptable:--About an hour before sunset (for then the mice
begin to run) they sally forth in quest of prey, and hunt all round the
hedges of meadows and small enclosures for them, which seem to be their
only food.  In this irregular country we can stand on an eminence and see
them beat the fields over like a setting-dog, and often drop down in the
grass or corn.  I have minuted these birds with my watch for an hour
together, and have found that they return to their nest, the one or the
other of them, about once in five minutes; reflecting at the same time on
the adroitness that every animal is possessed of as far as regards the
well-being of itself and offspring.  But a piece of address, which they
show when they return loaded, should not, I think, be passed over in
silence.  As they take their prey with their claws, so they carry it in
their claws to their nest; but, as the feet are necessary in their ascent
under the tiles, they constantly perch first on the roof of the chancel,
and shift the mouse from their claws to their bill, that their feet may
be at liberty to take hold of the plate on the wall as they are rising
under the eaves.

White owls seem not (but in this I am not positive) to hoot at all; all
that clamorous hooting appears to me to come from the wood kinds.  The
white owl does indeed snore and hiss in a tremendous manner; and these
menaces well answer the intention of intimidating; for I have known a
whole village up in arms on such an occasion, imagining the churchyard to
be full of goblins and spectres.  White owls also often scream horribly
as they fly along; from this screaming probably arose the common people's
imaginary species of screech-owl, which they superstitiously think
attends the windows of dying persons.  The plumage of the remiges of the
wings of every species of owl that I have yet examined is remarkably soft
and pliant.  Perhaps it may be necessary that the wings of these birds
should not make much resistance or rushing, that they may be enabled to
steal through the air unheard upon a nimble and watchful quarry.

While I am talking of owls, it may not be improper to mention what I was
told by a gentleman of the county of Wilts.  As they were grubbing a vast
hollow pollard-ash that had been the mansion of owls for centuries, he
discovered at the bottom a mass of matter that at first he could not
account for.  After some examination he found that it was a congeries of
the bones of mice (and perhaps of birds and bats) that had been heaping
together for ages, being cast up in pellets out of the crops of many
generations of inhabitants.  For owls cast up the bones, fur, and
feathers of what they devour, after the manner of hawks.  He believes, he
told me, that there were bushels of this kind of substance.

When brown owls hoot their throats swell as big as a hen's egg.  I have
known an owl of this species live a full year without any water.  Perhaps
the case may be the same with all birds of prey.  When owls fly they
stretch out their legs behind them as a balance to their large heavy
heads, for as most nocturnal birds have large eyes and ears they must
have large heads to contain them.  Large eyes, I presume, are necessary
to collect every ray of light, and large concave ears to command the
smallest degree of sound or noise.

I am, etc.

* * * * *

[It will be proper to premise here that the sixteenth, eighteenth,
twentieth, and twenty-first letters have been published already in the
"Philosophical Transactions;" but as nicer observation has furnished
several corrections and additions, it is hoped that the republication of
them will not give offence; especially as these sheets would be very
imperfect without them, and as they will be new to many readers who had
no opportunity of seeing them when they made their first appearance.]

"The hirundines are a most inoffensive, harmless, entertaining, social,
and useful tribe of birds; they touch no fruit in our gardens; delight,
all except one species, in attaching themselves to our houses; amuse us
with their migrations, songs, and marvellous agility; and clear our
outlets from the annoyances of gnats and other troublesome insects.  Some
districts in the south seas, near Guiaquil, are desolated, it seems, by
the infinite swarms of venomous mosquitoes, which fill the air, and
render those coasts insupportable.  It would be worth inquiring whether
any species of hirundines is found in those regions.  Whoever
contemplates the myriads of insects that sport in the sunbeams of a
summer evening in this country, will soon be convinced to what a degree
our atmosphere would be choked with them was it not for the friendly
interposition of the swallow tribe.

"Many species of birds have their peculiar lice; but the hirundines alone
seem to be annoyed with dipterous insects, which infest every species,
and are so large, in proportion to themselves, that they must be
extremely irksome and injurious to them.  These are the _hippoboscoe
hirundinis_, with narrow subulated wings, abounding in every nest; and
are hatched by the warmth of the bird's own body during incubation, and
crawl about under its feathers.

"A species of them is familiar to horsemen in the south of England under
the name of forest-fly; and to some of side-fly, from its running
sideways like a crab.  It creeps under the tails, and about the groins,
of horses, which, at their first coming out of the north, are rendered
half frantic by the tickling sensation; while our own breed little
regards them.

"The curious Reaumur discovered the large eggs, or rather _pupoe_, of
these flies as big as the flies themselves, which he hatched in his own
bosom.  Any person that will take the trouble to examine the old nests of
either species of swallows may find in them the black shining cases or
skins of the _pupoe_ of these insects; but for other particulars, too
long for this place, we refer the reader to 'L'Histoire d'Insectes' of
that admirable entomologist.  Tom. iv., pl. ii."



LETTER XVI.


SELBORNE, _Nov._ 20_th_, 1773.

Dear Sir,--In obedience to your injunctions I sit down to give you some
account of the house-martin, or martlet; and if my monography of this
little domestic and familiar bird should happen to meet with your
approbation, I may probably soon extend my inquiries to the rest of the
British hirundines--the swallow, the swift, and the bank-martin.

A few house-martins begin to appear about the 16th April; usually some
few days later than the swallow.  For some time after they appear the
hirundines in general pay no attention to the business of nidification,
but play and sport about, either to recruit from the fatigue of their
journey, if they do migrate at all, or else that their blood may recover
its true tone and texture after it has been so long benumbed by the
severities of winter.  About the middle of May, if the weather be fine,
the martin begins to think in earnest of providing a mansion for its
family.  The crust or shell of this nest seems to be formed of such dirt
or loam as comes most readily to hand, and is tempered and wrought
together with little bits of broken straws to render it tough and
tenacious.  As this bird often builds against a perpendicular wall
without any projecting ledge under, it requires its utmost efforts to get
the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the
superstructure.  On this occasion the bird not only clings with its
claws, but partly supports itself by strongly inclining its tail against
the wall, making that a fulcrum; and thus steadied, it works and plasters
the materials into the face of the brick or stone.  But then, that this
work may not, while it is soft and green, pull itself down by its own
weight, the provident architect has prudence and forbearance enough not
to advance her work too fast; but by building only in the morning, and by
dedicating the rest of the day to food and amusement, gives it sufficient
time to dry and harden.  About half an inch seems to be a sufficient
layer for a day.  Thus careful workmen, when they build mud-walls
(informed at first, perhaps, by this little bird), raise but a moderate
layer at a time, and then desist, lest the work should become top-heavy,
and so be ruined by its own weight.  By this method in about ten or
twelve days is formed a hemispheric nest with a small aperture towards
the top, strong, compact, and warm; and perfectly fitted for all the
purposes for which it was intended.  But then nothing is more common than
for the house-sparrow, as soon as the shell is finished, to seize on it
as its own, to eject the owner, and to line it after its own manner.

After so much labour is bestowed in erecting a mansion, as Nature seldom
works in vain, martins will breed on for several years together in the
same nest, where it happens to be well sheltered and secure from the
injuries of weather.  The shell or crust of the nest is a sort of rustic
work, full of knobs and protuberances on the outside; nor is the inside
of those that I have examined smoothed with any exactness at all; but is
rendered soft and warm, and fit for incubation, by a lining of small
straws, grasses, and feathers, and sometimes by a bed of moss interwoven
with wool.  In this nest they tread, or engender, frequently during the
time of building; and the hen lays from three to five white eggs.

At first when the young are hatched, and are in a naked and helpless
condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, carry out what comes
away from their young.  Was it not for this affectionate cleanliness the
nestlings would soon be burnt up, and destroyed in so deep and hollow a
nest, by their own caustic excrement.  In the quadruped creation the same
neat precaution is made use of, particularly among dogs and cats, where
the dams lick away what proceeds from their young.  But in birds there
seems to be a particular provision, that the dung of nestlings is
enveloped in a tough kind of jelly, and therefore is the easier conveyed
off without soiling or daubing.  Yet, as nature is cleanly in all her
ways, the young perform this office for themselves in a little time by
thrusting their tails out at the aperture of their nest.  As the young of
small birds presently arrive at their ἡλικία, or full growth, they
soon become impatient of confinement, and sit all day with their heads
out at the orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them
with food from morning to night.  For a time the young are fed on the
wing by their parents; but the feat is done by so quick and almost
imperceptible a flight that a person must have attended very exactly to
their motions before he would be able to perceive it.  As soon as the
young are able to shift for themselves, the dams immediately turn their
thoughts to the business of a second brood; while the first flight,
shaken off and rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and
are the birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings and
evenings round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of churches and
houses.  These congregatings usually begin to take place about the first
week in August, and therefore we may conclude that by that time the first
flight is pretty well over.  The young of this species do not quit their
abodes altogether; but the more forward birds get abroad some days before
the rest.  These approaching the eaves of buildings, and playing about
before them, make people think that several old ones attend one nest.
They are often capricious in fixing on a nesting-place, beginning many
edifices, and leaving them unfinished; but when once a nest is completed
in a sheltered place, it serves for several seasons.  Those which breed
in a ready finished house get the start in hatching of those that build
new by ten days or a fortnight.  These industrious artificers are at
their labours in the long days before four in the morning.  When they fix
their materials they plaster them on with their chins, moving their heads
with a quick vibratory motion.  They dip and wash as they fly sometimes
in very hot weather, but not so frequently as swallows.  It has been
observed that martins usually build to a north-east or north-west aspect,
that the heat of the sun may not crack and destroy their nests; but
instances are also remembered where they bred for many years in vast
abundance in a hot stifled inn-yard against a wall facing to the south.

Birds in general are wise in their choice of situation; but in this
neighbourhood every summer is seen a strong proof to the contrary at a
house without eaves in an exposed district, where some martins build year
by year in the corners of the windows.  But, as the corners of these
windows (which face to the south-east and south-west) are too shallow,
the nests are washed down every hard rain; and yet these birds drudge on
to no purpose from summer to summer, without changing their aspect or
house.  It is a piteous sight to see them labouring when half their nest
is washed away and bringing dirt . . . "_generis lapsi sarcire ruinas_."
Thus is instinct a most wonderful unequal faculty; in some instances so
much above reason, in other respects so far below it!  Martins love to
frequent towns, especially if there are great lakes and rivers at hand;
nay, they even affect the close air of London.  And I have not only seen
them nesting in the Borough, but even in the Strand and Fleet Street; but
then it was obvious from the dinginess of their aspect that their
feathers partook of the filth of that sooty atmosphere.  Martins are by
far the least agile of the four species; their wings and tails are short,
and therefore they are not capable of such surprising turns and quick and
glancing evolutions as the swallow.  Accordingly they make use of a
placid easy motion in a middle region of the air, seldom mounting to any
great height, and never sweeping long together over the surface of the
ground or water.  They do not wander far for food, but affect sheltered
districts, over some lake, or under some hanging wood, or in some hollow
vale, especially in windy weather.  They breed the latest of all the
swallow kind: in 1772 they had nestlings on to October 21st, and are
never without unfledged young as late as Michaelmas.

As the summer declines the congregating flocks increase in numbers daily
by the constant accession of the second broods, till at last they swarm
in myriads upon myriads round the villages on the Thames, darkening the
face of the sky as they frequent the aits of that river, where they
roost.  They retire, the bulk of them, I mean, in vast flocks together
about the beginning of October, but have appeared of late years in a
considerable flight in this neighbourhood, for one day or two, as late as
November 3rd and 6th, after they were supposed to have been gone for more
than a fortnight.  They therefore withdraw with us the latest of any
species.  Unless these birds are very short-lived indeed, or unless they
do not return to the districts where they are bred, they must undergo
vast devastations somehow and somewhere; for the birds that return yearly
bear no manner of proportion to the birds that retire.

House-martins are distinguished from their congeners by having their legs
covered with soft downy feathers down to their toes.  They are no
songsters, but twitter in a pretty inward soft manner in their nests.
During the time of breeding they are often greatly molested with fleas.

I am, etc.



LETTER XVII.


RINGMER, near LEWES, _Dec._ 9_th_, 1773.

Dear Sir,--I received your last favour just as I was setting out for this
place, and am pleased to find that my monography met with your
approbation.  My remarks are the result of many years' observation, and
are, I trust, true in the whole, though I do not pretend to say that they
are perfectly void of mistake, or that a more nice observer might not
make many additions, since subjects of this kind are inexhaustible.

If you think my letter worthy the notice of your respectable society, you
are at liberty to lay it before them, and they will consider it, I hope,
as it was intended, as a humble attempt to promote a more minute inquiry
into natural history, into the life and conversation of animals.  Perhaps,
hereafter, I may be induced to take the house-swallow under
consideration, and from that proceed to the rest of the British
hirundines.

Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upwards of thirty years, yet
I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh
admiration year by year, and I think I see new beauties every time I
traverse it.  This range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far as
East Bourn, is about sixty miles in length, and is called the South
Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewes.  As you pass along you
command a noble view of the wild, or weald, on one hand, and the broad
downs and sea on the other.  Mr. Ray used to visit a family just at the
foot of these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect from Plumpton
Plain, near Lewes, that he mentions those scapes in his "Wisdom of God in
the Works of the Creation" with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks them
equal to anything he had seen in the finest parts of Europe.

For my own part, I think there is somewhat peculiarly sweet and amusing
in the shapely-figured aspect of chalk-hills in preference to those of
stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless.

Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to convey to
you the same idea; but I never contemplate these mountains without
thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to growth in their gentle
swellings and smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides, and
regular hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative
dilation and expansion . . .

. . . Or was there ever a time when these immense masses of calcareous
matter were thrown into fermentation by some adventitious moisture: were
raised and leavened into such shapes by some plastic power: and so made
to swell and heave their broad backs into the sky so much above the less
animated clay of the wild below?

By what I can guess from the admeasurements of the hills that have been
taken round my house, I should suppose that these hills surmount the wild
at an average at about the rate of five hundred feet.

One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep: from the westward till you
get to the river Adur all the flocks have horns, and smooth white faces,
and white legs, and a hornless sheep is rarely to be seen; but as soon as
you pass that river eastward, and mount Beeding Hill, all the flocks at
once become hornless, or as they call them, poll-sheep; and have,
moreover, black faces with a white tuft of wool on their foreheads, and
speckled and spotted legs, so that you would think that the flocks of
Laban were pasturing on one side of the stream, and the variegated breed
of his son-in-law Jacob were cantoned along on the other.  And this
diversity holds good respectively on each side from the valley of Bramber
and Beeding to the eastward, and westward all the whole length of the
downs.  If you talk with the shepherds on this subject, they tell you
that the case has been so from time immemorial; and smile at your
simplicity if you ask them whether the situation of these two different
breeds might not be reversed?  However, an intelligent friend of mine
near Chichester is determined to try the experiment; and has this autumn,
at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced a parcel of black-faced
hornless rams among his horned western ewes.  The black-faced poll-sheep
have the shortest legs and the finest wool.

As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late a season of
the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a look-out as possible so
near the southern coast, with respect to the summer short-winged birds of
passage.  We make great inquiries concerning the withdrawing of the
swallow kind, without examining enough into the causes why this tribe is
never to be seen in winter; for, _entre nous_, the disappearing of the
latter is more marvellous than that of the former, and much more
unaccountable.  The hirundines, if they please, are certainly capable of
migration, and yet no doubt are often found in a torpid state; but
redstarts, nightingales, white-throats, black-caps, etc., are very ill
provided for long flights; have never been once found, as I ever heard
of, in a torpid state, and yet can never be supposed, in such troops,
from year to year to dodge and elude the eyes of the curious and
inquisitive, which from day to day discern the other small birds that are
known to abide our winters.  But, notwithstanding all my care, I saw
nothing like a summer bird of passage; and what is more strange not one
wheat-ear, though they abound so in the autumn as to be a considerable
perquisite to the shepherds that take them; and though many are to be
seen to my knowledge all the winter through in many parts of the south of
England.  The most intelligent shepherds tell me that some few of these
birds appear on the downs in March, and then withdraw to breed probably
in warrens and stone-quarries: now and then a nest is ploughed up in a
fallow on the downs under a furrow, but it is thought a rarity.  At the
time of wheat-harvest they begin to be taken in great numbers; are sent
for sale in vast quantities to Brightelmstone and Tunbridge; and appear
at the tables of all the gentry that entertain with any degree of
elegance.  About Michaelmas they retire and are seen no more till March.
Though the birds are, when in season, in great plenty on the south downs
round Lewes, yet at East Bourn, which is the eastern extremity of those
downs, they abound much more.  One thing is very remarkable, that though
in the height of the season so many hundreds of dozens are taken, yet
they never are seen to flock; and it is a rare thing to see more than
three or four at a time; so that there must be a perpetual flitting and
constant progressive succession.  It does not appear that any wheat-ears
are taken to the westward of Houghton Bridge, which stands on the river
Arun.

I did not fail to look particularly after my new migration of
ring-ousels, and to take notice whether they continued on the downs to
this season of the year; as I had formerly remarked them in the month of
October all the way from Chichester to Lewes wherever there were any
shrubs and covert: but not one bird of this sort came within my
observation.  I only saw a few larks and whin-chats, some rooks, and
several kites and buzzards.

About Midsummer a flight of cross-bills comes to the pine-groves about
this house, but never makes any long stay.

The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, still
continues in this garden; and retired under ground about the 20th
November, and came out again for one day on the 30th: it lies now buried
in a wet swampy border under a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped
at present in mud and mire!

Here is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants of which seem
to get their livelihood very easily; for they spend the greatest part of
the day on their nest-trees when the weather is mild.  These rooks retire
every evening all the winter from this rookery, where they only call by
the way, as they are going to roost in deep woods: at the dawn of day
they always revisit their nest-trees, and are preceded a few minutes by a
flight of daws, that act, as it were, as their harbingers.

I am, etc.



LETTER XVIII.


SELBORNE, _Jan._ 29_th_, 1774.

Dear Sir,--The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the
first comer of all the British hirundines; and appears in general on or
about 13th April, as I have remarked from many years' observation.  Not
but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier; and, in particular,
when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a whole day together on a sunny
warm Shrove Tuesday; which day could not fall out later than the middle
of March, and often happened early in February.

It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and
mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if these early visitors
happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two dreadful
springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a time.  A
circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than migration; since it
is much more probable that a bird should retire to its hybernaculum just
at hand, than return for a week or two to warmer latitudes.

The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no means builds
altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and out-houses against the
rafters; and so she did in Virgil's time:

   . . . "Ante
   Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo."

In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called _ladu swala_, the barn
swallow.  Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are no chimneys to
houses, except they are English-built: in these countries she constructs
her nest in porches, and gateways, and galleries, and open halls.

Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place; as we have
known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well, through which chalk
had been formerly drawn up for the purpose of manure: but in general with
us this _hirundo_ breeds in chimneys, and loves to haunt those stacks
where there is a constant fire, no doubt for the sake of warmth.  Not
that it can subsist in the immediate shaft where there is a fire; but
prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and disregards the
perpetual smoke of that funnel, as I have often observed with some degree
of wonder.

Five or six or more feet down the chimney does this little bird begin to
form her nest about the middle of May, which consists, like that of the
house-martin, of a crust or shell composed of dirt or mud, mixed with
short pieces of straw to render it tough and permanent; with this
difference, that whereas the shell of the martin is nearly hemispheric,
that of the swallow is open at the top, and like half a deep dish: this
nest is lined with fine grasses and feathers, which are often collected
as they float in the air.

Wonderful is the address which this adroit bird shows all day long in
ascending and descending with security through so narrow a pass.  When
hovering over the mouth of the funnel, the vibrations of her wings acting
on the confined air occasion a rumbling like thunder.  It is not
improbable that the dam submits to this inconvenient situation so low in
the shaft, in order to secure her broods from rapacious birds, and
particularly from owls, which frequently fall down chimneys, perhaps in
attempting to get at these nestlings.

The swallow lays from four to six white eggs, dotted with red specks; and
brings out her first brood about the last week in June, or the first week
in July.  The progressive method by which the young are introduced into
life is very amusing: first, they emerge from the shaft with difficulty
enough, and often fall down into the rooms below: for a day or so they
are fed on the chimney-top, and then are conducted to the dead leafless
bough of some tree, where, sitting in a row, they are attended with great
assiduity, and may then be called _perchers_.  In a day or two more they
become _flyers_, but are still unable to take their own food; therefore
they play about near the place where the dams are hawking for flies; and,
when a mouthful is collected, at a certain signal given, the dam and the
nestling advance, rising towards each other, and meeting at an angle; the
young one all the while uttering such a little quick note of gratitude
and complacency, that a person must have paid very little regard to the
wonders of Nature that has not often remarked this feat.

The dam betakes herself immediately to the business of a second brood as
soon as she is disengaged from her first; which at once associates with
the first broods of house-martins; and with them congregates, clustering
on sunny roofs, towers, and trees.  This hirundo brings out her second
brood towards the middle and end of August.

All the summer long is the swallow a most instructive pattern of
unwearied industry and affection; for from morning to night, while there
is a family to be supported, she spends the whole day in skimming close
to the ground, and executing the most sudden turns and quick evolutions.
Avenues, and long walks, under hedges, and pasture-fields, and mown
meadows where cattle graze, are her delight, especially if there are
trees interspersed; because in such spots insects most abound.  When a
fly is taken a smart snap from her bill is heard, resembling the noise at
the shutting of a watch-case: but the motion of the mandibles is too
quick for the eye.

The swallow, probably the male bird, is the _excubitor_ to house-martins,
and other little birds, announcing the approach of birds of prey.  For as
soon as a hawk appears, with a shrill alarming note he calls all the
swallows and martins about him; who pursue in a body, and buffet and
strike their enemy till they have driven him from the village, darting
down from above on his back, and rising in a perpendicular line in
perfect security.  This bird also will sound the alarm, and strike at
cats when they climb on the roofs of houses, or otherwise approach the
nests.  Each species of hirundo drinks as it flies along, sipping the
surface of the water; but the swallow alone, in general, washes on the
wing, by dropping into a pool for many times together: in very hot
weather house-martins and bank-martins dip and wash a little.

The swallow is a delicate songster, and in soft sunny weather sings both
perching and flying: on trees in a kind of concert, and on chimney tops:
is also a bold flyer, ranging to distant downs and commons even in windy
weather, which the other species seem much to dislike; nay, even
frequenting exposed seaport towns, and making little excursions over the
salt water.  Horsemen on wide downs are often closely attended by a
little party of swallows for miles together, which plays before and
behind them, sweeping around them, and collecting all the sculking
insects that are roused by the trampling of the horses' feet: when the
wind blows hard, without this expedient, they are often forced to settle
to pick up their lurking prey.

This species feeds much on little _Coleoptera_, as well as on gnats and
flies; and often settles on dug ground, or paths, for gravels to grind
and digest its food.  Before they depart, for some weeks, to a bird, they
forsake houses and chimneys, and roost in trees; and usually withdraw
about the beginning of October; though some few stragglers may appear on
at times till the first week in November.

Some few pairs haunt the new and open streets of London next the fields,
but do not enter, like the house-martin, the close and crowded parts of
the city.

Both male and female are distinguished from their congeners by the length
and forkedness of their tails.  They are undoubtedly the most nimble of
all the species: and when the male pursues the female in amorous chase
they then go beyond their usual speed, and exert a rapidity almost too
quick for the eye to follow.

After this circumstantial detail of the life and discerning στοργὴ
of the swallow, I shall add, for your farther amusement, an anecdote or
two not much in favour of her sagacity:--

A certain swallow built for two years together on the handles of a pair
of garden-shears, that were stuck up against the boards in an out-house,
and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever that implement was
wanted: and, what is stranger still, another bird of the same species
built its nest on the wings and body of an owl, that happened by accident
to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn.  This owl, with the nest
on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity
worthy the most elegant private museum in Great Britain.  The owner,
struck with the oddity of the sight, furnished the bringer with a large
shell, or conch, desiring him to fix it just where the owl hung: the
person did as he was ordered, and the following year a pair, probably the
same pair, built their nest in the conch, and laid their eggs.

The owl and the conch make a strange grotesque appearance, and are not
the least curious specimens in that wonderful collection of art and
nature.

Thus is instinct in animals, taken the least out of its way, an
undistinguishing, limited faculty; and blind to every circumstance that
does not immediately respect self-preservation, or lead at once to the
propagation or support of their species.

I am, with all respect, etc., etc.



LETTER XIX.


SELBORNE, _Feb._ 14_th_, 1774.

Dear Sir,--I received your favour of the 8th, and am pleased to find that
you read my little history of the swallow with your usual candour; nor
was I the less pleased to find that you made objections where you saw
reason.

As to the quotations, it is difficult to say precisely which species of
hirundo Virgil might intend in the lines in question, since the ancients
did not attend to specific differences like modern naturalists; yet
somewhat may be gathered, enough to incline me to suppose that in the two
passages quoted the poet had his eye on the swallow.

In the first place the epithet _garrula_ suits the swallow well, who is a
great songster, and not the martin, which is rather a mute bird; and when
it sings is so inward as scarce to be heard.  Besides, if _tignum_ in
that place signifies a rafter rather than a beam, as it seems to me to
do, then I think it must be the swallow that is alluded to, and not the
martin, since the former does frequently build within the roof against
the rafters, while the latter always, as far as I have been able to
observe, builds without the roof against eaves and cornices.

As to the simile, too much stress must not be laid on it, yet the epithet
_nigra_ speaks plainly in favour of the swallow, whose back and wings are
very black, while the rump of the martin is milk-white, its back and
wings blue, and all its under part white as snow.  Nor can the clumsy
motions (comparatively clumsy) of the martin well represent the sudden
and artful evolutions and quick turns which Juturna gave to her brother's
chariot, so as to elude the eager pursuit of the enraged AEneas.  The
verb _sonat_ also seems to imply a bird that is somewhat loquacious.

We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so as to raise the springs to a
pitch beyond anything since 1764, which was a remarkable year for floods
and high waters.  The land-springs which we call lavants, break out much
on the downs of Sussex, Hampshire and Wiltshire.  The country people say
when the _lavants_ rise corn will always be dear; meaning that when the
earth is so glutted with water as to send forth springs on the downs and
uplands, that the corn-vales must be drowned; and so it has proved for
these ten or eleven years past.  For land-springs have never obtained
more since the memory of man than during that period; nor has there been
known a greater scarcity of all sorts of grain, considering the great
improvements of modern husbandry.  Such a run of wet seasons a century or
two ago would, I am persuaded, have occasioned a famine.  Therefore
pamphlets and newspaper letters, that talk of combinations, tend to
inflame and mislead; since we must not expect plenty till Providence
sends us more favourable seasons.

The wheat of last year, all round this district, and in the county of
Rutland, and elsewhere, yields remarkably bad, and our wheat on the
ground, by the continual late sudden vicissitudes from fierce frost to
pouring rains, looks poorly, and the turnips rot very fast.

I am, etc.



LETTER XX.


SELBORNE, _Feb._ 26_th_, 1774.

Dear Sir,--The sand-martin, or bank-martin, is by much the least of any
of the British hirundines, and as far as we have ever seen, the smallest
known hirundo; though Brisson asserts that there is one much smaller, and
that is the _hirundo esculenta_.

But it is much to be regretted that it is scarce possible for any
observer to be so full and exact as he could wish in reciting the
circumstances attending the life and conversation of this little bird,
since it is _fera natura_, at least in this part of the kingdom,
disclaiming all domestic attachments, and haunting wild heaths and
commons where there are large lakes; while the other species, especially
the swallow and house-martin, are remarkably gentle and domesticated, and
never seem to think themselves safe but under the protection of man.

Here are in this parish, in the sand-pits and banks of the lakes of
Wolmer forest, several colonies of these birds, and yet they are never
seen in the village, nor do they at all frequent the cottages that are
scattered about in that wild district.  The only instance I ever remember
where this species haunts any building, is at the town of Bishop's
Waltham, in this county, where many sand-martins nestle and breed in the
scaffold-holes of the back wall of William of Wykeham's stables; but then
this wall stands in a very sequestered and retired enclosure, and faces
upon a large and beautiful lake.  And indeed this species seems so to
delight in large waters, that no instance occurs of their abounding, but
near vast pools or rivers; and in particular it has been remarked that
they swarm in the banks of the Thames in some places below London-bridge.

It is curious to observe with what different degrees of architectonic
skill Providence has endowed birds of the same genus, and so nearly
correspondent in their general mode of life; for while the swallow and
the house-martin discover the greatest address in raising and securely
fixing crusts or shells of loam as cunabula for their young, the bank-
martin terebrates a round and regular hole in the sand or earth, which is
serpentine, horizontal, and about two feet deep.  At the inner end of
this burrow does this bird deposit, in a good degree of safety, her rude
nest, consisting of fine grasses and feathers, usually goose-feathers,
very inartificially laid together.

Perseverance will accomplish anything, though at first one would be
disinclined to believe that this weak bird, with her soft and tender bill
and claws, should ever be able to bore the stubborn sand-bank without
entirely disabling herself; yet with these feeble instruments have I seen
a pair of them make great despatch, and could remark how much they had
scooped that day, by the fresh sand which ran down the bank, and was of a
different colour from that which lay loose and bleached in the sun.

In what space of time these little artists are able to mine and finish
these cavities I have not been able to discover, for reasons given above;
but it would be a matter worthy of observation, where it falls in the way
of any naturalist to make his remarks.  This I have often taken notice
of, that several holes of different depths are left unfinished at the end
of summer.  To imagine that these beginnings were intentionally made in
order to be in the greater forwardness for next spring, is allowing
perhaps too much foresight and _rerum prudentia_ to a simple bird.  May
not the cause of these _latebroe_ being left unfinished arise from their
meeting in those places with strata too harsh, hard, and solid, for their
purpose, which they relinquish, and go to a fresh spot that works more
freely?  Or may they not in other places fall in with a soil as much too
loose and mouldering, liable to flounder, and threatening to overwhelm
them and their labours?

One thing is remarkable--that, after some years, the old holes are
forsaken and new ones bored; perhaps because the old habitations grow
foul and fetid from long use, or because they may so abound with fleas as
to become untenantable.  This species of swallow, moreover, is strangely
annoyed with fleas; and we have seen fleas, bed-fleas (_pulex irritans_),
swarming at the mouths of these holes, like bees on the stools of their
hives.

The following circumstance should by no means be omitted--that these
birds do not make use of their caverns by way of hybernacula, as might be
expected; since banks so perforated have been dug out with care in the
winter, when nothing was found but empty nests.

The sand-martin arrives much about the same time with the swallow, and
lays, as she does, from four to six white eggs.  But as this species is
cryptogame, carrying on the business of nidification, incubation, and the
support of its young in the dark, it would not be so easy to ascertain
the time of breeding, were it not for the coming forth of the broods,
which appear much about the time, or rather somewhat earlier than those
of the swallow.  The nestlings are supported in common like those of
their congeners, with gnats and other small insects, and sometimes they
are fed with _libelluloe_ (dragon-flies) almost as long as themselves.  In
the last week in June we have seen a row of these sitting on a rail near
a great pool as perchers, and so young and helpless, as easily to be
taken by hand; but whether the dams ever feed them on the wing, as
swallows and house-martins do, we have never yet been able to determine,
nor do we know whether they pursue and attack birds of prey.

When they happen to breed near hedges and enclosures, they are
dispossessed of their breeding holes by the house-sparrow, which is on
the same account a fell adversary to house-martins.

These hirundines are no songsters, but rather mute, making only a little
harsh noise when a person approaches their nest.  They seem not to be of
a sociable turn, never with us congregating with their congeners in the
autumn.  Undoubtedly they breed a second time, like the house-martin and
swallow; and withdraw about Michaelmas.

Though in some particular districts they may happen to abound, yet in the
whole, in the south of England at least, is this much the rarest species.
For there are few towns or large villages but what abound with
house-martins; few churches, towers, or steeples, but what are haunted by
some swifts; scarce a hamlet or single cottage-chimney that has not its
swallow; while the bank-martins, scattered here and there, live a
sequestered life among some abrupt sand-hills, and in the banks of some
few rivers.

These birds have a peculiar manner of flying; flitting about with odd
jerks, and vacillations, not unlike the motions of a butterfly.  Doubtless
the flight of all hirundines is influenced by, and adapted to, the
peculiar sort of insects which furnish their food.  Hence it would be
worth inquiry to examine what particular genus of insects affords the
principal food of each respective species of swallow.

Notwithstanding what has been advanced above, some few sand-martins, I
see, haunt the skirts of London, frequenting the dirty pools in Saint
George's Fields, and about Whitechapel.  The question is where these
build, since there are no banks or bold shores in that neighbourhood;
perhaps they nestle in the scaffold holes of some old or new deserted
building.  They dip and wash as they fly sometimes, like the house-martin
and swallow.

Sand-martins differ from their congeners in the diminutiveness of their
size, and in their colour, which is what is usually called a
mouse-colour.  Near Valencia, in Spain, they are taken, says Willughby,
and sold in the markets for the table; and are called by the country
people, probably from their desultory jerking manner of flight, _Papilion
de Montagna_.



LETTER XXI.


SELBORNE, _Sept._ 28_th_, 1774.

Dear Sir,--As the swift or black-martin is the largest of the British
_hirundines_, so it is undoubtedly the latest comer.  For I remember but
one instance of its appearing before the last week in April; and in some
of our late frosty, harsh springs, it has not been seen till the
beginning of May.  This species usually arrives in pairs.

The swift, like the sand-martin, is very defective in architecture,
making no crust, or shell, for its nest; but forming it of dry grasses
and feathers, very rudely and inartificially put together.  With all my
attention to these birds, I have never been able once to discover one in
the act of collecting or carrying in materials; so that I have suspected
(since their nests are exactly the same) that they sometimes usurp upon
the house-sparrows, and expel them, as sparrows do the house and sand-
martin; well remembering that I have seen them squabbling together at the
entrance of their holes; and the sparrows up in arms, and much
disconcerted at these intruders.  And yet I am assured, by a nice
observer in such matters, that they do collect feathers for their nests
in Andalusia, and that he has shot them with such materials in their
mouths.

Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business of nidification quite in
the dark, in crannies of castles and towers, and steeples, and upon the
tops of the walls of churches under the roof; and therefore cannot be so
narrowly watched as those species that build more openly; but, from what
I could ever observe, they begin nesting about the middle of May; and I
have remarked, from eggs taken, that they have sat hard by the 9th June.
In general they haunt tall buildings, churches, and steeples, and breed
only in such; yet in this village some pairs frequent the lowest and
meanest cottages, and educate their young under those thatched roofs.  We
remember but one instance where they breed out of buildings, and that is
in the sides of a deep chalk-pit near the town of Odiham, in this county,
where we have seen many pairs entering the crevices, and skimming and
squeaking round the precipices.

As I have regarded these amusive birds with no small attention, if I
should advance something new and peculiar with respect to them, and
different from all other birds, I might perhaps be credited; especially
as my assertion is the result of many years' exact observation.  The fact
that I would advance is, that swifts tread, or propagate, on the wing;
and I would wish any nice observer, that is startled at this supposition,
to use his own eyes, and I think he will soon be convinced.  In another
class of animals, viz. the insect, nothing is so common as to see the
different species of many genera in conjunction as they fly.  The swift
is almost continually on the wing; and as it never settles on the ground,
on trees, or roofs, would seldom find opportunity for amorous rites, was
it not enabled to indulge them in the air.  If any person would watch
these birds of a fine morning in May, as they are sailing round at a
great height from the ground, he would see every now and then, one drop
on the back of another, and both of them sink down together for many
fathoms with a loud piercing shriek.  This I take to be the juncture when
the business of generation is carrying on.

As the swift eats, drinks, collects materials for its nest, and, as it
seems, propagates on the wing, it appears to live more in the air than
any other bird, and to perform all functions there save those of sleeping
and incubation.

This hirundo differs widely from its congeners in laying invariably but
two eggs at a time, which are milk-white, long, and peaked at the small
end; whereas the other species lay at each brood from four to six.  It is
a most alert bird, rising very early, and retiring to roost very late;
and is on the wing in the height of summer at least sixteen hours.  In
the longest days it does not withdraw to rest till a quarter before nine
in the evening, being the latest of all day-birds.  Just before they
retire whole groups of them assemble high in the air, and squeak, and
shoot about with wonderful rapidity.  But this bird is never so much
alive as in sultry thundery weather, when it expresses great alacrity,
and calls forth all its powers.  In hot mornings several, getting
together in little parties, dash round the steeples and churches,
squeaking as they go in a very clamorous manner; these, by nice
observers, are supposed to be males serenading their sitting hens; and
not without reason, since they seldom squeak till they come close to the
walls or eaves, and since those within utter at the same time a little
inward note of complacency.

When the hen has sat hard all day, she rushes forth just as it is almost
dark, and stretches and relieves her weary limbs, and snatches a scanty
meal for a few minutes, and then returns to her duty of incubation.
Swifts, when wantonly and cruelly shot while they have young, discover a
little lump of insects in their mouths, which they pouch and hold under
their tongue.  In general they feed in a much higher district than the
other species--a proof that gnats and other insects do also abound to a
considerable height in the air; they also range to vast distances, since
locomotion is no labour to them who are endowed with such wonderful
powers of wing.  Their powers seem to be in proportion to their levers,
and their wings are longer in proportion than those of almost any other
bird.  When they mute, or ease themselves in flight, they raise their
wings, and make them meet over their backs.

At some certain times in the summer I had remarked that swifts were
hawking very low for hours together over pools and streams, and could not
help inquiring into the object of their pursuit that induced them to
descend so much below their usual range.  After some trouble, I found
that they were taking _phryganeae_, _ephemerae_, and _libellulae_ (cadew-
flies, may-flies, and dragon-flies), that were just emerged out of their
aurelia state.  I then no longer wondered that they should be so willing
to stoop for a prey that afforded them such plentiful and succulent
nourishment.

They bring out their young about the middle or latter end of July: but as
these never become perchers, nor, that ever I could discern, are fed on
the wing by their dams, the coming forth of the young is not so notorious
as in the other species.

On the 30th of last June I untiled the eaves of a house where many pairs
build, and found in each nest only two squab, naked _pulli_; on the 8th
July I repeated the same inquiry, and found that they had made very
little progress towards a fledged state, but were still naked and
helpless.  From whence we may conclude that birds whose way of life keeps
them perpetually on the wing would not be able to quit their nest till
the end of the month.  Swallows and martins, that have numerous families,
are continually feeding them every two or three minutes, while swifts,
that have but two young to maintain, are much at their leisure, and do
not attend on their nest for hours together.

Sometimes they pursue and strike at hawks that come in their way, but not
with that vehemence and fury that swallows express on the same occasion.
They are out all day long in wet days, feeding about, and disregarding
still rain: from whence two things may be gathered; first, that many
insects abide high in the air, even in rain; and next, that the feathers
of these birds must be well preened to resist so much wet.  Windy, and
particularly windy weather with heavy showers, they dislike, and on such
days withdraw, and are scarce ever seen.

There is a circumstance respecting the colour of swifts which seems not
to be unworthy of our attention.  When they arrive in the spring, they
are all over of a glossy, dark soot-colour, except their chins, which are
white; but, by being all day long in the sun and air, they become quite
weather-beaten and bleached before they depart, and yet they return
glossy again in the spring.  Now, if they pursue the sun into lower
latitudes, as some suppose, in order to enjoy a perpetual summer, why do
they not return bleached?  Do they not rather perhaps retire to rest for
a season, and at that juncture moult and change their feathers, since all
other birds are known to moult soon after the season of breeding?

Swifts are very anomalous in many particulars, dissenting from all their
congeners not only in the number of their young, but in breeding but once
in a summer, whereas all the other British hirundines breed invariably
twice.  It is past all doubt that swifts can breed but once, since they
withdraw in a short time after the flight of their young, and some time
before their congeners bring out their second broods.  We may here remark
that, as swifts breed but once in a summer, and only two at a time, and
the other hirundines twice, the latter, who lay from four to six eggs,
increase at an average five times as fast as the former.

But in nothing are swifts more singular than in their early retreat.  They
retire, as to the main body of them, by the 10th August, and sometimes a
few days sooner; and every straggler invariably withdraws by the 20th,
while their congeners, all of them, stay till the beginning of
October--many of them all through that month, and some occasionally to
the beginning of November.  This early retreat is mysterious and
wonderful, since that time is often the sweetest season in the year.  But
what is more extraordinary, they begin to retire still earlier in the
most southerly parts of Andalusia, where they can be in no ways
influenced by any defect of heat, or, as one might suppose, failure of
food.  Are they regulated in their motions with us by a defect of food,
or by a propensity to moulting, or by a disposition to rest after so
rapid a life, or by what?  This is one of those incidents in natural
history that not only baffles our searches, but almost eludes our
guesses!

These hirundines never perch on trees or roofs, and so never congregate
with their congeners.  They are fearless while haunting their nesting-
places, and are not to be scared with a gun, and are often beaten down
with poles and cudgels as they stoop to go under the eaves.  Swifts are
much infested with those pests to the genus called _hippoboscoe
hirundinis_; and often wriggle and scratch themselves in their flight to
get rid of that clinging annoyance.

Swifts are no songsters, and have only one harsh screaming note; yet
there are ears to which it is not displeasing, from an agreeable
association of ideas, since that note never occurs but in the most lovely
summer weather.

They never can settle on the ground but through accident, and, when down,
can hardly rise, on account of the shortness of their legs and the length
of their wings; neither can they walk, but only crawl; but they have a
strong grasp with their feet, by which they cling to walls.  Their bodies
being flat they can enter a very narrow crevice; and where they cannot
pass on their bellies they will turn up edgewise.

The particular formation of the foot discriminates the swift from all the
British hirundines; and, indeed from all other known birds, the _hirundo
melba_, or great white-bellied swift of Gibraltar, excepted; for it is so
disposed as to carry "_omnes quatuor digitos anticos_"--all its four toes
forward; besides, the least toe, which should be the back toe, consists
of one bone alone, and the other three only of two apiece,--a
construction most rare and peculiar, but nicely adapted to the purposes
in which their feet are employed.  This and some peculiarities attending
the nostrils and under mandible have induced a discerning naturalist to
suppose that this species might constitute a genus _per se_.

In London a party of swifts frequents the Tower, playing and feeding over
the river just below the bridge; others haunt some of the churches of the
Borough, next the fields, but do not venture, like the house-martin, into
the close crowded part of the town.

The Swedes have bestowed a very pertinent name on this swallow, calling
it "ring swala," from the perpetual rings or circles that it takes round
the scene of its nidification.

Swifts feed on _coleoptera_, or small beetles with hard cases over their
wings, as well as on the softer insects, but it does not appear how they
can procure gravel to grind their food, as swallows do, since they never
settle on the ground.  Young ones, over-run with _hippoboscoe_, are
sometimes found under their nests, fallen to the ground, the number of
vermin rendering their abode insupportable any longer.  They frequent in
this village several abject cottages; yet a succession still haunts the
same unlikely roofs--a good proof this that the same birds return to the
same spots.  As they must stoop very low to get up under these humble
eaves, cats lie in wait, and sometimes catch them on the wing.

On July 5th, 1775, I again untiled part of a roof over the nest of a
swift.  The dam sat in the nest, but so strongly was she affected by
natural στοργὴ for her brood, which she supposed to be in danger,
that, regardless of her own safety, she would not stir, but lay sullenly
by them, permitting herself to be taken in hand.  The squab young we
brought down and placed on the grass-plot, where they tumbled about, and
were as helpless as a new-born child.  While we contemplated their naked
bodies, their unwieldy disproportioned abdomina, and their heads, too
heavy for their necks to support, we could not but wonder when we
reflected that these shiftless beings in a little more than a fortnight
would be able to dash through the air almost with the inconceivable
swiftness of a meteor, and perhaps in their emigration must traverse vast
continents and oceans as distant as the equator.  So soon does Nature
advance small birds to their ἡλικία, or state of perfection, while
the progressive growth of men and large quadrupeds is slow and tedious!

I am, etc.



LETTER XXII.


SELBORNE, _Sept._ 13_th_, 1774.

Dear Sir,--By means of a straight cottage chimney I had an opportunity
this summer of remarking, at my leisure, how swallows ascend and descend
through the shaft; but my pleasure in contemplating the address with
which this feat was performed to a considerable depth in the chimney was
somewhat interrupted by apprehensions lest my eyes might undergo the same
fate with those of Tobit.

Perhaps it may be some amusement to you to hear at what times the
different species of hirundines arrived this spring in three very distant
counties of this kingdom.  With us the swallow was seen first on April
4th, the swift on April 24th, the bank-martin on April 12th, and the
house-martin not till April 30th.  At South Zele, Devonshire, swallows
did not arrive till April 25th, swifts in plenty on May 1st, and house-
martins not till the middle of May.  At Blackburn, in Lancashire, swifts
were seen April 28th, swallows April 29th, house-martins May 1st.  Do
these different dates, in such distant districts, prove anything for or
against migration?

A farmer near Weyhill fallows his land with two teams of asses, one of
which works till noon, and the other in the afternoon.  When these
animals have done their work, they are penned all night, like sheep, on
the fallow.  In the winter they are confined and foddered in a yard, and
make plenty of dung.

Linnaeus says that hawks "_paciscuntur inducia scum avibus_, _quamdiu
cuculus cuculat_;" but it appears to me that during that period many
little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen by
their feathers left in lanes and under hedges.

The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, driving such
birds as approach its nest with great fury to a distance.  The Welsh call
it "pen y llwyn," the head or master of the coppice.  He suffers no
magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter the garden where he haunts, and is,
for the time, a good guard to the new-sown legumens.  In general he is
very successful in the defence of his family; but once I observed in my
garden that several magpies came determined to storm the nest of a missel-
thrush: the dams defended their mansion with great vigour, and fought
resolutely _pro aris et focis_; but numbers at last prevailed, they tore
the nest to pieces, and swallowed the young alive.

In the season of nidification the wildest birds are comparatively tame.
Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though they are continually
frequented; and the missel-thrush, though most shy and wild in the autumn
and winter, builds in my garden close to a walk where people are passing
all day long.

Wall-fruit abounds with me this year; but my grapes, that used to be
forward and good, are at present backward beyond all precedent; and this
is not the worst of the story; for the same ungenial weather, the same
black cold solstice, has injured the more necessary fruits of the earth,
and discoloured and blighted our wheat.  The crop of hops promises to be
very large.

Frequent returns of deafness incommode me sadly, and half disqualify me
for a naturalist; for, when those fits are upon me, I lose all the
pleasing notices and little intimations arising from rural sounds; and
May is to me as silent and mute with respect to the notes of birds, etc.,
as August.  My eyesight is, thank God, quick and good; but with respect
to the other sense, I am, at times, disabled:

   "And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."



LETTER XXIII.


SELBORNE, _June_ 8_th_, 1775.

Dear Sir,--On September 21st, 1741, being then on a visit, and intent on
field-diversions, I rose before daybreak: when I came into the
enclosures, I found the stubbles and clover-grounds matted all over with
a thick coat of cobweb, in the meshes of which a copious and heavy dew
hung so plentifully that the whole face of the country seemed, as it
were, covered with two or three setting-nets drawn one over another.  When
the dogs attempted to hunt, their eyes were so blinded and hoodwinked
that they could not proceed, but were obliged to lie down and scrape the
incumbrances from their faces with their fore-feet, so that, finding my
sport interrupted, I returned home musing in my mind on the oddness of
the occurrence.

As the morning advanced the sun became bright and warm, and the day
turned out one of those most lovely ones which no season but the autumn
produces; cloudless, calm, serene, and worthy of the South of France
itself.

About nine an appearance very unusual began to demand our attention, a
shower of cobwebs falling from very elevated regions, and continuing,
without any interruption, till the close of the day.  These webs were not
single filmy threads, floating in the air in all directions, but perfect
flakes or rags; some near an inch broad, and five or six long, which fell
with a degree of velocity that showed they were considerably heavier than
the atmosphere.

On every side as the observer turned his eyes might he behold a continual
succession of fresh flakes falling into his sight, and twinkling like
stars as they turned their sides towards the sun.

How far this wonderful shower extended would be difficult to say; but we
know that it reached Bradley, Selborne, and Alresford, three places which
lie in a sort of a triangle, the shortest of whose sides is about eight
miles in extent.

At the second of those places there was a gentleman (for whose veracity
and intelligent turn we have the greatest veneration) who observed it the
moment he got abroad; but concluded that, as soon as he came upon the
hill above his house, where he took his morning rides, he should be
higher than this meteor which he imagined might have been blown, like
thistledown, from the common above; but, to his great astonishment, when
he rode to the most elevated part of the down, three hundred feet above
his fields, he found the webs in appearance still as much above him as
before; still descending into sight in a constant succession, and
twinkling in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most incurious.

Neither before nor after was any such fall observed; but on this day the
flakes hung in the trees and hedges so thick that a diligent person sent
out might have gathered baskets full.

The remark that I shall make on these cobweb-like appearances, called
gossamer, is, that, strange and superstitious as the notions about them
were formerly, nobody in these days doubts but that they are the real
production of small spiders, which swarm in the fields in fine weather in
autumn, and have a power of shooting out webs from their tails so as to
render themselves buoyant, and lighter than air.  But why these apterous
insects should that day take such a wonderful aerial excursion, and why
their webs should at once become so gross and material as to be
considerably more weighty than air, and to descend with precipitation, is
a matter beyond my skill.  If I might be allowed to hazard a supposition,
I should imagine that those filmy threads, when first shot, might be
entangled in the rising dew, and so drawn up, spiders and all, by a brisk
evaporation, into the regions where clouds are formed: and if the spiders
have a power of coiling and thickening their webs in the air, as Dr.
Lister says they have [see his Letters to Mr. Ray], then, when they were
become heavier than the air, they must fall.

Every day in fine weather, in autumn chiefly, do I see those spiders
shooting out their webs and mounting aloft: they will go off from your
finger if you will take them into your hand.  Last summer one alighted on
my book as I was reading in the parlour; and, running to the top of the
page, and shooting out a web, took its departure from thence.  But what I
most wondered at was, that it went off with considerable velocity in a
place where no air was stirring; and I am sure that I did not assist it
with my breath.  So that these little crawlers seem to have, while
mounting, some locomotive power without the use of wings, and to move in
the air faster than the air itself.



LETTER XXIV.


SELBORNE, _Aug._ 15_th_, 1775.

Dear Sir,--There is a wonderful spirit of sociality in the brute
creation, independent of sexual attachment: the congregating of
gregarious birds in the winter is a remarkable instance.

Many horses, though quiet with company, will not stay one minute in a
field by themselves: the strongest fences cannot restrain them.  My
neighbour's horse will not only not stay by himself abroad, but he will
not bear to be left alone in a strange stable without discovering the
utmost impatience, and endeavouring to break the rack and manger with his
fore feet.  He has been known to leap out at a stable-window, through
which dung was thrown, after company; and yet in other respects is
remarkably quiet.  Oxen and cows will not fatten by themselves; but will
neglect the finest pasture that is not recommended by society.  It would
be needless to instance sheep, which constantly flock together.

But this propensity seems not to be confined to animals of the same
species; for we know a doe, still alive, that was brought up from a
little fawn with a dairy of cows; with them it goes a-field, and with
them it returns to the yard.  The dogs of the house take no notice of
this deer, being used to her; but, if strange dogs come by, a chase
ensues; while the master smiles to see his favourite securely leading her
pursuers over hedge, or gate, or stile, till she returns to the cows,
who, with fierce lowings and menacing horns, drive the assailants quite
out of the pasture.

Even great disparity of kind and size does not always prevent social
advances and mutual fellowship.  For a very intelligent and observant
person has assured me that, in the former part of his life, keeping but
one horse, he happened also on a time to have but one solitary hen, These
two incongruous animals spent much of their time together in a lonely
orchard, where they saw no creature but each other.  By degrees an
apparent regard began to take place between these two sequestered
individuals.  The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of
complacency, rubbing herself gently against his legs; while the horse
would look down with satisfaction, and move with the greatest caution and
circumspection, lest he should trample on his diminutive companion.  Thus,
by mutual good offices, each seemed to console the vacant hours of the
other: so that Milton, when he puts the following sentiment in the mouth
of Adam, seems to be somewhat mistaken:

   "Much less can _bird_ with _beast_, or fish with fowl,
   So well converse, nor with the ox the ape."

I am, etc.



LETTER XXV.


SELBORNE, _Oct._ 2_nd_, 1775.

Dear Sir,--We have two gangs or hordes of gypsies which infest the south
and west of England, and come round in their circuit two or three times
in the year.  One of these tribes calls itself by the noble name of
Stanley, of which I have nothing particular to say; but the other is
distinguished by an appellative somewhat remarkable.  As far as their
harsh gibberish can be understood, they seem to say that the name of
their clan is Curleople; now the termination of this word is apparently
Grecian, and as Mezeray and the gravest historians all agree that these
vagrants did certainly migrate from Egypt and the East, two or three
centuries ago, and so spread by degrees over Europe, may not this family-
name, a little corrupted, be the very name they brought with them from
the Levant?  It would be matter of some curiosity, could one meet with an
intelligent person among them, to inquire whether, in their jargon, they
still retain any Greek words; the Greek radicals will appear in hand,
foot, head, water, earth, etc.  It is possible that amidst their cant and
corrupted dialect many mutilated remains of their native language might
still be discovered.

With regard to those peculiar people, the gypsies, one thing is very
remarkable, and especially as they came from warmer climates; and that
is, that while other beggars lodge in barns, stables, and cow-houses,
these sturdy savages seem to pride themselves in braving the severities
of winter, and in living _sub dio_ the whole year round.  Last September
was as wet a month as ever was known; and yet during those deluges did a
young gipsy girl lie in the midst of one of our hop-gardens, on the cold
ground, with nothing over her but a piece of a blanket extended on a few
hazel-rods bent hoop-fashion, and stuck into the earth at each end, in
circumstances too trying for a cow in the same condition; yet within this
garden there was a large hop-kiln, into the chambers of which she might
have retired, had she thought shelter an object worthy her attention.

Europe itself, it seems, cannot set bounds to the rovings of these
vagabonds; for Mr. Bell, in his return from Peking, met a gang of those
people on the confines of Tartary, who were endeavouring to penetrate
those deserts, and try their fortune in China.

Gypsies are called in French, Bohemians; in Italian and modern Greek,
Zingari.

I am, etc.



LETTER XXVI.


SELBORNE, _Nov._ 1_st_, 1775.

   "Hic . . . taedae pingues, hic plurimus ignis
   Semper, et assidua postes fuligine nigri."

Dear Sir,--I shall make no apology for troubling you with the detail of a
very simple piece of domestic economy, being satisfied that you think
nothing beneath your attention that tends to utility; the matter alluded
to is the use of rushes instead of candles, which I am well aware
prevails in many districts besides this; but as I know there are
countries also where it does not obtain, and as I have considered the
subject with some degree of exactness, I shall proceed in my humble
story, and leave you to judge of the expediency.

The proper species of rush for this purpose seems to be the _juncus
effusus_, or common soft rush, which is to be found in most moist
pastures, by the sides of streams, and under hedges.  These rushes are in
best condition in the height of summer; but may be gathered, so as to
serve the purpose well, quite on to autumn.  It would be needless to add
that the largest and longest are best.  Decayed labourers, women, and
children, make it their business to procure and prepare them.  As soon as
they are cut, they must be flung into water, and kept there, for
otherwise they will dry and shrink, and the peel will not run.  At first
a person would find it no easy matter to divest a rush of its peel or
rind, so as to leave one regular, narrow, even rib from top to bottom
that may support the pith; but this, like other feats, soon becomes
familiar, even to children; and we have seen an old woman, stone blind,
performing this business with great despatch, and seldom failing to strip
them with the nicest regularity.  When these _junci_ are thus far
prepared, they must lie out on the grass to be bleached, and take the dew
for some nights, and afterwards be dried in the sun.

Some address is required in dipping these rushes in the scalding fat or
grease; but this knack also is to be attained by practice.  The careful
wife of an industrious Hampshire labourer obtains all her fat for
nothing; for she saves the scummings of her bacon-pot for this use; and,
if the grease abounds with salt, she causes the salt to precipitate to
the bottom, by setting the scummings in a warm oven.  Where hogs are not
much in use, and especially by the seaside, the coarser animal-oils will
come very cheap.  A pound of common grease may be procured for fourpence,
and about six pounds of grease will dip a pound of rushes, and one pound
of rushes may be bought for one shilling; so that a pound of rushes
medicated and ready for use, will cost three shillings.  If men that keep
bees will mix a little wax with the grease, it will give it a
consistency, and render it more cleanly, and make the rushes burn longer;
mutton-suet would have the same effect.

A good rush, which measured in length two feet four inches and a half,
being minuted, burnt only three minutes short of an hour; and a rush of
still greater length has been known to burn one hour and a quarter.

These rushes give a good clear light.  Watch-lights (coated with tallow),
it is true, shed a dismal one, "darkness visible;" but then the wick of
those have two ribs of the rind, or peel, to support the pith, while the
wick of the dipped rush has but one.  The two ribs are intended to impede
the progress of the flame and make the candle last.

In a pound of dry rushes, avoirdupois, which I caused to be weighed and
numbered, we found upwards of one thousand six hundred individuals.  Now
suppose each of these burns, one with another, only half an hour, then a
poor man will purchase eight hundred hours of light, a time exceeding
thirty-three entire days, for three shillings.  According to this account
each rush, before dipping costs 1/33 of a farthing, and 1/11 afterwards.
Thus a poor family will enjoy five and a half hours of comfortable light
for farthing.  An experienced old housekeeper assures me that one pound
and a half of rushes completely supplies his family the year round, since
working people burn no candles in the long days, because they rise and go
to bed by daylight.

Little farmers use rushes much in the short days, both morning and
evening, in the dairy and kitchen; but the very poor, who are always the
worst economists, and therefore must continue very poor, buy a halfpenny
candle every evening, which in their blowing open rooms does not burn
much more than two hours.  Thus have they only two hours' light for their
money instead of eleven.

While on the subject of rural economy, it may not be improper to mention
a pretty implement of housewifery that we have seen nowhere else; that
is, little neat besoms which our foresters make from the stalks of the
_polytricum commune_, or great golden maidenhair, which they call silk-
wood, and find plenty in the bogs.  When this moss is well combed and
dressed, and divested of its outer skin, it becomes of a beautiful bright-
chestnut colour; and, being soft and pliant, is very proper for the
dusting of beds, curtains, carpets, hangings, etc.  If these besoms were
known to the brushmakers in town, it is probable they might come much in
use for the purpose above mentioned.

I am, etc.



LETTER XXVII.


SELBORNE, _Dec._ 12_th_, 1775.

Dear Sir,--We had in this village more than twenty years ago an idiot
boy, whom I well remember, who, from a child, showed a strong propensity
to bees; they were his food, his amusement, his sole object.  And as
people of this caste have seldom more than one point in view, so this lad
exerted all his few faculties on this one pursuit.  In the winter he
dozed away his time, within his father's house, by the fireside, in a
kind of torpid state, seldom departing from the chimney-corner; but in
the summer he was all alert, and in quest of his game in the fields, and
on sunny banks.  Honey-bees, humble-bees, and wasps, were his prey
wherever he found them; he had no apprehensions from their stings, but
would seize them _nudis manibus_, and at once disarm them of their
weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags.
Sometimes he would fill his bosom between his shirt and his skin with a
number of these captives, and sometimes would confine them in bottles.  He
was a very _merops apiaster_, or bee-bird, and very injurious to men that
kept bees; for he would slide into their bee-gardens, and, sitting down
before the stools would rap with his finger on the hives, and so take the
bees as they came out.  He has been known to overturn hives for the sake
of honey, of which he was passionately fond.  Where metheglin was making
he would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of what he
called bee-wine.  As he ran about he used to make a humming noise with
his lips, resembling the buzzing of bees.  This lad was lean and sallow,
and of a cadaverous complexion; and, except in his favourite pursuit, in
which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of understanding.
Had his capacity been better, and directed to the same object, he had
perhaps abated much of our wonder at the feats of a more modern exhibitor
of bees; and we may justly say of him now,--

   " . . . Thou,
   Had thy presiding star propitious shone,
   Shouldst Wildman be . . . "

When a tall youth he was removed from hence to a distant village, where
he died, as I understand, before he arrived at manhood.

I am, etc.



LETTER XXVIII.


SELBORNE, _Jan._ 8_th_, 1776.

Dear Sir,--It is the hardest thing in the world to shake off
superstitious prejudices: they are sucked in, as it were, with our
mother's milk; and growing up with us at a time when they take the
fastest hold and make the most lasting impressions, become so interwoven
into our very constitutions, that the strongest good sense is required to
disengage ourselves from them.  No wonder, therefore, that the lower
people retain them their whole lives through, since their minds are not
invigorated by a liberal education, and therefore not enabled to make any
efforts adequate to the occasion.

Such a preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on the
superstitions of this district, lest we should be suspected of
exaggeration in a recital of practices too gross for this enlightened
age.

But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to remember that
no longer ago than the year 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital,
they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age, and
overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of witchcraft; and, by
trying experiments, drowned them in a horse-pond.

In a farm-yard near the middle of this village stands at this day, a row
of pollard-ashes, which by the seams and long cicatrices down their
sides, manifestly show that, in former times, they have been cleft
asunder.  These trees when young and flexible, were severed and held open
by wedges, while ruptured children, stripped naked, were pushed through
the apertures, under a persuasion that, by such a process, the poor babes
would be cured of their infirmity.  As soon as the operation was over,
the tree, in the suffering part, was plastered with loam, and carefully
swathed up.  If the parts coalesced and soldered together, as usually
fell out, where the feat was performed with any adroitness at all, the
party was cured; but, where the cleft continued to gape, the operation it
was supposed, would prove ineffectual.  Having occasion to enlarge my
garden not long since, I cut down two or three such trees, one of which
did not grow together.

We have several persons now living in the village who, in their
childhood, were supposed to be healed by this superstitious ceremony,
derived down perhaps from our Saxon ancestors, who practised it before
their conversion to Christianity.

At the fourth corner of the Plestor, or area, near the church, there
stood, about twenty years ago, a very old grotesque hollow pollard-ash,
which for ages had been looked on with no small veneration as a shrew-
ash.  Now a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently
applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the pains which
a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part affected;
for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a
nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep,
the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with
the loss of the use of the limb.  Against this accident, to which they
were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew-
ash at hand, which when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for
ever.  A shrew-ash was made thus:--Into the body of the tree a deep hole
was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in
alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations long
since forgotten.  As the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration are
no longer understood, all succession is at an end, and no such tree is
known to subsist in the manor, or hundred.

As to that on the Plestor

   "The late Vicar stubb'd and burnt it,"

when he was way-warden, regardless of the remonstrances of the
bystanders, who interceded in vain for its preservation, urging its power
and efficacy, and alleging that it had been

   "Religione patrum multos servata per annos."

I am, etc.



LETTER XXIX.


SELBORNE, _Feb._ 7_th_, 1776.

Dear Sir,--In heavy fogs, on elevated situations especially, trees are
perfect alembics; and no one that has not attended to such matters can
imagine how much water one tree will distil in a night's time, by
condensing the vapour, which trickles down the twigs and boughs, so as to
make the ground below quite in a float.  In Newton Lane, in October,
1775, on a misty day, a particular oak in leaf dropped so fast that the
cart-way stood in puddles and the ruts ran with water, though the ground
in general was dusty.

In some of our smaller islands in the West Indies, if I mistake not,
there are no springs or rivers; but the people are supplied with that
necessary element, water, merely by the dripping of some large teak
trees, which, standing in the bosom of a mountain, keep their heads
constantly enveloped with fogs and clouds, from which they dispense their
kindly never-ceasing moisture; and so render those districts habitable by
condensation alone.

Trees in leaf have such a vast proportion more of surface than those that
are naked, that, in theory, their condensations should greatly exceed
those that are stripped of their leaves; but, as the former imbibe also a
great quantity of moisture, it is difficult to say which drip most: but
this I know, that deciduous trees that are entwined with much ivy seem to
distil the greatest quantity.  Ivy-leaves are smooth, and thick, and
cold, and therefore condense very fast; and besides, evergreens imbibe
very little.  These facts may furnish the intelligent with hints
concerning what sorts of trees they should plant round small ponds that
they would wish to be perennial; and show them how advantageous some
trees are in preference to others.

Trees perspire profusely, condense largely, and check evaporation so
much, that woods are always moist; no wonder, therefore, that they
contribute much to pools and streams.

That trees are great promoters of lakes and rivers appears from a well-
known fact in North America; for, since the woods and forests have been
grubbed and cleared, all bodies of water are much diminished; so that
some streams that were very considerable a century ago, will not now
drive a common mill.  Besides, most woodlands, forests, and chases, with
us abound with pools and morasses; no doubt for the reason given above.

To a thinking mind few phenomena are more strange than the state of
little ponds on the summits of chalk hills, many of which are never dry
in the most trying droughts of summer.  On chalk-hills I say, because in
many rocky and gravelly soils springs usually break out pretty high on
the sides of elevated grounds and mountains: but no person acquainted
with chalk districts will allow that they ever saw springs in such a soil
but in valleys and bottoms, since the waters of so pervious a stratum as
chalk all lie on one dead level, as well-diggers have assured me again
and again.

Now we have many such little round ponds in this district; and one in
particular on our sheep-down, three hundred feet above my house; which,
though never above three feet deep in the middle, and not more than
thirty feet in diameter, and containing perhaps not more than two or
three hundred hogsheads of water, yet never is known to fail, though it
affords drink for three hundred or four hundred sheep, and for at least
twenty head of large cattle beside.  This pond, it is true, is overhung
with two moderate beeches, that, doubtless, at times afford it much
supply: but then we have others as small, that, without the aid of trees,
and in spite of evaporation from sun and wind, and perpetual consumption
by cattle, yet constantly maintain a moderate share of water, without
overflowing in the wettest seasons, as they would do if supplied by
springs.  By my journal of May, 1775, it appears that "the small and even
considerable ponds in the vales are now dried up, while the small ponds
on the very tops of hills are but little affected."  Can this difference
be accounted for from evaporation alone, which certainly is more
prevalent in bottoms? or rather have not those elevated pools some
unnoticed recruits, which in the night time counterbalance the waste of
the day; without which the cattle alone must soon exhaust them?  And here
it will be necessary to enter more minutely into the cause.  Dr. Hales,
in his Vegetable Statics, advances, from experiment, that "the moister
the earth is the more dew falls on it in a night: and more than a double
quantity of dew falls on a surface of water than there does on an equal
surface of moist earth."  Hence we see that water, by its coolness, is
enabled to assimilate to itself a large quantity of moisture nightly by
condensation; and that the air, when loaded with fogs and vapours, and
even with copious dews, can alone advance a considerable and
never-failing resource.  Persons that are much abroad, and travel early
and late, such as shepherds, fishermen, etc., can tell what prodigious
fogs prevail in the night on elevated downs, even in the hottest parts of
summer; and how much the surfaces of things are drenched by those
swimming vapours, though, to the senses, all the while, little moisture
seems to fall.

I am, etc.



LETTER XXX.


SELBORNE, _April_ 3_rd_, 1776.

Dear Sir,--Monsieur Herissant, a French anatomist, seems persuaded that
he has discovered the reason why cuckoos do not hatch their own eggs; the
impediment, he supposes, arises from the internal structure of their
parts, which incapacitates them for incubation.  According to this
gentleman, the crop, or craw, of a cuckoo does not lie before the sternum
at the bottom of the neck, as in the _gallinae_, _columbae_, etc., but
immediately behind it, on and over the bowels, so as to make a large
protuberance in the belly.

Induced by this assertion, we procured a cuckoo; and, cutting open the
breast-bone, and exposing the intestines to sight, found the crop lying
as mentioned above.  This stomach was large and round, and stuffed hard,
like a pincushion, with food, which, upon nice examination, we found to
consist of various insects; such as small scarabs, spiders, and dragon-
flies; the last of which we have seen cuckoos catching on the wing as
they were just emerging out of the aurelia state.  Among this farrago
also were to be seen maggots, and many seeds, which belonged either to
gooseberries, currants, cranberries, or some such fruit; so that these
birds apparently subsist on insects and fruits; nor was there the least
appearance of bones, feathers, or fur, to support the idle notion of
their being birds of prey.

The sternum in this bird seemed to us to be remarkably short, between
which and the anus lay the crop, or craw, and immediately behind that the
bowels against the back-bone.

It must be allowed, as this anatomist observes, that the crop placed just
upon the bowels must, especially when full, be in a very uneasy situation
during the business of incubation; yet the test will be to examine
whether birds that are actually known to sit for certain are not formed
in a similar manner.  This inquiry I proposed to myself to make with a
fern-fowl, or goat-sucker, as soon as opportunity offered: because, if
their formation proves the same, the reason for incapacity in the cuckoo
will be allowed to have been taken up somewhat hastily.

Not long after a fern-owl was procured, which, from its habit and shape,
we suspected might resemble the cuckoo in its internal construction.  Nor
were our suspicions ill-grounded; for, upon the dissection, the crop, or
craw, also lay behind the sternum, immediately on the viscera, between
them and the skin of the belly.  It was bulky, and stuffed hard with
large _phalaenae_, moths of several sorts, and their eggs, which no doubt
had been forced out of those insects by the action of swallowing.

Now as it appears that this bird, which is so well known to practise
incubation, is formed in a similar manner with cuckoos, Monsieur
Herissant's conjecture, that cuckoos are incapable of incubation from the
disposition of their intestines, seems to fall to the ground; and we are
still at a loss for the cause of that strange and singular peculiarity in
the instance of the _cuculus canorus_.

We found the case to be the same with the ring-tail hawk, in respect to
formation; and, as far as I can recollect, with the swift; and probably
it is so with many more sorts of birds that are not granivorous.

I am, etc.



LETTER XXXI.


SELBORNE, _April_ 29_th_, 1776.

Dear Sir,--On August 4th, 1775, we surprised a large viper, which seemed
very heavy and bloated, as it lay in the grass basking in the sun.  When
we came to cut it up, we found that the abdomen was crowded with young,
fifteen in number; the shortest of which measured full seven inches, and
were about the size of full-grown earth-worms.  This little fry issued
into the world with the true viper-spirit about them, showing great
alertness as soon as disengaged from the belly of the dam: they twisted
and wriggled about, and set themselves up, and gaped very wide when
touched with a stick, showing manifest tokens of menace and defiance,
though as yet they had no manner of fangs that we could find, even with
the help of our glasses.

To a thinking mind nothing is more wonderful than that early instinct
which impresses young animals with a notion of the situation of their
natural weapons, and of using them properly in their own defence, even
before those weapons subsist or are formed.  Thus a young cock will spar
at his adversary before his spurs are grown: and a calf or a lamb will
push with their heads before their horns are sprouted.  In the same
manner did these young adders attempt to bite before their fangs were in
being.  The dam however was furnished with very formidable ones, which we
lifted up (for they fold down when not used), and cut them off with the
point of our scissors.

There was little room to suppose that this brood had ever been in the
open air before; and that they were taken in for refuge, at the mouth of
the dam, when she perceived that danger was approaching; because then
probably we should have found them somewhere in the neck, and not in the
abdomen.



LETTER XXXII.


Castration has a strange effect: it emasculates both man, beast, and
bird, and brings them to a near resemblance of the other sex.  Thus
eunuchs have smooth, unmuscular arms, thighs, and legs; and broad hips,
and beardless chins, and squeaking voices.  Gelt stags and bucks have
hornless heads, like hinds and does.  Thus wethers have small horns, like
ewes; and oxen large bent horns, and hoarse voices when they low, like
cows: for bulls have short straight horns; and though they mutter and
grumble in a deep, tremendous tone, yet they low in a shrill high key.
Capons have small combs and gills, and look pallid about the head, like
pullets; they also walk without any parade, and hover chickens like hens.
Barrow-hogs have also small tusks like sows.

Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour puts a stop
to the growth of those parts or appendages that are looked upon as its
insignia.  But the ingenious Mr. Lisle, in his book on husbandry, carries
it much farther; for he says that the loss of those insignia alone has
sometimes a strange effect on the ability itself: he had a boar so fierce
and venereous, that, to prevent mischief, orders were given for his tusks
to be broken off.  No sooner had the beast suffered this injury than his
powers forsook him, and he neglected those females to whom before he was
passionately attached, and from whom no fences would restrain him.



LETTER XXXIII.


The natural term of a hog's life is little known, and the reason is
plain--because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep that
turbulent animal to the full extent of its time: however, my neighbour, a
man of substance, who had no occasion to study every little advantage to
a nicety, kept a half-bred bantam-sow, who was as thick as she was long,
and whose belly swept on the ground till she was advanced to her
seventeenth year, at which period she showed some tokens of age by the
decay of her teeth and the decline of her fertility.

For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters in the year
of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a litter; but, as there
were near double the number of pigs to that of teats, many died.  From
long experience in the world this female was grown very sagacious and
artful.  When she found occasion to converse with a boar, she used to
open all the intervening gates, and march, by herself, up to a distant
farm where one was kept; and when her purpose was served, would return by
the same means.  At the age of about fifteen her litters began to be
reduced to four or five, and such a litter she exhibited when in her
fatting-pen.  She proved, when fat, good bacon, juicy, and tender; the
rind, or sward, was remarkably thin.  At a moderate computation she was
allowed to have been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs: a
prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped!  She was killed
in spring, 1775.

I am, etc.



LETTER XXXIV.


SELBORNE, _May_ 9_th_, 1776.

   " . . . admorunt ubera tigres."

Dear Sir,--We have remarked in a former letter {83} how much incongruous
animals, in a lonely state, may be attached to each other from a spirit
of sociality; in this it may not be amiss to recount a different motive
which has been known to create as strange a fondness.  My friend had a
little helpless leveret brought to him, which the servants fed with milk
in a spoon, and about the same time his cat kittened and the young were
dispatched and buried.  The hare was soon lost, and supposed to be gone
the way of most foundlings, to be killed by some dog or cat.  However, in
about a fortnight, as the master was sitting in his garden in the dusk of
the evening, he observed his cat, with tail erect, trotting towards him,
and calling with little short inward notes of complacency, such as they
use towards their kittens, and something gamboling after, which proved to
be the leveret that the cat had supported with her milk, and continued to
support with great affection.

Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and predaceous
one!

Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the ferocious genus of
_Felis_, the _murium leo_, as Linnaeus calls it, should be affected with
any tenderness towards an animal which is its natural prey, is not so
easy to determine.

This strange affection probably was occasioned by that desiderium, those
tender maternal feelings, which the loss of her kittens had awakened in
her breast; and by the complacency and ease she derived to herself from
the procuring her teats to be drawn, which were too much distended with
milk, till, from habit, she became as much delighted with this foundling
as if it had been her real offspring.

This incident is no bad solution of that strange circumstance which grave
historians as well as the poets assert, of exposed children being
sometimes nurtured by female wild beasts that probably had lost their
young.  For it is not one whit more marvellous that Romulus and Remus, in
their infant state, should be nursed by a she-wolf, than that a poor
little sucking leveret should be fostered and cherished by a bloody
grimalkin.

   " . . . viridi foetam Mavortis in antro
   Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circum
   Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
   Impavidos: illam tereti cervice reflexam
   Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua."



LETTER XXXV.


SELBORNE, _May_ 20_th_, 1777.

Dear Sir,--Lands that are subject to frequent inundations are always
poor; and probably the reason may be because the worms are drowned.  The
most insignificant insects and reptiles are of much more consequence, and
have much more influence in the economy of Nature than the incurious are
aware of, and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which
renders them less an object of attention, and from their numbers and
fecundity.  Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link
in the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm.  For,
to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost
entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters of
vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them, by boring,
perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains
and the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks of leaves and
twigs into it, and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of
lumps of earth called worm-casts, which, being their excrement, is a fine
manure for grain and grass.  Worms probably provide new soil for hills
and slopes where the rain washes the earth away; and they affect slopes,
probably to avoid being flooded.  Gardeners and farmers express their
detestation of worms; the former because they render their walks
unsightly, and make them much work; and the latter because, as they
think, worms eat their green corn.  But these men would find that the
earth without worms would soon become cold, hard-bound, and void of
fermentation, and consequently sterile; and besides, in favour of worms,
it should be hinted that green corn, plants, and flowers, are not so much
injured by them as by many species of _coleoptera_ (scarabs), and
_tipuloe_ (long-legs) in their larva, or grub-state, and by unnoticed
myriads of small shell-less snails, called slugs, which silently and
imperceptibly make amazing havoc in the field and garden. {86}

These hints we think proper to throw out in order to set the inquisitive
and discerning to work.

A good monography of worms would afford much entertainment and
information at the same time, and would open a large and new field in
natural history.  Worms work most in the spring, but by no means lie
torpid in the dead months: are out every mild night in the winter, as any
person may be convinced that will take the pains to examine his grass-
plots with a candle; are hermaphrodites, and very prolific.

I am, etc.



LETTER XXXVI.


SELBORNE, _Nov._ 22_nd_, 1777.

Dear Sir,--You cannot but remember that the 26th and 27th of last March
were very hot days--so sultry that everybody complained and were restless
under those sensations to which they had not been reconciled by gradual
approaches.

This sudden summer-like heat was attended by many summer coincidences;
for on those two days the thermometer rose to 66 degrees in the shade;
many species of insects revived and came forth; some bees swarmed in this
neighbourhood; the old tortoise, near Lewes, in Sussex, awakened and came
forth out of its dormitory; and, what is most to my present purpose, many
house-swallows appeared and were very alert in many places, and
particularly at Chobham, in Surrey.

But as that short, warm period was succeeded as well as preceded by
harsh, severe weather, with frequent frosts and ice, and cutting winds,
the insects withdrew, the tortoise retired again into the ground, and the
swallows were seen no more until the 10th April, when, the rigour of the
spring abating, a softer season began to prevail.

Again, it appears by my journals for many years past that house-martins
retire, to a bird, about the beginning of October, so that a person not
very observant of such matters would conclude that they had taken their
last farewell; but then it may be seen in my diaries also that
considerable flocks have discovered themselves again in the first week of
November, and often on the fourth day of that month, only for one day,
and that not as if they were in actual migration, but playing about at
their leisure and feeding calmly, as if no enterprise of moment at all
agitated their spirits.  And this was the case in the beginning of this
very month; for on the 4th November more than twenty house-martins,
which, in appearance, had all departed about the 7th October, were seen
again for that one morning only sporting between my fields and the
Hanger, and feasting on insects which swarmed in that sheltered district.
The preceding day was wet and blustering, but the 4th was dark, and mild,
and soft, the wind at south-west, and the thermometer at 58.5 degrees, a
pitch not common at that season of the year.  Moreover, it may not be
amiss to add in this place, that whenever the thermometer is above 50
degrees, the bat comes flitting out in every autumnal and winter month.

From all these circumstances laid together, it is obvious that torpid
insects, reptiles, and quadrupeds, are awakened from their profoundest
slumbers by a little untimely warmth, and therefore that nothing so much
promotes its death-like stupor as a defect of heat.  And farther, it is
reasonable to suppose that two whole species, or at least many
individuals of those two species of British hirundines, do never leave
this island at all, but partake of the same benumbed state; for we cannot
suppose, that after a month's absence, house-martins can return from
southern regions to appear for one morning in November, or that house-
swallows should leave the districts of Asia to enjoy in March the
transient summer of a couple of days.

I am, etc.



LETTER XXXVII.


SELBORNE, _Jan._ 8_th_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--There was in this village several years ago a miserable
pauper, who from his birth was afflicted with a leprosy, as far as we are
aware of a singular kind, since it affected only the palms of his hands
and the soles of his feet.  This scaly eruption usually broke out twice
in the year, at the spring and fall; and, by peeling away, left the skin
so thin and tender that neither his hands nor feet were able to perform
their functions; so that the poor object was half his time on crutches,
incapable of employ, and languishing in a tiresome state of indolence and
inactivity.  His habit was lean, lank, and cadaverous.  In this sad
plight he dragged on a miserable existence, a burden to himself and his
parish, which was obliged to support him till he was relieved by death at
more than thirty years of age.

The good women, who love to account for every defect in children by the
doctrine of longing, said that his mother felt a violent propensity for
oysters, which she was unable to gratify; and that the black rough scurf
on his hands and feet were the shells of that fish.  We knew his parents,
neither of which were lepers; his father in particular lived to be far
advanced in years.

In all ages the leprosy has made dreadful havoc among mankind.  The
Israelites seem to have been greatly afflicted with it from the most
remote times, as appears from the peculiar and repeated injunctions given
them in the Levitical law.  Nor was the rancour of this foul disorder
much abated in the last period of their commonwealth, as may be seen in
many passages of the New Testament.

Some centuries ago this horrible distemper prevailed all Europe over: and
our forefathers were by no means exempt, as appears by the large
provision made for objects labouring under this calamity.  There was a
hospital for female lepers in the diocese of Lincoln; a noble one near
Durham; three in London and Southwark; and perhaps many more in or near
our great towns and cities.  Moreover, some crowned heads, and other
wealthy and charitable personages, bequeathed large legacies to such poor
people as languished under this hopeless infirmity.

It must, therefore, in these days be to a humane and thinking person a
matter of equal wonder and satisfaction, when he contemplates how nearly
this pest is eradicated, and observes that a leper now is a rare sight.
He will, moreover, when engaged in such a train of thought, naturally
inquire for the reason.  This happy change, perhaps, may have originated
and been continued from the much smaller quantity of salted meat and fish
now eaten in these kingdoms; from the use of linen next the skin; from
the plenty of better bread; and from the profusion of fruits, roots,
legumes, and greens, so common in every family.  Three or four centuries
ago, before there were any enclosures, sown-grasses, field-turnips, or
field-carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and
were not killed for winter use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to
shift as they could through the dead months; so that no fresh meat could
be had in winter or spring.  Hence the marvellous account of the vast
stores of salted flesh found in the larder of the eldest Spencer in the
days of Edward II., even so late in the spring as the 3rd May.  It was
from magazines like these that turbulent barons supported in idleness
their riotous swarms of retainers ready for any disorder or mischief.  But
agriculture is now arrived at such a pitch of perfection that our best
and fattest meats are killed in the winter, and no man need eat salted
flesh, unless he prefers it, that has money to buy fresh.

One cause of this distemper might be, no doubt, the quantity of wretched
fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty at all seasons as well as
in Lent, which our poor now would hardly be persuaded to touch.

The use of linen changes, shirts or shifts, in the room of sordid and
filthy woollen, long worn next the skin, is a matter of neatness
comparatively modern, but must prove a great means of preventing
cutaneous ails.  At this very time woollen, instead of linen, prevails
among the poorer Welsh, who are subject to foul eruptions.

The plenty of good wheaten bread that now is found among all ranks of
people in the south, instead of that miserable sort which used in old
days to be made of barley or beans, may contribute not a little to the
sweetening their blood and correcting their juices, for the inhabitants
of mountainous districts to this day are still liable to the itch and
other cutaneous disorders, from a wretchedness and poverty of diet.

As to the produce of a garden, every middle-aged person of observation
may perceive, within his own memory, both in town and country, how vastly
the consumption of vegetables is increased.  Green-stalls in cities now
support multitudes in a comfortable state, while gardeners get fortunes.
Every decent labourer also has his garden, which is half his support, as
well as his delight; and common farmers provide plenty of beans, peas,
and greens, for their hinds to eat with their bacon; and those few that
do not are despised for their sordid parsimony, and looked upon as
regardless of the welfare of their dependents.  Potatoes have prevailed
in this little district by means of premiums within these twenty years
only, and are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarce have
ventured to taste them in the last reign.

Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of cabbage, because they call
the month of February "sprout-cale;" but long after their days the
cultivation of gardens was little attended to.  The religious, being men
of leisure, and keeping up a constant correspondence with Italy, were the
first people among us that had gardens and fruit-trees in any perfection
within the wall of their abbeys and priories.  The barons neglected every
pursuit that did not lead to war or tend to the pleasure of the chase.

It was not till gentlemen took up the study of horticulture themselves
that the knowledge of gardening made such hasty advances.  Lord Cobham,
Lord Ila, and Mr. Waller, of Beaconsfield, were some of the first people
of rank that promoted the elegant science of ornamenting without
despising the superintendence of the kitchen quarters and fruit walls.

A remark made by the excellent Mr. Ray, in his "Tour of Europe," at once
surprises us, and corroborates what has been advanced above; for we find
him observing so late as his days, that, "The Italians use several herbs
for sallets, which are not yet, or have not been but lately, used in
England, viz., _selleri_ (celery), which is nothing else but the sweet
smallage; the young shoots whereof, with a little of the head of the root
cut off, they eat raw with oil and pepper;" and further adds: "curled
endive blanched is much used beyond seas; and for a raw sallet, seemed to
excell lettuce itself."  Now this journey was undertaken no longer ago
than in the year 1663.

I am, etc.



LETTER XXXVIII.


SELBORNE, _Feb._ 12_th_, 1778.

   "Forte puer, comitum seductus ab agmine fido,
   Dixerat, ecquis adest? et, adest, responderat echo,
   Hic stupet; utque aciem partes divisit in omnes;
   Voce, veni, clamat magna.  Vocat illa vocantem."

Dear Sir,--In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales
and hanging woods, it is no wonder that echoes should abound.  Many we
have discovered that return the cry of a pack of dogs, the notes of a
hunting-horn, a tunable ring of bells, or the melody of birds very
agreeably; but we were still at a loss for a polysyllabical articulate
echo, till a young gentleman, who had parted from his company in a summer
evening walk, and was calling after them, stumbled upon a very curious
one in a spot where it might least be expected.  At first he was much
surprised, and could not be persuaded but that he was mocked by some boy;
but repeating his trials in several languages, and finding his respondent
to be a very adroit polyglot, he then discerned the deception.

This echo in an evening, before rural noises cease, would repeat ten
syllables most articulately and distinctly, especially if quick dactyls
were chosen.  The last syllables of

   "Tityre, tu patulae recubans . . . "

were as audibly and intelligibly returned as the first; and there is no
doubt, could trial have been made, but that at midnight, when the air is
very elastic, and a dead stillness prevails, one or two syllables more
might have been obtained; but the distance rendered so late an experiment
very inconvenient.

Quick dactyls, we observed, succeeded best; for when we came to try its
powers in slow, heavy, embarrassed spondees of the same number of
syllables,

   "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens . . . "

we could perceive a return but of four or five.

All echoes have some one place to which they are returned stronger and
more distinct than to any other; and that is always the place that lies
at right angles with the object of repercussion, and is not too near, nor
too far off.  Buildings, or naked rocks, re-echo much more articulately
than hanging woods or vales; because in the latter the voice is as it
were entangled, and embarrassed in the covert, and weakened in the
rebound.

The true object of this echo, as we found by various experiments, is the
stone-built, tiled hop-kiln in Gally Lane, which measures in front forty
feet, and from the ground to the eaves twelve feet.  The true _centrum
phonicum_, or just distance, is one particular spot in the king's field,
in the path to Nore Hill, on the very brink of the steep balk above the
hollow cart-way.  In this case there is no choice of distance; but the
path, by mere contingency, happens to be the lucky, the identical spot,
because the ground rises or falls so immediately, if the speaker either
retires or advances, that his mouth would at once be above or below the
object.

We measured this polysyllabical echo with great exactness, and found the
distance to fall very short of Dr. Plot's rule for distinct articulation;
for the doctor, in his history of Oxfordshire, allows a hundred and
twenty feet for the return of each syllable distinctly; hence this echo,
which gives ten distinct syllables, ought to measure four hundred yards,
or one hundred and twenty feet to each syllable; whereas our distance is
only two hundred and fifty-eight yards, or near seventy-five feet, to
each syllable.  Thus our measure falls short of the doctor's, as five to
eight; but then it must be acknowledged that this candid philosopher was
convinced afterwards, that some latitude must be admitted of in the
distance of echoes according to time and place.

When experiments of this sort are making, it should always be remembered
that weather and the time of day have a vast influence on an echo; for a
dull, heavy, moist air deadens and clogs the sound; and hot sunshine
renders the air thin and weak, and deprives it of all its springiness,
and a ruffling wind quite defeats the whole.  In a still, clear, dewy
evening the air is most elastic; and perhaps the later the hour the more
so.

Echo has always been so amusing to the imagination that the poets have
personified her; and in their hand she has been the occasion of many a
beautiful fiction.  Nor need the gravest man be ashamed to appear taken
with such a phenomenon, since it may become the subject of philosophical
or mathematical inquiries.

One should have imagined that echoes, if not entertaining, must at least
have been harmless and inoffensive; yet, Virgil advances a strange
notion, that they are injurious to bees.  After enumerating some probable
and reasonable annoyances, such as prudent owners would wish far removed
from their bee gardens, he adds--

      . . . "aut ubi concava pulsu
   Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat imago."

This wild and fanciful assertion will hardly be admitted by the
philosophers of these days, especially as they all now seem agreed that
insects are not furnished with any organs of hearing at all.  But if it
should be urged, that though they cannot hear yet perhaps they may feel
the repercussions of sounds, I grant it is possible they may.  Yet that
these impressions are distasteful or hurtful, I deny, because bees, in
good summers, thrive well in my outlet, where the echoes are very strong;
for this village is another Anathoth, a place of responses and echoes.
Besides, it does not appear from experiment that bees are in any way
capable of being affected by sounds; for I have often tried my own with a
large speaking-trumpet held close to their hives, and with such an
exertion of voice as would have hailed a ship at the distance of a mile,
and still these insects pursued their various employments undisturbed,
and without showing the least sensibility or resentment.

Some time since its discovery this echo is become totally silent, though
the object, or hop-kiln, remains; nor is there any mystery in this
defect; for the field between is planted as a hop-garden, and the voice
of the speaker is totally absorbed and lost among the poles and entangled
foliage of the hops.  And when the poles are removed in autumn the
disappointment is the same; because a tall quick-set hedge, nurtured up
for the purpose of shelter to the hop ground, entirely interrupts the
impulse and repercussion of the voice; so that till those obstructions
are removed no more of its garrulity can be expected.

Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his park or outlet a
pleasing incident, he might build one at little or no expense.  For
whenever he had occasion for a new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the like
structure, it would be only needful to erect this building on the gentle
declivity of a hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hundred
yards distance; and perhaps success might be the easier ensured could
some canal, lake, or stream intervene.  From a seat at the _centrum
phonicum_ he and his friends might amuse themselves sometimes of an
evening with the prattle of this loquacious nymph; of whose complacency
and decent reserve more may be said than can with truth of every
individual of her sex; since she is . . .

      " . . . quae nec reticere loquenti,
   Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo."

I am, etc.

P.S.--The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the following lovely
quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting for
their causes from popular superstition:--

   "Quae bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis
   Tute tibi atque aliis, quo pacto per loca sola
   Saxa paries formas verborum ex ordine reddant,
   Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos
   Quaerimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus.
   Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces
   Unam quom jaceres: ita colles collibus ipsis
   Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre.
   Haec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere
   Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur;
   Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti
   Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi,
   Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas,
   Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum:
   Et genus agricolum late sentiscere, quom Pan
   Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans,
   Unco saepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis,
   Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam."

   LUCRETIUS, Lib. iv. l. 576.



LETTER XXXIX.


SELBORNE, _May_ 13_th_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds the
swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every year the
same number of pairs invariably; at least the result of my inquiry has
been exactly the same for a long time past.  The swallows and martins are
so numerous, and so widely distributed over the village, that it is
hardly possible to recount them; while the swifts, though they do not
build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and rendezvous
round it, that they are easily enumerated.  The number that I constantly
find are eight pairs; about half of which reside in the church, and the
rest build in some of the lowest and meanest thatched cottages.  Now as
these eight pairs, allowance being made for accidents, breed yearly eight
pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase; and what determines
every spring which pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy their ancient
haunts?

Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have always
supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange ἀντιστοργὴ,
which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind to the most
passionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of birds over
the face of the earth.  Without this provision one favourite district
would be crowded with inhabitants, while others would be destitute and
forsaken.  But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous superiority,
and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes; and the rivalry of the
males in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one on the other.
Whether the swallows and house-martins return in the same exact number
annually is not easy to say, for reasons given above; but it is apparent,
as I have remarked before in my Monographies, that the numbers returning
bear no manner of proportion to the numbers retiring.



LETTER XL.


SELBORNE, _June_ 2_nd_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--The standing objection to botany has always been, that it is a
pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without improving
the mind or advancing any real knowledge; and, where the science is
carried no farther than a mere systematic classification, the charge is
but too true.  But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this
aspersion should be by no means content with a list of names; he should
study plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegetation,
should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, should
promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the
husbandman, on the phytologist.  Not that system is by any means to be
thrown aside; without system the field of Nature would be a pathless
wilderness; but system should be subservient to, not the main object of,
pursuit.

Vegetation is highly worthy of our attention; and in itself is of the
utmost consequence to mankind, and productive of many of the greatest
comforts and elegances of life.  To plants we owe timber, bread, beer,
honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, etc., what not only strengthens our
hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but what secures us from
inclemencies of weather and adorns our persons.  Man, in his true state
of nature, seems to be subsisted by spontaneous vegetation; in middle
climes, where grasses prevail, he mixes some animal food with the produce
of the field and garden; and it is towards the polar extremes only that,
like his kindred bears and wolves, he gorges himself with flesh alone,
and is driven to what hunger has never been known to compel the very
beasts, to prey on his own species.

The productions of vegetation have had a vast influence on the commerce
of nations, and have been the great promoters of navigation, as may be
seen in the articles of sugar, tea, tobacco, opium, ginsing, betel,
paper, etc.  As every climate has its peculiar produce our natural wants
bring on a mutual intercourse; so that by means of trade each distinct
part is supplied with the growth of every latitude.  But, without the
knowledge of plants and their culture, we must have been content with our
hips and haws, without enjoying the delicate fruits of India and the
salutiferous drugs of Peru.

Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various species of
each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to make himself
acquainted with those that are useful.  You shall see a man readily
ascertain every herb of the field, yet hardly know wheat from barley, or
at least one sort of wheat or barley from another.

But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be most neglected;
neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distinguish the annual from
the perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the succulent and nutritive
from the dry and juiceless.

The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a northerly and
grazing kingdom.  The botanist that could improve the sward of the
district where he lived would be a useful member of society: to raise a
thick turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of systematic
knowledge; and he would be the best commonwealth's man that could
occasion the growth of "two blades of grass where one alone was seen
before."

I am, etc.



LETTER XLI.


SELBORNE, _July_ 3_rd_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--In a district so diversified with such a variety of hill and
dale, aspects, and soils, it is no wonder that great choice of plants
should be found.  Chalks, clays, sands, sheep-walks and downs, bogs,
heaths, woodlands, and champaign fields, cannot but furnish an ample
Flora.  The deep rocky lanes abound with _filices_, and the pastures and
moist woods with _fungi_.  If in any branch of botany we may seem to be
wanting, it must be in the large aquatic plants, which are not to be
expected on a spot far removed from rivers, and lying up amidst the hill
country at the spring heads.  To enumerate all the plants that have been
discovered within our limits would be a needless work; but a short list
of the more rare, and the spots where they are to be found, may be
neither unacceptable nor unentertaining:--

_Helleborus foetidus_, stinking hellebore, bear's foot, or
setterworth,--all over the High Wood and Coneycroft Hanger: this
continues a great branching-plant the winter through, blossoming about
January, and is very ornamental in shady walks and shrubberies.  The good
women give the leaves powdered to children troubled with worms; but it is
a violent remedy, and ought to be administered with caution.

_Helleborus viridis_, green hellebore,--in the deep stony lane on the
left hand just before the turning to Norton Farm, and at the top of
Middle Dorton under the hedge: this plant dies down to the ground early
in autumn, and springs again about February, flowering almost as soon as
it appears above the ground.

_Vaccinium oxycoccos_, creeping bilberries, or cranberries,--in the bogs
of Bin's Pond.

_Vaccinium myrtillus_, whortle, or bleaberries--on the dry hillocks of
Wolmer Forest.

_Drosera rotundifolia_, round-leaved sundew--in the bogs of Bin's Pond.

_Drosera longifolia_, long-leaved sundew--in the bogs of Bin's Pond.

_Comarum palustre_, purple comarum, or marsh cinquefoil--in the bogs of
Bin's Pond.

_Hypericum androsoemum_, Tutsan, St. John's Wort--in the stony, hollow
lanes.

_Vinca minor_, less periwinkle--in Selborne Hanger and Shrub Wood.

_Monotropa hypopithys_, yellow monotropa, or birds' nest--in Selborne
Hanger under the shady beeches, to whose roots it seems to be
parasitical, at the north-west end of the Hanger.

_Chlora perfoliata_, _Blackstonia perfoliata_, _Hudsoni_, perfoliated
yellow-wort--on the banks in the King's Field.

_Paris quadrifolia_, herb of Paris, true-love, or oneberry--in the Church
Litten Coppice.

_Chrysosplenium oppositifolium_, opposite golden saxifrage--in the dark
and rocky hollow lanes.

_Gentiana amarella_, autumnal gentian or fellwort--on the Zigzag and
Hanger.

_Lathraea squamaria_, tooth-wort--in the Church Litten Coppice under some
hazels near the foot-bridge, in Trimming's garden hedge, and on the dry
wall opposite Grange Yard.

_Dipsacus pilosus_, small teasel--in the Short and Long Lith.

_Lathyrus sylvestris_, narrow-leaved, or wild lathyrus--in the bushes at
the foot of the Short Lith, near the path.

_Ophrys spiralis_, ladies' traces--in the Long Lith, and towards the
south corner of the common.

_Ophrys nidus avis_, birds' nest ophrys--in the Long Lith under the shady
beeches among the dead leaves; in Great Dorton among the bushes, and on
the Hanger plentifully.

_Serapias latifolia_, helleborine--in the High Wood under the shady
beeches.

_Daphne laureola_, spurge laurel--in Selborne Hanger and the High Wood.

_Daphne mezereum_, the mezereon--in Selborne Hanger among the shrubs, at
the south-east end above the cottages.

_Lycoperdon tuber_, truffles--in the Hanger and High Wood.

_Sambucus ebulus_, dwarf elder, walwort, or danewort--among the rubbish
and ruined foundations of the Priory.

Of all the propensities of plants, none seem more strange than their
different periods of blossoming.  Some produce their flowers in the
winter, or very first dawnings of spring, many when the spring is
established, some at midsummer, and some not till autumn.  When we see
the _helleborus foetidus_ and _helleborus niger_ blowing at Christmas,
the _helleborus hyemalis_ in January, and the _helleborus viridis_ as
soon as ever it emerges out of the ground, we do not wonder, because they
are kindred plants that we expect should keep pace the one with the
other; but other congenerous vegetables differ so widely in their time of
flowering, that we cannot but admire.  I shall only instance at present
in the _crocus sativus_, the vernal and the autumnal crocus, which have
such an affinity, that the best botanists only make them varieties of the
same genus, of which there is only one species, not being able to discern
any difference in the corolla, or in the internal structure.  Yet the
vernal crocus expands its flowers by the beginning of March at farthest,
and often in very rigorous weather, and cannot be retarded but by some
violence offered; while the autumnal (the saffron) defies the influence
of the spring and summer, and will not blow till most plants begin to
fade and run to seed.  This circumstance is one of the wonders of the
creation, little noticed because a common occurrence, yet ought not to be
overlooked on account of its being familiar, since it would be as
difficult to be explained as the most stupendous phenomenon in nature.

   "Say, what impels, amidst surrounding snow
   Congeal'd, the crocus, flamy bud to glow?
   Say, what retards, amidst the summer's blaze,
   Th' autumnal bulb, till pale, declining days?
   The GOD OF SEASONS; whose pervading power
   Controls the sun, or sheds the fleecy shower:
   He bids each flower His quickening word obey,
   Or to each lingering bloom enjoins delay."



LETTER XLII.


   "Omnibus animalibus reliquis certus et uniusmodi, et in suo cuique
   genere incessus est: aves solae vario meatu feruntur, et in terra, et
   in aere."

SELBORNE, _Aug._ 7_th_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--A good ornithologist should be able to distinguish birds by
their air as well as by their colours and shape, on the ground as well as
on the wing, and in the bush as well as in the hand.  For, though it must
not be said that every species of birds has a manner peculiar to itself,
yet there is somewhat in most _genera_ at least, that at first sight
discriminates them, and enables a judicious observer to pronounce upon
them with some certainty.  Put a bird in motion

   "--Et vera incessu patuit--"

Thus kites and buzzards sail round in circles with wings expanded and
motionless; and it is from their gliding manner that the former are still
called in the north of England gleads, from the Saxon verb glidan, to
glide.  The kestrel, or wind-hover, has a peculiar mode of hanging in the
air in one place, his wings all the while being briskly agitated.  Hen-
harriers fly low over heaths or fields of corn, and beat the ground
regularly like a pointer or setting-dog.  Owls move in a buoyant manner,
as if lighter than the air; they seem to want ballast.  There is a
peculiarity belonging to ravens that must draw the attention even of the
most incurious; they spend all their leisure time in striking and cuffing
each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish, and, when they move
from one place to another, frequently turn on their backs with a loud
croak, and seem to be falling to the ground.  When this odd gesture
betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and thus lose
the centre of gravity.  Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a frolicsome
manner; crows and daws swagger in their walk; wood-peckers fly _volatu
undoso_, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are
always rising or falling in curves.  All of this genus use their tails,
which incline downward, as a support while they run up trees.  Parrots,
like all other hooked-clawed birds, walk awkwardly, and make use of their
bill as a third foot, climbing and descending with ridiculous caution.
All the _gallinoe_ parade and walk gracefully, and run nimbly, but fly
with difficulty, with an impetuous whirring, and in a straight line.
Magpies and jays flutter with powerless wings, and make no despatch;
herons seem encumbered with too much sail for their light bodies, but
these vast hollow wings are necessary in carrying burdens, such as large
fishes and the like; pigeons, and particularly the sort called smiters,
have a way of clashing their wings the one against the other over their
backs with a loud snap; another variety, called tumblers, turn themselves
over in the air.  Some birds have movements peculiar to the season of
love.  Thus ringdoves, though strong and rapid at other times, yet in the
spring hang about on the wing in a toying and playful manner; thus the
cock-snipe while breeding, forgetting his former flight, fans the air
like the wind-hover; and the green-finch in particular, exhibits such
languishing and faltering gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying
bird; the king-fisher darts along like an arrow; fern-owls, or
goat-suckers, glance in the dusk over the tops of trees like a meteor;
starlings, as it were, swim along, while missel-thrushes use a wild and
desultory flight; swallows sweep over the surface of the ground and
water, and distinguish themselves by rapid turns and quick evolutions;
swifts dash round in circles; and the bank-martin moves with frequent
vacillations like a butterfly.  Most of the small birds fly by jerks,
rising and falling as they advance.  Most small birds hop; but wagtails
and larks walk moving their legs alternately.  Skylarks rise and fall
perpendicularly as they sing; woodlarks hang poised in the air; and
titlarks rise and fall in large curves, singing in their descent.  The
white-throat uses odd jerks and gesticulations over the tops of hedges
and bushes.  All the duck-kind waddle; divers and auks walk as if
fettered, and stand erect on their tails: these are the _compedes_ of
Linnaeus.  Geese and cranes, and most wild fowls, move in figured
flights, often changing their position.  The secondary _remiges_ of
Tringae, wild-ducks, and some others, are very long, and give their
wings, when in motion, a hooked appearance.  Dabchicks, moorhens, and
coots, fly erect, with their legs hanging down, and hardly make any
despatch.  The reason is plain, their wings are placed too forward out of
the true centre of gravity, as the legs of auks and divers are situated
too backward.



LETTER XLIII.


SELBORNE, _Sept._ 9_th_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--From the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough
to their notes and language, of which I shall say something.  Not that
I would pretend to understand their language like the vizier of the
_Spectator_, who, by recital of a conversation which passed between two
owls, reclaimed a sultan, before delighting in conquest and
devastation; but I would be thought only to mean that many of the
winged tribes have various sounds and voices adapted to express their
various passions, wants and feelings; such as anger, fear, love,
hatred, hunger and the like.  All species are not equally eloquent;
some are copious and fluent as it were in their utterance while others
are confined to a few important sounds: no bird, like the fish kind, is
quite mute, though some are rather silent.  The language of birds is
very ancient and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical;
little is said, but much is meant and understood.

The notes of the eagle-kind are shrill and piercing and about the season
of nidification much diversified, as I have been often assured by a
curious observer of Nature, who long resided at Gibraltar, where eagles
abound.  The notes of our hawks much resemble those of the king of birds.
Owls have very expressive notes; they hoot in a fine vocal sound, much
resembling the _vox humana_, and reducible by a pitch-pipe to a musical
key.  This note seems to express complacency and rivalry among the males;
they use also a quick call and a horrible scream: and can snore and hiss
when they mean to menace.  Ravens, besides their loud croak, can exert a
deep and solemn note that makes the woods to echo; the amorous sound of a
crow is strange and ridiculous; rooks, in the breeding season, attempt
sometimes in the gaiety of their hearts to sing, but with no great
success; the parrot-kind have many modulations of voice, as appears by
their aptitude to learn human sounds; doves coo in an amorous and
mournful manner, and are emblems of despairing lovers; the woodpecker
sets up a sort of loud and hearty laugh; the fern-owl, or goat-sucker,
from the dusk till daybreak, serenades his mate with the clattering of
castanets.  All the tuneful _passeres_ express their complacency by sweet
modulations and a variety of melody.  The swallow, as has been observed
in a former letter, by a shrill alarm bespeaks the attention of the other
hirundines, and bids them be aware the hawk is at hand.  Aquatic and
gregarious birds, especially the nocturnal, that shift their quarters in
the dark, are very noisy and loquacious; as cranes, wild-geese,
wild-ducks, and the like; their perpetual clamour prevents them from
dispersing and losing their companions.

In so extensive a subject, sketches and outlines are as much as can be
expected; for it would be endless to instance in all the infinite variety
of the feathered nation.  We shall therefore confine the remainder of
this letter to the few domestic fowls of our yards, which are most known,
and therefore best understood.  And first the peacock, with his gorgeous
train, demands our attention; but, like most of the gaudy birds, his
notes are grating and shocking to the ear: the yelling of cats, and the
braying of an ass, are not more disgustful.  The voice of the goose is
trumpet-like and clanking; and once saved the Capitol at Rome, as grave
historians assert; the hiss, also, of the gander, is formidable and full
of menace, and "protective of his young."  Among ducks the sexual
distinction of voice is remarkable; for, while the quack of the female is
loud and sonorous, the voice of the drake is inward and harsh, and
feeble, and scarce discernible.  The cock turkey struts and gobbles to
his mistress in a most uncouth manner; he hath also a pert and petulant
note when he attacks his adversary.  When a hen turkey leads forth her
young brood she keeps a watchful eye; and if a bird of prey appear,
though ever so high in the air, the careful mother announces the enemy
with a little inward moan, and watches him with a steady and attentive
look; but if he approach, her note becomes earnest and alarming, and her
outcries are redoubled.

No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such a variety of expression
and so copious a language as common poultry.  Take a chicken of four or
five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it
will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of complacency;
but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and
expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger.  When a pullet is
ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note.  Of
all the occurrences of their life, that of laying seems to be the most
important; for no sooner has a hen disburdened herself, than she rushes
forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which the cock and the rest of his
mistresses immediately adopt.  The tumult is not confined to the family
concerned, but catches from yard to yard, and spreads to every homestead
within hearing, till at last the whole village is in an uproar.  As soon
as a hen becomes a mother her new relation demands a new language; she
then runs clucking and screaming about, and seems agitated as if
possessed.  The father of the flock has also a considerable vocabulary;
if he finds food, he calls a favourite concubine to partake; and if a
bird of prey passes over, with a warning voice he bids his family beware.
The gallant chanticleer has at command his amorous phrases and his terms
of defiance.  But the sound by which he is best known is his crowing: by
this he has been distinguished in all ages as the countryman's clock or
larum, as the watchman that proclaims the divisions of the night.  Thus
the poet elegantly styles him:

   " . . . the crested cock, whose clarion sounds
   The silent hours."

A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost most of his chickens by a
sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between a faggot pile and the end of
his house to the place where the coops stood.  The owner, inwardly vexed
to see his flock thus diminished, hung a setting-net adroitly between the
pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed and was entangled.
Resentment suggested the law of retaliation; he therefore clipped the
hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his bill, threw
him down among the brood-hens.  Imagination cannot paint the scene that
ensued; the expressions that fear, rage, and revenge inspired, were new,
or at least such as had been unnoticed before: the exasperated matrons
upbraided, they execrated, they insulted, they triumphed.  In a word,
they never desisted from buffeting their adversary till they had torn him
in a hundred pieces.



LETTER XLIV.


   " . . . Monstrent
   * * * * *
   Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
   Hyberni; vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet."

SELBORNE.

Gentlemen who have outlets might contrive to make ornament subservient to
utility: a pleasing eye-trap might also contribute to promote science: an
obelisk in a garden or park might be both an embellishment and an
heliotrope.

Any person that is curious, and enjoys the advantage of a good horizon,
might, with little trouble, make two heliotropes; the one for the winter,
the other for the summer solstice: and the two erections might be
constructed with very little expense; for two pieces of timber
frame-work, about ten or twelve feet high, and four feet broad at the
base, and close lined with plank, would answer the purpose.

The erection for the former should, if possible, be placed within sight
of some window in the common sitting-parlour; because men, at that dead
season of the year, are usually within doors at the close of the day;
while that for the latter might be fixed for any given spot in the garden
or outlet; whence the owner might contemplate, in a fine summer's
evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to the northward at the
season of the longest days.  Now nothing would be necessary but to place
these two objects with so much exactness, that the westerly limb of the
sun, at setting, might but just clear the winter heliotrope to the west
of it on the shortest day; and that the whole disc of the sun, at the
longest day, might exactly at setting also clear the summer heliotrope to
the north of it.

By this simple expedient it would soon appear that there is no such
thing, strictly speaking, as a solstice; for, from the shortest day, the
owner would, every clear evening, see the disc advancing at its setting,
to the westward of the object; and, from the longest day, observe the sun
retiring backwards every evening at its setting, towards the object
westward, till, in a few nights, it would set quite behind it, and so by
degrees, to the west of it; for when the sun comes near the summer
solstice, the whole disc of it would at first set behind the object;
after a time the northern limb would first appear, and so every night
gradually more, till at length the whole diameter would set northward of
it for about three nights; but on the middle night of the three, sensibly
more remote than the former or following.  When beginning its recess from
the summer tropic, it would continue more and more to be hidden every
night, till at length it would descend quite behind the object again; and
so nightly more and more to the westward.



LETTER XLV.


   " . . . Mugire videbis
   Sub bedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos."

SELBORNE.

When I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and implicit assent,
accounts in "Baker's Chronicle" of walking hills and travelling
mountains.  John Philips, in his "Cyder," alludes to the credit that was
given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein of humour peculiar
to the author of the "Splendid Shilling."

   "I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice
   Of Marcely Hill; the apple nowhere finds
   A kinder mould; yet 'tis unsafe to trust
   Deceitful ground; who knows but that once more
   This mount may journey, and his present site
   Forsaken, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer
   Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange
   For law debates?"

But, when I came to consider better, I began to suspect that though our
hills may never have journeyed far, yet that the ends of many of them
have slipped and fallen away at distant periods, leaving the cliffs bare
and abrupt.  This seems to have been the case with Nore and Whetham
Hills; and especially with the ridge between Harteley Park and Ward-le-
Ham, where the ground has slid into vast swellings and furrows; and lies
still in such romantic confusion as cannot be accounted for from any
other cause.  A strange event, that happened not long since, justifies
our suspicions; which, though it befell not within the limits of this
parish, yet as it was within the hundred of Selborne, and as the
circumstances were singular, may fairly claim a place in a work of this
nature.

The months of January and February, in the year 1774, were remarkable for
great melting snows and vast gluts of rain; so that by the end of the
latter month the land-springs, or lavants, began to prevail, and to be
near as high as in the memorable winter of 1764.  The beginning of March
also went on in the same tenor; when, in the night between the 8th and
9th of that month, a considerable part of the great woody hanger at
Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a high freestone
cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of a chalk-pit.  It
appears that this huge fragment, being perhaps sapped and undermined by
waters, foundered, and was ingulfed, going down in a perpendicular
direction; for a gate which stood in the field, on the top of the hill,
after sinking with its post for thirty or forty feet, remained in so true
and upright a position as to open and shut with great exactness, just as
in its first situation.  Several oaks also are still standing, and in a
state of vegetation, after taking the same desperate leap.  That great
part of this prodigious mass was absorbed in some gulf below, is plain
also from the inclining ground at the bottom of the hill, which is free
and unincumbered; but would have been buried in heaps of rubbish, had the
fragment parted and fallen forward.  About a hundred yards from the foot
of this hanging coppice stood a cottage by the side of a lane; and two
hundred yards lower, on the other side of the lane, was a farm-house, in
which lived a labourer and his family; and, just by, a stout new barn.
The cottage was inhabited by an old woman and her son, and his wife.
These people in the evening, which was very dark and tempestuous,
observed that the brick floors of their kitchens began to heave and part;
and that the walls seemed to open, and the roofs to crack; but they all
agree that no tremor of the ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever
felt; only that the wind continued to make a most tremendous roaring in
the woods and hangers.  The miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to
bed, remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every
moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered edifices.  When
daylight came they were at leisure to contemplate the devastations of the
night: they then found that a deep rift, or chasm, had opened under their
houses, and torn them, as it were, in two; and that one end of the barn
had suffered in a similar manner: that a pond near the cottage had
undergone a strange reverse, becoming deep at the shallow end, and so
vice versa; that many large oaks were removed out of their perpendicular,
some thrown down, and some fallen into the heads of neighbouring trees;
and that a gate was thrust forward, with its edge, full six feet, so as
to require a new track to be made to it.  From the foot of the cliff the
general course of the ground, which is pasture, inclines in a moderate
descent for half a mile, and is interspersed with some hillocks, which
were rifted, in every direction, as well towards the great woody hanger,
as from it.  In the first pasture the deep clefts began; and running
across the lane, and under the buildings, made such vast shelves that the
road was impassable for some time: and so over to an arable field on the
other side, which was strangely torn and disordered.  The second pasture-
field, being more soft and springy, was protruded forward without many
fissures in the turf, which was raised in long ridges resembling graves,
lying at right angles to the motion.  At the bottom of this enclosure the
soil and turf rose many feet against the bodies of some oaks that
obstructed their farther course, and terminated this awful commotion.

The perpendicular height of the precipice in general is twenty-three
yards; the length of the lapse or slip as seen from the fields below, one
hundred and eighty-one; and a partial fall, concealed in the coppice,
extends seventy yards more; so that the total length of this fragment
that fell was two hundred and fifty-one yards.  About fifty acres of land
suffered from this violent convulsion; two houses were entirely
destroyed; one end of a new barn was left in ruins, the walls being
cracked through the very stones that composed them; a hanging coppice was
changed to a naked rock; and some grass grounds and an arable field so
broken and rifted by the chasms as to be rendered for a time neither fit
for the plough nor safe for pasturage, till considerable labour and
expense had been bestowed in levelling the surface and filling in the
gaping fissures.



LETTER XLVI.


   " . . . resonant arbusta . . . "

SELBORNE.

There is a steep abrupt pasture field and interspersed with furze close
to the back of this village, well known by the name of Short Lithe,
consisting of a rocky dry soil, and inclining to the afternoon sun.  This
spot abounds with the _gryllus campestris_, or field-cricket; which,
though frequent in these parts, is by no means a common insect in many
other counties.

As their cheerful summer cry cannot but draw the attention of a
naturalist, I have often gone down to examine the economy of these
_grylli_, and study their mode of life; but they are so shy and cautious
that it is no easy matter to get a sight of them; for feeling a person's
footsteps as he advances, they stop short in the midst of their song, and
retire backward nimbly into their burrows, where they lurk till all
suspicion of danger is over.

At first we attempted to dig them out with a spade, but without any great
success; for either we could not get to the bottom of the hole, which
often terminated under a great stone; or else in breaking up the ground
we inadvertently squeezed the poor insect to death.  Out of one so
bruised we took a multitude of eggs, which were long and narrow, of a
yellow colour, and covered with a very tough skin.  By this accident we
learned to distinguish the male from the female; the former of which is
shining black, with a golden stripe across his shoulders; the latter is
more dusky, more capacious about the abdomen, and carries a long sword-
shaped weapon at her tail, which probably is the instrument with which
she deposits her eggs in crannies and safe receptacles.

Where violent methods will not avail, more gentle means will often
succeed, and so it proved in the present case; for, though a spade be too
boisterous and rough an implement, a pliant stalk of grass, gently
insinuated into the caverns, will probe their windings to the bottom, and
quickly bring out the inhabitant; and thus the humane inquirer may
gratify his curiosity without injuring the object of it.  It is
remarkable, that though these insects are furnished with long legs
behind, and brawny thighs for leaping, like grasshoppers; yet when driven
from their holes they show no activity, but crawl along in a shiftless
manner, so as easily to be taken; and again, though provided with a
curious apparatus of wings, yet they never exert them when there seems to
be the greatest occasion.  The males only make that shrilling noise,
perhaps, out of rivalry and emulation, as is the case with many animals
which exert some sprightly note during their breeding-time.  It is raised
by a brisk friction of one wing against the other.  They are solitary
beings, living singly male and female, each as it may happen; but there
must be a time when the sexes have some intercourse, and then the wings
may be useful perhaps during the hours of night.  When the males meet
they will fight fiercely, as I found by some which I put into the
crevices of a dry stone wall, where I should have been glad to have made
them settle.  For though they seemed distressed by being taken out of
their knowledge, yet the first that got possession of the chinks would
seize on any other that were intruded upon them with a vast row of
serrated fangs.  With their strong jaws, toothed like the shears of a
lobster's claws, they perforate and round their curious regular cells,
having no fore-claws to dig, like the mole-cricket.  When taken in hand I
could not but wonder that they never offered to defend themselves, though
armed with such formidable weapons.  Of such herbs as grow before the
mouths of their burrows they eat indiscriminately, and on a little
platform which they make just by, they drop their dung; and never, in the
day time, seem to stir more than two or three inches from home.  Sitting
in the entrance of their caverns they chirp all night as well as day from
the middle of the month of May to the middle of July; and in hot weather,
when they are most vigorous, they make the hills echo, and in the stiller
hours of darkness may be heard to a considerable distance.  In the
beginning of the season their notes are more faint and inward; but become
louder as the summer advances, and so die away again by degrees.

Sounds do not always give us pleasure according to their sweetness and
melody, nor do harsh sounds always displease.  We are more apt to be
captivated or disgusted with the associations which they promote than
with the notes themselves.  Thus the shrilling of the field-cricket,
though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously delights some hearers,
filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of everything that is
rural, verdurous, and joyous.

About the 10th March the crickets appear at the mouths of their cells,
which they then open and bore, and shape very elegantly.  All that ever I
have seen at that season were in their pupa state, and had only the
rudiments of wings, lying under a skin or coat, which must be cast before
the insect can arrive at its perfect state, from whence I should suppose
that the old ones of last year do not always survive the winter.  In
August their holes begin to be obliterated, and the insects are seen no
more till spring.

Not many summers ago I endeavoured to transplant a colony to the terrace
in my garden, by boring deep holes in the sloping turf.  The new
inhabitants stayed some time, and fed and sung, but wandered away by
degrees, and were heard at a farther distance every morning, so that it
appears that on this emergency they made use of their wings in attempting
to return to the spot from which they were taken.

One of these crickets, when confined in a paper cage and set in the sun,
and supplied with plants moistened with water, will feed and thrive, and
become so merry and loud as to be irksome in the same room where a person
is sitting; if the plants are not wetted it will die.



LETTER XLVII.


   "Far from all resort of mirth
   Save the cricket on the hearth."

   MILTON'S _Il Penseroso_.

SELBORNE.

Dear Sir,--While many other insects must be sought after in fields, and
woods, and waters, the _gryllus domesticus_, or house-cricket, resides
altogether within our dwellings, intruding itself upon our notice whether
we will or no.  This species delights in new-built houses, being, like
the spider, pleased with the moisture of the walls; and besides, the
softness of the mortar enables them to burrow and mine between the joints
of the bricks or stones, and to open communications from one room to
another.  They are particularly fond of kitchens and bakers' ovens, on
account of their perpetual warmth.

Tender insects that live abroad either enjoy only the short period of one
summer, or else doze away the cold uncomfortable months in profound
slumbers; but these, residing as it were in a torrid zone, are always
alert and merry--a good Christmas fire is to them like the heats of the
dog-days.  Though they are frequently heard by day, yet is their natural
time of motion only in the night.  As soon as it grows dusk, the chirping
increases, and they come running forth, and are from the size of a flea
to that of their full stature.  As one should suppose, from the burning
atmosphere which they inhabit, they are a thrifty race, and show a great
propensity for liquids, being found frequently drowned in pans of water,
milk, broth, or the like.  Whatever is moist they affect; and therefore
often gnaw holes in wet woollen stockings and aprons that are hung to the
fire.  They are the housewife's barometer, foretelling her when it will
rain, and are prognostic sometimes she thinks of ill or good luck, of the
death of a near relation, or the approach of an absent lover.  By being
the constant companions of her solitary hours they naturally become the
objects of her superstition.  These crickets are not only very thrifty,
but very voracious; for they will eat the scummings of pots, and yeast,
salt, and crumbs of bread, and any kitchen offal or sweepings.  In the
summer we have observed them to fly when it became dusk out of the
windows and over the neighbouring roofs.  This feat of activity accounts
for the sudden manner in which they often leave their haunts, as it does
for the method by which they come to houses where they were not known
before.  It is remarkable that many sorts of insects seem never to use
their wings but when they have a mind to shift their quarters and settle
new colonies.  When in the air they move "_volatu undoso_," in waves or
curves, like wood-peckers, opening and shutting their wings at every
stroke, and so are always rising or sinking.

When they increase to a great degree, as they did once in the house where
I am now writing, they become noisome pests, flying into the candles, and
dashing into people's faces; but may be blasted and destroyed by
gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies.  In families at
such times they are like Pharaoh's plague of frogs--"in their
bedchambers, and upon their beds, and in their ovens, and in their
kneading troughs."  Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a brisk
attrition of their wings.  Cats catch hearth-crickets, and, playing with
them as they do with mice, devour them.  Crickets may be destroyed, like
wasps, by phials half filled with beer, or any liquid, and set in their
haunts; for being always eager to drink, they will crowd in till the
bottles are full.



LETTER XLVIII.


SELBORNE.

How diversified are the modes of life, not only of incongruous, but even
of congenerous animals; and yet their specific distinctions are not more
various than their propensities.  Thus, while the field-cricket delights
in sunny dry banks, and the house-cricket rejoices amidst the glowing
heat of the kitchen hearth or oven, the _gryllus gryllo talpa_ (the mole-
cricket), haunts moist meadows, and frequents the sides of ponds and
banks of streams, performing all its functions in a swampy wet soil.  With
a pair of fore-feet, curiously adapted to the purpose, it burrows and
works under ground like the mole, raising a ridge as it proceeds, but
seldom throwing up hillocks.

As mole-crickets often infest gardens by the sides of canals, they are
unwelcome guests to the gardener, raising up ridges in their
subterraneous progress, and rendering the walks unsightly.  If they take
to the kitchen quarters they occasion great damage among the plants and
roots, by destroying whole beds of cabbages, young legumes, and flowers.
When dug out they seem very slow and helpless, and make no use of their
wings by day, but at night they come abroad, and make long excursions, as
I have been convinced by finding stragglers in a morning, in improbable
places.  In fine weather, about the middle of April, and just at the
close of day, they begin to solace themselves with a low, dull, jarring
note, continued for a long time without interruption, and not unlike the
chattering of the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, but more inward.

About the beginning of May they lay their eggs, as I was once an
eye-witness; for a gardener at a house where I was on a visit, happening
to be mowing, on the 6th of that month, by the side of a canal, his
scythe struck too deep, pared off a large piece of turf, and laid open to
view a curious scene of domestic economy:--

   " . . . Ingentem lato dedit ore fenestram:
   Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt:
   Apparent--penetralia."

There were many caverns and winding passages leading to a kind of
chamber, neatly smoothed and rounded, and about the size of a moderate
snuff-box.  Within this secret nursery were deposited near a hundred eggs
of a dirty yellow colour, and enveloped in a tough skin, but too lately
excluded to contain any rudiments of young, being full of a viscous
substance.  The eggs lay but shallow, and within the influence of the
sun, just under a little heap of fresh-mowed mould, like that which is
raised by ants.

When mole-crickets fly they move "_cursu undoso_," rising and falling in
curves, like the other species mentioned before.  In different parts of
this kingdom people call them fen-crickets, churr-worms, and eve-churrs,
all very apposite names.

Anatomists, who have examined the intestines of these insects, astonish
me with their accounts; for they say that, from the structure, position,
and number of their stomachs, or maws, there seems to be good reason to
suppose that this and the two former species ruminate or chew the cud
like many quadrupeds!



LETTER XLIX.


SELBORNE, _May_ 7_th_, 1779.

It is now more than forty years that I have paid some attention to the
ornithology of this district, without being able to exhaust the subject:
new occurrences still arise as long as any inquiries are kept alive.

In the last week of last month five of those most rare birds, too
uncommon to have obtained an English name, but known to naturalists by
the terms of _himantopus_, or _loripes_, and _charadrius himantopus_,
were shot upon the verge of Frinsham pond, a large lake belonging to the
Bishop of Winchester, and lying between Wolmer forest and the town of
Farnham, in the county of Surrey.  The pond-keeper says there were three
brace in the flock: but that, after he had satisfied his curiosity, he
suffered the sixth to remain unmolested.  One of these specimens I
procured, and found the length of the legs to be so extraordinary, that,
at first sight, one might have supposed the shanks had been fastened on
to impose on the credulity of the beholder: they were legs in
_caricatura_, and had we seen such proportions on a Chinese or Japan
screen, we should have made large allowances for the fancy of the
draughtsman.  These birds are of the plover family, and might with
propriety be called the stilt plovers.  Brisson, under that idea, gives
them the apposite name of _l'echasse_.  My specimen, when drawn and
stuffed with pepper, weighed only four ounces and a quarter, though the
naked part of the thigh measured three inches and a half, and the legs
four inches and a half.  Hence we may safely assert that these birds
exhibit, weight for inches, incomparably the greatest length of legs of
any known bird.  The flamingo, for instance, is one of the most
long-legged birds, and yet it bears no manner of proportion to the
_himantopus_; for a cock flamingo weighs, at an average, about four
pounds avoirdupois, and his legs and thighs measure usually about twenty
inches.  But four pounds are fifteen times and a fraction more than four
ounces and one quarter; and if four ounces and a quarter have eight
inches of legs, four pounds must have one hundred and twenty inches and a
fraction of legs--viz., somewhat more than ten feet; such a monstrous
proportion as the world never saw!  If you should try the experiment in
still larger birds, the disparity would still increase.  It must be
matter of great curiosity to see the stilt plover move--to observe how it
can wield such a length of lever with such feeble muscles as the thighs
seem to be furnished with.  At best one should expect it to be but a bad
walker: but what adds to the wonder is, that it has no back toe.  Now
without that steady prop to support its steps it must be liable, in
speculation, to perpetual vacillations, and seldom able to preserve the
true centre of gravity.

The old name of _himantopus_ is taken from Pliny, and, by an awkward
metaphor, implies that the legs are as slender and pliant as if cut out
of a thong of leather.  Neither Willughby nor Ray, in all their curious
researches, either at home or abroad, ever saw this bird.  Mr. Pennant
never met with it in all Great Britain, but observed it often in the
cabinets of the curious at Paris.  Hasselquist says that it migrates to
Egypt in the autumn, and a most accurate observer of Nature has assured
me that he has found it on the banks of the streams in Andalusia.

Our writers record it to have been found only twice in Great Britain.
From all these relations it plainly appears that these long-legged
plovers are birds of South Europe, and rarely visit our island, and when
they do, are wanderers and stragglers, and impelled to make so distant
and northern an excursion from motives or accidents for which we are not
able to account.  One thing may fairly be deduced, that these birds come
over to us from the continent, since nobody can suppose that a species
not noticed once in an age, and of such a remarkable make, can constantly
breed unobserved in this kingdom.



LETTER L.


SELBORNE, _April_ 21_st_, 1780.

Dear Sir,--The old Sussex tortoise, that I have mentioned to you so
often, is become my property.  I dug it out of its winter dormitory in
March last, when it was enough awakened to express its resentments by
hissing, and, packing it in a box with earth, carried it eighty miles in
post-chaises.  The rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it
that, when I turned it out on a border, it walked twice down to the
bottom of my garden; however, in the evening, the weather being cold, it
buried itself in the loose mould, and continues still concealed.

As it will be under my eye, I shall now have an opportunity of enlarging
my observations on its mode of life and propensities, and perceive
already that, towards the time of coming forth, it opens a breathing
place in the ground near its head, requiring, I conclude, a freer
respiration as it becomes more alive.  This creature not only goes under
the earth from the middle of November to the middle of April, but sleeps
great part of the summer: for it goes to bed in the longest days at four
in the afternoon, and often does not stir in the morning till late.
Besides, it retires to rest for every shower, and does not move at all in
wet days.

When one reflects on the state of this strange being, it is a matter of
wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days,
such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that appears to relish it
so little as to squander more than two-thirds of its existence in a
joyless stupor, and be lost to all sensation for months together in the
profoundest of slumbers.

While I was writing this letter, a moist and warm afternoon, with the
thermometer at 50 degrees, brought forth troops of shell-snails, and, at
the same juncture, the tortoise heaved up the mould and put out its head,
and the next morning came forth, as it were, raised from the dead; and
walked about till four in the afternoon.  This was a curious coincidence!
a very amusing occurrence! to see such a similarity of feelings between
the two φερέοικοι! for so the Greeks called both the shell-snail and
the tortoise.

Summer birds are, this cold and backward spring, unusually late: I have
seen but one swallow yet.  This conformity with the weather convinces me
more and more that they sleep in the winter.



LETTER LI.


SELBORNE, _Sept._ 3_rd_, 1781.

I have now read your miscellanies through with much care and
satisfaction; and am to return you my best thanks for the honourable
mention made in them of me as a naturalist, which I wish I may deserve.

In some former letters I expressed my suspicions that many of the house-
martins do not depart in the winter far from this village.  I therefore
determined to make some search about the south-east end of the hill,
where I imagined they might slumber out the uncomfortable months of
winter.  But supposing that the examination would be made to the best
advantage in the spring, and observing that no martins had appeared by
the 11th April last; on that day I employed some men to explore the
shrubs and cavities of the suspected spot.  The persons took pains, but
without any success; however, a remarkable incident occurred in the midst
of our pursuit: while the labourers were at work, a house-martin, the
first that had been seen this year, came down the village in the sight of
several people, and went at once into a nest, where it stayed a short
time, and then flew over the houses; for some days after no martins were
observed, not till the 16th April, and then only a pair.  Martins in
general were remarkably late this year.



LETTER LII.


SELBORNE, _Sept._ 9_th_, 1781.

I have just met with a circumstance respecting swifts, which furnishes an
exception to the whole tenor of my observations ever since I have
bestowed any attention on that species of hirundines.  Our swifts, in
general, withdrew this year about the first day of August, all save one
pair, which in two or three days was reduced to a single bird.  The
perseverance of this individual made me suspect that the strongest of
motives, that of an attachment to her young, could alone occasion so late
a stay.  I watched therefore till the 24th August, and then discovered
that, under the eaves of the church, she attended upon two young, which
were fledged, and now put out their white chins from a crevice.  These
remained till the 27th, looking more alert every day, and seeming to long
to be on the wing.  After this day they were missing at once; nor could I
ever observe them with their dam coursing round the church in the act of
learning to fly, as the first broods evidently do.  On the 31st I caused
the eaves to be searched, but we found in the nest only two callow dead,
stinking swifts, on which a second nest had been formed.  This double
nest was full of the black shining cases of the _hippoboscae hirundinis_.

The following remarks on this unusual incident are obvious.  The first
is, that though it may be disagreeable to swifts to remain beyond the
beginning of August, yet that they can subsist longer is undeniable.  The
second is, that this uncommon event, as it was owing to the loss of the
first brood, so it corroborates my former remark, that swifts breed
regularly but once; since, was the contrary the case, the occurrence
above could neither be new nor rare.

P.S.--One swift was seen at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, in 1782, so
late as the 3rd September.



LETTER LIII.


As I have sometimes known you make inquiries about several kinds of
insects, I shall here send you an account of one sort which I little
expected to have found in this kingdom.  I had often observed that one
particular part of a vine growing on the walls of my house was covered in
the autumn with a black dust-like appearance, on which the flies fed
eagerly; and that the shoots and leaves thus affected did not thrive; nor
did the fruit ripen.  To this substance I applied my glasses; but could
not discover that it had anything to do with animal life, as I at first
expected: but, upon a closer examination behind the larger boughs, we
were surprised to find that they were coated over with husky shells, from
whose sides proceeded a cotton-like substance, surrounding a multitude of
eggs.  This curious and uncommon production put me upon recollecting what
I have heard and read concerning the _coccus vitis viniferae_ of Linnaeus,
which, in the south of Europe, infests many vines, and is a horrid and
loathsome pest.  As soon as I had turned to the accounts given of this
insect, I saw at once that it swarmed on my vine; and did not appear to
have been at all checked by the preceding winter, which had been
uncommonly severe.

Not being then at all aware that it had anything to do with England, I
was much inclined to think that it came from Gibraltar among the many
boxes and packages of plants and birds which I had formerly received from
thence; and especially as the vine infested grew immediately under my
study-window, where I usually kept my specimens.  True it is that I had
received nothing from thence for some years: but as insects, we know, are
conveyed from one country to another in a very unexpected manner, and
have a wonderful power of maintaining their existence till they fall into
a nidus proper for their support and increase, I cannot but suspect still
that these cocci came to me originally from Andalusia.  Yet, all the
while, candour obliges me to confess that Mr. Lightfoot has written me
word that he once, and but once, saw these insects on a vine at Weymouth
in Dorsetshire; which, it is here to be observed, is a seaport town to
which the coccus might be conveyed by shipping.

As many of my readers may possibly never have heard of this strange and
unusual insect, I shall here transcribe a passage from a natural history
of Gibraltar, written by the Reverend John White, late vicar of Blackburn
in Lancashire, but not yet published:--

   "In the year 1770 a vine, which grew on the east side of my house, and
   which had produced the finest crops of grapes for years past, was
   suddenly overspread on all the woody branches with large lumps of a
   white fibrous substance resembling spiders' webs, or rather raw
   cotton.  It was of a very clammy quality, sticking fast to everything
   that touched it, and capable of being spun into long threads.  At
   first I suspected it to be the product of spiders, but could find
   none.  Nothing was to be seen connected with it but many brown oval
   husky shells, which by no means looked like insects, but rather
   resembled bits of the dry bark of the vine.  The tree had a plentiful
   crop of grapes set, when this pest appeared upon it; but the fruit was
   manifestly injured by this foul encumbrance.  It remained all the
   summer, still increasing, and loaded the woody and bearing branches to
   a vast degree.  I often pulled off great quantities by handfuls; but
   it was so slimy and tenacious that it could by no means be cleared.
   The grapes never filled to their natural perfection, but turned watery
   and vapid.  Upon perusing the works afterwards of M. de Reaumur, I
   found this matter perfectly described and accounted for.  Those husky
   shells, which I had observed, were no other than the female coccus,
   from whose side this cotton-like substance exudes, and serves as a
   covering and security for their eggs."

To this account I think proper to add, that, though the female cocci are
stationary, and seldom remove from the place to which they stick, yet the
male is a winged insect; and that the black dust which I saw was
undoubtedly the excrement of the females, which is eaten by ants as well
as flies.  Though the utmost severity of our winter did not destroy these
insects, yet the attention of the gardener in a summer or two has
entirely relieved my vine from this filthy annoyance.

As we have remarked above that insects are often conveyed from one
country to another in a very unaccountable manner, I shall here mention
an emigration of small aphides, which was observed in the village of
Selborne no longer ago than August 1st, 1785.

About three o'clock in the afternoon of that day, which was very hot, the
people of this village were surprised by a shower of aphides, or smother-
flies, which fell in these parts.  Those that were walking in the street
at that juncture found themselves covered with these insects, which
settled also on the hedges and gardens, blackening all the vegetables
where they alighted.  My annuals were discoloured with them, and the
stalks of a bed of onions were quite coated over for six days after.
These armies were then, no doubt, in a state of emigration, and shifting
their quarters; and might have come, as far as we know, from the great
hop plantations of Kent or Sussex, the wind being all that day in the
easterly quarter.  They were observed at the same time in great clouds
about Farnham, and all along the vale from Farnham to Alton.



LETTER LIV.


Dear Sir,--When I happen to visit a family where gold and silver fishes
are kept in a glass bowl, I am always pleased with the occurrence,
because it offers me an opportunity of observing the actions and
propensities of those beings with whom we can be little acquainted in
their natural state.  Not long since I spent a fortnight at the house of
a friend where there was such a vivary, to which I paid no small
attention, taking every occasion to remark what passed within its narrow
limits.  It was here that I first observed the manner in which fishes
die.  As soon as the creature sickens, the head sinks lower and lower,
and it stands as it were on its head; till, getting weaker, and losing
all poise, the tail turns over, and at last it floats on the surface of
the water with its belly uppermost.  The reason why fishes, when dead,
swim in that manner is very obvious; because, when the body is no longer
balanced by the fins of the belly, the broad muscular back preponderates
by its own gravity, and turns the belly uppermost, as lighter from its
being a cavity, and because it contains the swimming-bladders, which
contribute to render it buoyant.  Some that delight in gold and silver
fishes have adopted a notion that they need no aliment.  True it is that
they will subsist for a long time without any apparent food but what they
can collect from pure water frequently changed; yet they must draw some
support from animalcula, and other nourishment supplied by the water;
because, though they seem to eat nothing, yet the consequences of eating
often drop from them.  That they are best pleased with such _jejune_ diet
may easily be confuted, since if you toss them crumbs they will seize
them with great readiness, not to say greediness; however, bread should
be given sparingly, lest, turning sour, it corrupt the water.  They will
also feed on the water-plant called _lemna_ (ducks' meat), and also on
small fry.

When they want to move a little, they gently protrude themselves with
their _pinnae pectorales_; but it is with their strong muscular tails
only that they and all fishes shoot along with such inconceivable
rapidity.  It has been said that the eyes of fishes are immovable; but
these apparently turn them forward or backward in their sockets as
occasions require.  They take little notice of a lighted candle, though
applied close to their heads, but flounce and seem much frightened by a
sudden stroke of the hand against the support whereon the bowl is hung;
especially when they have been motionless, and are perhaps asleep.  As
fishes have no eyelids, it is not easy to discern when they are sleeping
or not, because their eyes are always open.

Nothing can be more amusing than a glass bowl containing such fishes; the
double refractions of the glass and water represent them, when moving, in
a shifting and changeable variety of dimensions, shades, and colours;
while the two mediums, assisted by the concavo-convex shape of the
vessel, magnify and distort them vastly; not to mention that the
introduction of another element and its inhabitants into our parlours
engages the fancy in a very agreeable manner.

Gold and silver fishes, though originally natives of China and Japan, yet
are become so well reconciled to our climate as to thrive and multiply
very fast in our ponds and stews.  Linnaeus ranks this species of fish
under the genus of _cyprinus_, or carp, and calls it _cyprinus auratus_.

Some people exhibit this sort of fish in a very fanciful way; for they
cause a glass bowl to be blown with a large hollow space within, that
does not communicate with it.  In this cavity they put a bird
occasionally; so that you may see a goldfinch or a linnet hopping as it
were in the midst of the water, and the fishes swimming in a circle round
it.  The simple exhibition of the fishes is agreeable and pleasant: but
in so complicated a way becomes whimsical and unnatural, and liable to
the objection due to him.

   "Qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam."

I am, etc.



LETTER LV.


_October_ 10_th_, 1781.

Dear Sir,--I think I have observed before that much of the most
considerable part of the house-martins withdraw from hence about the
first week in October, but that some, the latter broods I am now
convinced, linger on till towards the middle of that month; and that at
times, once perhaps in two or three years, a flight, for one day only,
has shown itself in the first week in November.

Having taken notice, in October, 1780, that the last flight was numerous,
amounting perhaps to one hundred and fifty; and that the season was soft
and still, I was resolved to pay uncommon attention to these late birds;
to find, if possible, where they roosted, and to determine the precise
time of their retreat.  The mode of life of these latter _hirundines_ is
very favourable to such a design, for they spend the whole day in the
sheltered district between me and the Hanger, sailing about in a placid,
easy manner, and feasting on those insects which love to haunt a spot so
secure from ruffling winds.  As my principal object was to discover the
place of their roosting, I took care to wait on them before they retired
to rest, and was much pleased to find that for several evenings together,
just at a quarter past five in the afternoon, they all scudded away in
great haste towards the south-east, and darted down among the low shrubs
above the cottages at the end of the hill.  This spot, in many respects,
seemed to be well calculated for their winter residence; for in many
parts it is as steep as the roof of any house, and therefore secure from
the annoyances of water; and it is moreover clothed with beechen shrubs,
which, being stunted and bitten by sheep, make the thickest covert
imaginable, and are so entangled as to be impervious to the smallest
spaniel; besides, it is the nature of underwood beech never to cast its
leaf all the winter, so that, with the leaves on the ground and those on
the twigs, no shelter can be more complete.  I watched them on the 13th
and 14th October, and found their evening retreat was exact and uniform;
but after this they made no regular appearance.  Now and then a straggler
was seen, and on the 22nd October, I observed two in the morning over the
village, and with them my remarks for the season ended.

From all these circumstances put together, it is more than probable that
this lingering flight, at so late a season of the year, never departed
from the island.  Had they indulged me that autumn with a November visit,
as I much desired, I presume that, with proper assistants, I should have
settled the matter past all doubt; but though the 3rd November was a
sweet day, and in appearance exactly suited to my wishes, yet not a
martin was to be seen; and so I was forced, reluctantly, to give up the
pursuit.

I have only to add that were the bushes, which cover some acres, and are
not my own property, to be grubbed and carefully examined, probably those
late broods, and perhaps the whole aggregate body of the house-martins of
this district, might be found there, in different secret dormitories; and
that, so far from withdrawing into warmer climes, it would appear that
they never depart three hundred yards from the village.



LETTER LVI.


They who write on natural history cannot too frequently advert to
instinct, that wonderful limited faculty, which in some instances raises
the brute creation, as it were, above reason, and in others leaves them
so far below it.  Philosophers have defined instinct to be that secret
influence by which every species is compelled naturally to pursue, at all
times, the same way or track, without any teaching or example; whereas
reason, without instruction, would often vary and do that by many methods
which instinct effects by one alone.  Now this maxim must be taken in a
qualified sense; for there are instances in which instinct does vary and
conform to the circumstances of place and convenience.

It has been remarked that every species of bird has a mode of
nidification peculiar to itself, so that a schoolboy would at once
pronounce on the sort of nest before him.  This is the case among fields
and woods, and wilds, but, in the villages round London, where mosses and
gossamer, and cotton from vegetables, are hardly to be found, the nest of
the chaffinch has not that elegant finished appearance, nor is it so
beautifully studded with lichens, as in a more rural district; and the
wren is obliged to construct its house with straws and dry grasses, which
do not give it that rotundity and compactness so remarkable in the
edifices of that little architect.  Again, the regular nest of the house-
martin is hemispheric; but where a rafter, or a joist, or a cornice, may
happen to stand in the way, the nest is so contrived as to conform to the
obstruction, and becomes flat or compressed.

In the following instances instinct is perfectly uniform and consistent.
There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse, and the bird
called the nut-hatch (_sitta Europaea_), which live much on hazelnut; and
yet they open them each in a different way.  The first, after rasping off
the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man
does with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so regular
as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that one could wonder how
the kernel can be extracted through it; while the last picks an irregular
ragged hole with its bill: but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut
firm while he pierces it, like an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it
were, in a vice, in some cleft of a tree, or in some crevice; when
standing over it, he perforates the stubborn shell.  We have often placed
nuts in the chink of a gatepost where nut-hatches have been known to
haunt, and have always found that those birds have readily penetrated
them.  While at work they make a rapping noise that may be heard at a
considerable distance.

You that understand both the theory and practical part of music may best
inform us why harmony or melody should so strangely assist some men, as
it were by recollection, for days after the concert is over.  What I mean
the following passage will most readily explain:--

   "Praehabebat porro vocibus humanis, instrumentisque harmonicis musicam
   illam avium: non quod alia quoque non delectaretur: sed quod ex musica
   humana relinqueretur in animo continens quaedam, attentionemque et
   somnum conturbans agitatio; dum ascensus, exscensus, tenores, ac
   mutationes illae sonorum, et consonantiarum euntque, redeuntque per
   phantasiam:--cum nihil tale relinqui possit ex modulationibus avium
   quae, quod non sunt perinde a nobis imitabiles, non possunt perinde
   internam facultatem commovere."--_Gassendus in Vita Peireskii_.

This curious quotation strikes me much by so well representing my own
case, and by describing what I have so often felt, but never could so
well express.  When I hear fine music I am haunted with passages
therefrom night and day; and especially at first waking, which, by their
importunity, give me more uneasiness than pleasure; elegant lessons still
tease my imagination, and recur irresistibly to my recollection at
seasons, and even when I am desirous of thinking of more serious matters.

I am, etc.



LETTER LVII.


A rare, and I think a new, little bird frequents my garden, which I have
great reason to think is the pettichaps: it is common in some parts of
the kingdom; and I have received formerly several dead specimens from
Gibraltar.  This bird much resembles the white-throat, but has a more
white or rather silvery breast and belly; is restless and active, like
the willow-wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part for
food; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and, putting its
head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the
nectarium of each petal.  Sometimes it feeds on the ground like the hedge-
sparrow, by hopping about on the grass-plots and mown-walks.

One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing man, informs me that,
in the beginning of May, and about ten minutes before eight o'clock in
the evening, he discovered a great cluster of house-swallows, thirty, at
least, he supposes, perching on a willow that hung over the verge of
James Knight's upper-pond.  His attention was first drawn by the
twittering of these birds, which sat motionless in a row on the bough,
with their heads all one way, and, by their weight, pressing down the
twig so that it nearly touched the water.  In this situation he watched
them till he could see no longer.  Repeated accounts of this sort, spring
and fall, induce us greatly to suspect that house-swallows have some
strong attachment to water, independent of the matter of food; and,
though they may not retire into that element, yet they may conceal
themselves in the banks of pools and rivers during the uncomfortable
months of winter.

One of the keepers of Wolmer Forest sent me a peregrine-falcon, which he
shot on the verge of that district as it was devouring a wood-pigeon.  The
_falco peregrinus_, or haggard-falcon, is a noble species of hawk seldom
seen in the southern counties.  In winter 1767, one was killed in the
neighbouring parish of Farringdon, and sent by me to Mr. Pennant into
North Wales.  Since that time I have met with none till now.  The
specimen mentioned above was in fine preservation, and not injured by the
shot: it measured forty-two inches from wing to wing, and twenty-one from
beak to tail, and weighed two pounds and a half standing weight.  This
species is very robust, and wonderfully formed for rapine; its breast was
plump and muscular; its thighs long, thick, and brawny; and its legs
remarkably short and well set: the feet were armed with most formidable,
sharp, long talons: the eyelids and cere of the bill were yellow; but the
irides of the eyes dusky; the beak was thick and hooked, and of a dark
colour, and had a jagged process near the end of the upper mandible on
each side: its tail, or train, was short in proportion to the bulk of its
body; yet the wings, when closed, did not extend to the end of the train.
From its large and fair proportions it might be supposed to have been a
female; but I was not permitted to cut open the specimen.  For one of the
birds of prey, which are usually lean, this was in high case: in its craw
were many barley-corns, which probably came from the crop of the wood-
pigeon, on which it was feeding when shot; for voracious birds do not eat
grain, but, when devouring their quarry, with undistinguishing vehemence
swallow bones and feathers, and all matters indiscriminately.  This
falcon was probably driven from the mountains of North Wales or Scotland,
where they are known to breed, by rigorous weather and deep snows that
had lately fallen.

I am, etc.



LETTER LVIII.


My near neighbour, a young gentleman in the service of the East India
Company, has brought home a dog and a bitch of the Chinese breed from
Canton, such as are fattened in that country for the purpose of being
eaten: they are about the size of a moderate spaniel; of a pale yellow
colour, with coarse bristling hairs on their backs; sharp upright ears,
and peaked heads, which give them a very fox-like appearance.  Their hind
legs are unusually straight, without any bend at the hock or ham, to such
a degree as to give them an awkward gait when they trot.  When they are
in motion their tails are curved high over their backs like those of some
hounds, and have a bare place each on the outside from the tip midway,
that does not seem to be matter of accident, but somewhat singular.  Their
eyes are jet-black, small, and piercing; the insides of their lips and
mouths of the same colour, and their tongues blue.  The bitch has a dew-
claw on each hind leg; the dog has none.  When taken out into a field the
bitch showed some disposition for hunting, and dwelt on the scent of a
covey of partridges till she sprung them, giving her tongue all the time.
The dogs in South America are dumb; but these bark much in a short thick
manner like foxes, and have a surly, savage demeanour like their
ancestors, which are not domesticated, but bred up in sties, where they
are fed for the table with rice-meal and other farinaceous food.  These
dogs, having been taken on board as soon as weaned, could not learn much
from their dam; yet they did not relish flesh when they came to England.
In the islands of the Pacific Ocean the dogs are bred upon vegetables,
and would not eat flesh when offered them by our circumnavigators.

We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, upright, fox-
like ears, and that hanging ears, which are esteemed so graceful, are the
effect of choice breeding and cultivation.  Thus, in the "Travels of
Ysbrandt Ides from Muscovy to China," the dogs which draw the Tartars on
snow-sledges, near the river Oby, are engraved with prick-ears, like
those from Canton.  The Kamschatdales also train the same sort of sharp-
eared, peak-nosed dogs to draw their sledges, as may be seen in an
elegant print engraved for Captain Cook's last voyage round the world.

Now we are upon the subject of dogs, it may not be impertinent to add
that spaniels, as all sportsmen know, though they hunt partridges and
pheasants as it were by instinct, and with much delight and alacrity, yet
will hardly touch their bones when offered as food; nor will a mongrel
dog of my own, though he is remarkable for finding that sort of game.
But, when we came to offer the bones of partridges to the two Chinese
dogs, they devoured them with much greediness, and licked the platter
clean.

No sporting dogs will flush woodcocks till inured to the scent and
trained to the sport, which they then pursue with vehemence and
transport; but then they will not touch their bones, but turn from them
with abhorrence, even when they are hungry.

Now, that dogs should not be fond of the bones of such birds as they are
not disposed to hunt is no wonder; but why they reject and do not care to
eat their natural game is not so easily accounted for, since the end of
hunting seems to be that the chase pursued should be eaten.  Dogs again
will not devour the more rancid water-fowls, nor indeed the bones of any
wild fowls; nor will they touch the foetid bodies of birds that feed on
offal and garbage; and indeed there may be somewhat of providential
instinct in this circumstance of dislike, for vultures, and kites, and
ravens, and crows, etc., were intended to be messmates with dogs over
their carrion, and seem to be appointed by Nature as fellow-scavengers to
remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of the earth.

I am, etc.



LETTER LIX.


The fossil wood buried in the bogs of Wolmer Forest is not yet all
exhausted, for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a log.  I have
just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of Oak Hanger to a
carpenter of this village; this was the butt-end of a small oak, about
five feet long, and about five inches in diameter.  It had apparently
been severed from the ground by an axe, was very ponderous, and as black
as ebony.  Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had procured it,
he told me that it was to be sent to his brother, a joiner at Farnham,
who was to make use of it in cabinet-work, by inlaying it along with
whiter woods.

Those that are much abroad on evenings after it is dark, in spring and
summer, frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing by on the wing, and
repeating often a short, quick note.  This bird I have remarked myself,
but never could make out till lately.  I am assured now that it is the
stone-curlew (_Charadrius oedicnemus_).  Some of them pass over or near
my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the
hill and North Fields, away down towards Dorton, where, among the streams
and meadows, they find a greater plenty of food.  Birds that fly by night
are obliged to be noisy; their notes often repeated become signals or
watch-words to keep them together, that they may not stray or lose each
the other in the dark.

The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious and
amusing in the autumn.  Just before dusk they return in long strings from
the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over Selborne Down,
where they wheel round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful
manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing,
which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village
are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding, or rather a pleasing
murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a
pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in
tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore.  When this
ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night
to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley.  We remember a little
girl who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an occurrence,
in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the rooks were saying their
prayers; and yet this child was much too young to be aware that the
Scriptures have said of the Deity, that "He feedeth the ravens who call
upon Him."

I am, etc.



LETTER LX.


In reading Dr. Huxam's "Observationes de Aere," etc., written at
Plymouth, I find by those curious and accurate remarks, which contain an
account of the weather from the year 1727 to the year 1748, inclusive,
that though there is frequent rain in that district of Devonshire, yet
the quantity falling is not great; and that some years it has been very
small: for in 1731 the rain measured only 17.266 in.; and in 1741, 20.354
in.; and again, in 1743, only 20.908 in.  Places near the sea have
frequent scuds, that keep the atmosphere moist, yet do not reach far up
into the country; making thus the maritime situations appear wet, when
the rain is not considerable.  In the wettest years at Plymouth the
Doctor measured only once 36 in.; and again once, viz., 1734, 37.114
in.--a quantity of rain that has twice been exceeded at Selborne in the
short period of my observations.  Dr. Huxam remarks that frequent small
rains keep the air moist; while heavy ones render it more dry, by beating
down the vapours.  He is also of opinion that the dingy, smoky appearance
in the sky, in very dry seasons, arises from the want of moisture
sufficient to let the light through, and render the atmosphere
transparent; because he had observed several bodies more diaphanous when
wet than dry; and did never recollect that the air had that look in rainy
seasons.

My friend, who lives just beyond the top of the down, brought his three
swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with their muzzles towards the
Hanger, supposing that the report would have had a great effect; but the
experiment did not answer his expectation.  He then removed them to the
alcove on the Hanger, when the sound, rushing along the Lythe and Comb
Wood, was very grand; but it was at the hermitage that the echoes and
repercussions delighted the hearers; not only filling the Lythe with the
roar, as if all the beeches were tearing up by the roots; but, turning to
the left, they pervaded the vale above Comb Wood ponds; and after a pause
seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend round Hartley Hangers,
and to die away at last among the coppices and coverts of Ward-le-Ham.  It
has been remarked before that this district is an Anathoth, a place of
responses or echoes, and therefore proper for such experiments: we may
farther add that the pauses in echoes, when they cease and yet are taken
up again, like the pauses in music, surprise the hearers, and have a fine
effect on the imagination.

The gentleman above mentioned has just fixed a barometer in his parlour
at Newton Valence.  The tube was first filled here (at Selborne) twice
with care, when the mercury agreed and stood exactly with my own; but,
being filled twice again at Newton, the mercury stood, on account of the
great elevation of that house, three-tenths of an inch lower than the
barometers at this village, and so continues to do, be the weight of the
atmosphere what it may.  The plate of the barometer at Newton is figured
as low as 27; because in stormy weather the mercury there will sometimes
descend below 28.  We have supposed Newton House to stand two hundred
feet higher than this house: but if the rule holds good, which says that
mercury in a barometer sinks one-tenth of an inch for every hundred feet
elevation, then the Newton barometer, by standing three-tenths lower than
that of Selborne, proves that Newton House must be three hundred feet
higher than that in which I am writing, instead of two hundred.

It may not be impertinent to add that the barometers at Selborne stand
three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at South Lambeth:
whence we may conclude that the former place is about three hundred feet
higher than the latter; and with good reason, because the streams that
rise with us run into the Thames at Weybridge, and so to London.  Of
course therefore there must be lower ground all the way from Selborne to
South Lambeth; the distance between which, all the windings and
indentings of the streams considered, cannot be less than a hundred
miles.

I am, etc.



LETTER LXI.


Since the weather of a district is undoubtedly part of its natural
history, I shall make no further apology for the four following letters,
which will contain many particulars concerning some of the great frosts,
and a few respecting some very hot summers, that have distinguished
themselves from the rest during the course of my observations.

As the frost in January 1768 was, for the small time it lasted, the most
severe that we had then known for many years, and was remarkably
injurious to evergreens, some account of its rigour, and reason of its
ravages, may be useful, and not unacceptable to persons that delight in
planting and ornamenting; and may particularly become a work that
professes never to lose sight of utility.

For the last two or three days of the former year there were considerable
falls of snow, which lay deep and uniform on the ground without any
drifting, wrapping up the more humble vegetation in perfect security.
From the first day to the fifth of the new year more snow succeeded; but
from that day the air became entirely clear; and the heat of the sun
about noon had a considerable influence in sheltered situations.

It was in such an aspect that the snow on the author's evergreens was
melted every day, and frozen intensely every night; so that the
laurustines, bays, laurels, and arbutuses looked, in three or four days,
as if they had been burnt in the fire; while a neighbour's plantation of
the same kind, in a high cold situation, where the snow was never melted
at all, remained uninjured.

From hence I would infer that it is the repeated melting and freezing of
the snow that is so fatal to vegetation, rather than the severity of the
cold.  Therefore it highly behoves every planter, who wishes to escape
the cruel mortification of losing in a few days the labour and hopes of
years, to bestir himself on such emergencies; and if his plantations are
small, to avail himself of mats, cloths, pease-haulm, straw, reeds, or
any such covering, for a short time; or, if his shrubberies are
extensive, to see that his people go about with prongs and forks, and
carefully dislodge the snow from the boughs: since the naked foliage will
shift much better for itself, than where the snow is partly melted and
frozen again.

It may perhaps appear at first like a paradox; but doubtless the more
tender trees and shrubs should never be planted in hot aspects; not only
for the reason assigned above, but also because, thus circumstanced, they
are disposed to shoot earlier in the spring, and to grow on later in the
autumn than they would otherwise do, and so are sufferers by lagging or
early frosts.  For this reason also plants from Siberia will hardly
endure our climate; because, on the very first advances of spring, they
shoot away, and so are cut off by the severe nights of March or April.

Dr. Fothergill and others have experienced the same inconvenience with
respect to the more tender shrubs from North America, which they
therefore plant under north walls.  There should also perhaps be a wall
to the east to defend them from the piercing blasts from that quarter.

This observation might without any impropriety be carried into animal
life; for discerning bee-masters now find that their hives should not in
the winter be exposed to the hot sun, because such unseasonable warmth
awakens the inhabitants too early from their slumbers; and, by putting
their juices into motion too soon, subjects them afterwards to
inconveniences when rigorous weather returns.

The coincidents attending this short but intense frost were, that the
horses fell sick with an epidemic distemper, which injured the winds of
many, and killed some; that colds and coughs were general among the human
species; that it froze under people's beds for several nights; that meat
was so hard frozen that it could not be spitted, and could not be secured
but in cellars; that several red-wings and thrushes were killed by the
frost; and that the large titmouse continued to pull straws lengthwise
from the eaves of thatched houses and barns in a most adroit manner, for
a purpose that has been explained already.

On the 3rd January, Benjamin Martin's thermometer within doors, in a
close parlour where there was no fire, fell in the night to 20 degrees,
and on the 4th, to 18 degrees, and on the 7th, to 17.5 degrees, a degree
of cold which the owner never since saw in the same situation; and he
regrets much that he was not able at that juncture to attend his
instrument abroad.  All this time the wind continued north and
north-east; and yet on the 8th roost-cocks, which had been silent, began
to sound their clarions, and crows to clamour, as prognostic of milder
weather; and, moreover, moles began to heave and work, and a manifest
thaw took place.  From the latter circumstance we may conclude that thaws
often originate under ground from warm vapours which arise; else how
should subterraneous animals receive such early intimations of their
approach?  Moreover, we have often observed that cold seems to descend
from above; for, when a thermometer hangs abroad in a frosty night, the
intervention of a cloud shall immediately raise the mercury 10 degrees;
and a clear sky shall again compel it to descend to its former gauge.

And here it may be proper to observe, on what has been said above, that
though frosts advance to their utmost severity by somewhat of a regular
gradation, yet thaws do not usually come on by as regular a declension of
cold; but often take place immediately from intense freezing; as men in
sickness often mend at once from a paroxysm.

To the great credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers, be it
remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general havoc: hence
men should learn to ornament chiefly with such trees as are able to
withstand accidental severities, and not subject themselves to the
vexation of a loss which may befall them once perhaps in ten years, yet
may hardly be recovered through the whole course of their lives.

As it appeared afterwards, the ilexes were much injured, the cypresses
were half destroyed, the arbutuses lingered on, but never recovered; and
the bays, laurustines, and laurels, were killed to the ground; and the
very wild hollies, in hot aspects, were so much affected that they cast
all their leaves.

By the 14th January the snow was entirely gone; the turnips emerged not
damaged at all, save in sunny places; the wheat looked delicately, and
the garden plants were well preserved; for snow is the most kindly mantle
that infant vegetation can be wrapped in: were it not for that friendly
meteor no vegetable life could exist at all in northerly regions.  Yet in
Sweden the earth in April is not divested of snow for more than a
fortnight before the face of the country is covered with flowers.



LETTER LXII.


There were some circumstances attending the remarkable frost in January
1776, so singular and striking, that a short detail of them may not be
unacceptable.

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 12th, 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 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 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 birthday, were strangely incommoded: 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 relentless heaps of snow were too bulky to be
removed; and so the 18th passed over, leaving the company in very
uncomfortable circumstances at the Castle and other inns.

On the 20th 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 degrees, 28 degrees, 25 degrees, and thereabout; but on the 21st it
descended to 20 degrees.  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.

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 to 11 degrees, 7 degrees, 6 degrees, 6 degrees; and at
Selborne to 7 degrees, 6 degrees, 10 degrees; and on the 31st January,
just before sunrise, with rime on the trees and on the tube of the glass,
the quicksilver sank exactly to zero, being 32 degrees below the freezing
point; but by eleven in the morning, though in the shade, it sprang up to
16.5 degrees,--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 constitutions could scarcely endure to
face it.  The Thames was at once so frozen over, both above and below
bridge, that crowds ran about on the ice.  The streets were now strangely
encumbered with snow, which crumbled and trod dusty, and, turning grey,
resembled bay-salt; what had fallen on the roofs was so perfectly dry
that, from first to last, it lay twenty-six days on the houses in the
city--a longer time than had been remembered by the oldest housekeepers
living.  According to all appearances we might now have expected the
continuance of this rigorous weather for weeks to come, since every night
increased in severity; but behold, without any apparent cause, on the 1st
February a thaw took place, and some rain followed before night, making
good the observation above, that frosts often go off as it were at once,
without any gradual declension of cold.  On the 2nd February the thaw
persisted; and on the 3rd swarms of little insects were frisking and
sporting in a courtyard at South Lambeth, as if they had felt no frost.
Why the juices in the small bodies and smaller limbs of such minute
beings are not frozen is a matter of curious inquiry.

Severe frosts seem to be partial, or to run in currents, for at the same
juncture, as the author was informed by accurate correspondents, at
Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, the thermometer stood at 19 degrees; at
Blackburn, in Lancashire, at 19 degrees; and at Manchester, at 21
degrees, 20 degrees, and 18 degrees.  Thus does some unknown circumstance
strangely overbalance latitude, and render the cold sometimes much
greater in the southern than the northern parts of this kingdom.

The consequences of this severity were that in Hampshire, at the melting
of the snow, the wheat looked well, and the turnips came forth little
injured.  The laurels and laurustines were somewhat damaged, but only in
hot aspects.  No evergreens were quite destroyed, and not half the damage
sustained that befell in January 1768.  Those laurels that were a little
scorched on the south sides were perfectly untouched on their north
sides.  The care taken to shake the snow day by day from the branches
seemed greatly to avail the author's evergreens.  A neighbour's laurel-
hedge, in a high situation, and facing to the north, was perfectly green
and vigorous, and the Portugal laurels remained unhurt.

As to the birds, the thrushes and blackbirds were mostly destroyed; and
the partridges, by the weather and poachers, were so thinned that few
remained to breed the following year.



LETTER LXIII.


As the frost in December 1784 was very extraordinary, you, I trust, will
not be displeased to hear the particulars, and especially when I promise
to say no more about the severities of winter after I have finished this
letter.

The first week in December was very wet, with the barometer very low.  On
the 7th, with the barometer at 28.5 degrees--came on a vast snow, which
continued all that day and the next, and most part of the following
night; so that by the morning of the 9th the works of men were quite
overwhelmed, the lanes filled so as to be impassable, and the ground
covered twelve or fifteen inches without any drifting.  In the evening of
the 9th the air began to be so very sharp that we thought it would be
curious to attend to the motions of a thermometer; we therefore hung out
two, one made by Martin and one by Dollond, which soon began to show us
what we were to expect; for by ten o'clock they fell to 21 degrees, and
at eleven to 4 degrees, when we went to bed.  On the 10th, in the
morning, the quicksilver of Dollond's glass was down to half a degree
below zero; and that of Martin's, which was absurdly graduated only to
four degrees above zero, sank quite into the brass guard of the ball; so
that when the weather became most interesting this was useless.  On the
10th, at eleven at night, though the air was perfectly still, Dollond's
glass went down to one degree below zero!  This strange severity of the
weather made me very desirous to know what degree of cold there might be
in such an exalted and near situation as Newton.  We had, therefore, on
the morning of the 10th, written to Mr. ---, and entreated him to hang
out his thermometer, made by Adams, and to pay some attention to it
morning and evening, expecting wonderful phenomena, in so elevated a
region, at two hundred feet or more above my house.  But, behold! on the
10th, at eleven at night, it was down only to 17 degrees, and the next
morning at 22 degrees, when mine was at 10 degrees!  We were so disturbed
at this unexpected reverse of comparative local cold, that we sent one of
my glasses up, thinking that of Mr. ---  must, somehow, be wrongly
constructed.

But, when the instruments came to be confronted, they went exactly
together; so that, for one night at least, the cold at Newton was 18
degrees less than at Selborne; and, through the whole frost, 10 degrees
or 12 degrees; and, indeed, when we came to observe consequences, we
could readily credit this; for all my laurustines, bays, ilexes,
arbutuses, cypresses, and even my Portugal laurels, and (which occasions
more regret) my fine sloping laurel-hedge, were scorched up; while, at
Newton, the same trees have not lost a leaf.

We had steady frost on the 25th, when the thermometer in the morning was
down to 10 degrees with us, and at Newton only to 21 degrees.  Strong
frost continued till the 31st, when some tendency to thaw was observed;
and, by January 3rd, 1785, the thaw was confirmed, and some rain fell.

A circumstance that I must not omit, because it was new to us, is, that
on Friday, December 10th, being bright sunshine, the air was full of icy
_spiculae_, floating in all directions, like atoms in a sunbeam let into
a dark room.  We thought them at first particles of the rime falling from
my tall hedges; but were soon convinced to the contrary, by making our
observations in open places where no rime could reach us.  Were they
watery particles of the air frozen as they floated, or were they
evaporations from the snow frozen as they mounted?

We were much obliged to the thermometers for the early information they
gave us; and hurried our apples, pears, onions, potatoes, etc., into the
cellar, and warm closets; while those who had not, or neglected such
warnings, lost all their store of roots and fruits, and had their very
bread and cheese frozen.

I must not omit to tell you that, during these two Siberian days, my
parlour cat was so electric, that had a person stroked her, and been
properly insulated, the shock might have been given to a whole circle of
people.

I forgot to mention before, that, during the two severe days, two men,
who were tracing hares in the snow, had their feet frozen, and two men,
who were much better employed, had their fingers so affected by the
frost, while they were thrashing in a barn, that a mortification
followed, from which they did not recover for many weeks.

This frost killed all the furze and most of the ivy, and in many places
stripped the hollies of all their leaves.  It came at a very early time
of the year, before old November ended; and yet may be allowed from its
effects to have exceeded any since 1730-40.



LETTER LXIV.


As the effects of heat are seldom very remarkable in the northerly
climate of England, where the summers are often so defective in warmth
and sunshine as not to ripen the fruits of the earth so well as might be
wished, I shall be more concise in my account of the severity of a summer
season, and so make a little amends for the prolix account of the degrees
of cold, and the inconveniences that we suffered from some late rigorous
winters.

The summers of 1781 and 1783 were unusually hot and dry; to them
therefore I shall turn back in my journals, without recurring to any more
distant period.  In the former of these years my peach and nectarine
trees suffered so much from the heat that the rind on the bodies was
scalded and came off; since which the trees have been in a decaying
state.  This may prove a hint to assiduous gardeners to fence and shelter
their wall-trees with mats or boards, as they may easily do, because such
annoyance is seldom of long continuance.  During that summer also, I
observed that my apples were coddled, as it were, on the trees; so that
they had no quickness of flavour, and would not keep in the winter.  This
circumstance put me in mind of what I have heard travellers assert, that
they never ate a good apple or apricot in the south of Europe, where the
heats were so great as to render the juices vapid and insipid.

The great pests of a garden are wasps, which destroy all the finer fruits
just as they are coming into perfection.  In 1781 we had none; in 1783
there were myriads, which would have devoured all the produce of my
garden, had not we set the boys to take the nests, and caught thousands
with hazel-twigs tipped with bird-lime: we have since employed the boys
to take and destroy the large breeding wasps in the spring.  Such
expedients have a great effect on these marauders, and will keep them
under.  Though wasps do not abound but in hot summers, yet they do not
prevail in every hot summer, as I have instanced in the two years above
mentioned.

In the sultry season of 1783, honey-dews were so frequent as to deface
and destroy the beauties of my garden.  My honeysuckles, which were one
week the most sweet and lovely objects that the eye could behold, became
the next the most loathsome; being enveloped in a viscous substance, and
loaded with black aphides, or smother-flies.  The occasion of this clammy
appearance seems to be this, that in hot weather the effluvia of flowers
in fields and meadows and gardens are drawn up in the day by a brisk
evaporation, and then in the night fall down again with the dews, in
which they are entangled; that the air is strongly scented, and therefore
impregnated with the particles of flowers in summer weather, our senses
will inform us; and that this clammy sweet substance is of the vegetable
kind we may learn from bees, to whom it is very grateful: and we may be
assured that it falls in the night, because it is always first seen in
warm still mornings.

On chalky and sandy soils, and in the hot villages about London, the
thermometer has been often observed to mount as high as 83 degrees or 84
degrees; but with us, in this hilly and woody district, I have hardly
ever seen it exceed 80 degrees, nor does it often arrive at that pitch.
The reason, I conclude, is, that our dense clayey soil, so much shaded by
trees, is not so easily heated through as those above-mentioned; and,
besides, our mountains cause currents of air and breezes; and the vast
effluvia from our woodlands temper and moderate our heats.



LETTER LXV.


The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full
of horrible phenomena; for, besides the alarming meteors and tremendous
thunderstorms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of
this kingdom, the peculiar haze, or smoky fog, that prevailed for many
weeks in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its
limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within
the memory of man.  By my journal I find that I had noticed this strange
occurrence from June 23rd to July 20th inclusive, during which period the
wind varied to every quarter without making any alteration in the air.
The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a
rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of rooms; but
was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting.  All the
time the heat was so intense that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten on
the day after it was killed; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and
hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic, and riding irksome.
The country people began to look with a superstitious awe at the red,
louring aspect of the sun; and indeed there was reason for the most
enlightened person to be apprehensive; for, all the while Calabria and
part of the isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes; and
about that juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of
Norway.  On this occasion Milton's noble simile of the sun, in his first
book of "Paradise Lost," frequently occurred to my mind; and it is indeed
particularly applicable because, towards the end, it alludes to a
superstitious kind of dread, with which the minds of men are always
impressed by such strange and unusual phenomena.

         "--As when the _sun_, new risen,
   Looks through the horizontal, _misty_ air,
   _Shorn_ of his _beams_; or from behind the moon,
   In _dim_ eclipse, _disastrous twilight sheds_
   On half the nations, and with _fear_ of _change_
   _Perplexes_ monarchs--."



LETTER LXVI.


We are very seldom annoyed with thunderstorms: and it is no less
remarkable than true, that those which arise in the south have hardly
been known to reach this village; for, before they get over us, they take
a direction to the east or to the west, or sometimes divide in two, go in
part to one of those quarters, and in part to the other; as was truly the
case in summer 1783, when, though the country round was continually
harassed with tempests, and often from the south, yet we escaped them
all, as appears by my journal of that summer.  The only way that I can at
all account for this fact--for such it is--is that, on that quarter,
between us and the sea, there are continual mountains, hill behind hill,
such as Nore-hill, the Barnet, Butser-hill, and Ports-down, which somehow
divert the storms, and give them a different direction.  High
promontories, and elevated grounds, have always been observed to attract
clouds and disarm them of their mischievous contents, which are
discharged into the trees and summits as soon as they come in contact
with those turbulent meteors; while the humble vales escape because they
are so far beneath them.

But, when I say I do not remember a thunderstorm from the south, I do not
mean that we never have suffered from thunderstorms at all; for on June
5th, 1784, the thermometer in the morning being at 64 degrees, and at
noon at 70 degrees the barometer at 29.6.5 degrees and the wind north, I
observed a blue mist, smelling strongly of sulphur, hanging along our
sloping woods, and seeming to indicate that thunder was at hand.  I was
called in about two in the afternoon, and so missed seeing the gathering
of the clouds in the north; which they who were abroad assured me had
something uncommon in its appearance.  At about a quarter after two the
storm began in the parish of Hartley, moving slowly from north to south:
and from thence it came over Norton-farm, and so to Grange-farm, both in
this parish.  It began with vast drops of rain, which were soon succeeded
by round hail, and then by convex pieces of ice, which measured three
inches in girth.  Had it been as extensive as it was violent, and of any
continuance (for it was very short), it must have ravaged all the
neighbourhood.  In the parish of Hartley it did some damage to one farm;
but Norton, which lay in the centre of the storm, was greatly injured; as
was Grange, which lay next to it.  It did but just reach to the middle of
the village, where the hail broke my north windows, and all my garden-
lights and hand-glasses, and many of my neighbours' windows.  The extent
of the storm was about two miles in length and one in breadth.  We were
just sitting down to dinner; but were soon diverted from our repast by
the clattering of tiles and the jingling of glass.  There fell at the
same time prodigious torrents of rain on the farms above mentioned, which
occasioned a flood as violent as it was sudden; doing great damage to the
meadows and fallows, by deluging the one and washing away the soil of the
other.  The hollow lane towards Alton was so torn and disordered as not
to be passable till mended, rocks being removed that weighed two hundred-
weight.  Those that saw the effect which the great hail had on ponds and
pools say that the dashing of the water made an extraordinary appearance,
the froth and spray standing up in the air three feet above the surface.
The rushing and roaring of the hail as it approached, was truly
tremendous.

Though the clouds at South Lambeth, near London, were at that juncture
thin and light, and no storm was in sight, nor within hearing, yet the
air was strongly electric; for the bells of an electric machine at that
place rang repeatedly, and fierce sparks were discharged.

When I first took the present work in hand I proposed to have added an
"_Annus Historico-naturalis_, or The Natural History of the Twelve Months
of the Year;" which would have comprised many incidents and occurrences
that have not fallen in my way to be mentioned in my series of letters;
but, as Mr. Aikin of Warrington has lately published somewhat of this
sort, and as the length of my correspondence has sufficiently put your
patience to the test, I shall here take a respectful leave of you and
natural history together, and am,

With all due deference and regard,
Your most obliged and most humble servant,

GIL. WHITE.

THE END.

Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.




Footnotes.


{83}  Letter XXIV.

{86}  Farmer Young, of Norton Farm, says that this spring (1777) about
four acres of his wheat in one field were entirely destroyed by slugs,
which swarmed on the blades of corn, and devoured it as fast as it
sprang.




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