THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE, WITH OBSERVATIONS ON VAEIOUS PAETS OF NATUEE, BY THE LATE EEV, GILBERT WHITE, A.M. A NEW EDITION. EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY SIE WILLIAM JAEDINE, BABT. F.E.S.E. F.L.S. &c. COMPLETELY ILLUSTRATED WITH ABOUT SEVENTY ENGRAVINGS, COMPRISING} SUBJECTS FROM NATURAL HISTORY, AND VIEWS OF SELBORNE. ITS VICINITY AND ANTIQUITIES, SKETCHED FROM NATURE EXPRESSLY FOR THIS EDITION. LONDON : NATHANIEL COOKE, MILFOED HOUSE, STEAND. 1853. ADVERTISEMENT TO ORIGINAL EDITION. THE Author of the following Letters takes the liberty, with all proper deference, of laying before the public his idea of parochial history, which, he thinks, ought to consist of natural productions and occurrences as well as antiquities. He is also of opinion that if stationary men would pay some attention to the districts on which they reside, and would publish their thoughts respecting the objects that surround them, from such materials might be drawn the most complete county-histories, which are still wanting in several parts of this kingdom, and in particular in the county of Southampton. And here he seizes the first opportunity, though a late one, of returning his most grateful acknowledgments to the reverend the President and the reverend and worthy the Fellows of Magdalen College in the university of Oxford, for their liberal behaviour in permitting their archives to be searched by a member of their own society, s» far as the evidences therein contained might respect the parish and priory of Selborne. To that gentleman also^ and his assistant, whose labours and attention could only be equalled by the very kind manner in which they were bestowed, many and great obligations are also due. Of the authenticity of the documents above-mentioned there can be no doubt, since they consist of the identical deeds and records that were removed to the College from the Priory at the time of its dissolution ; and, being carefully copied on the spot, may ba depended on AS genuine ; and, never having been made public before, may gratify the curiosity of the antiquary, as well as establish the credit of the history. If the writer should at all appear to have induced any of his b iv ADVERTISEMENT TO ORIGINAL EDITION. readers to pay a more ready attention to the wonders of the Creation, too frequently overlooked as common occurrences ; or if he should by any means, through his researches, have lent an helping hand towards the enlargement of the boundaries of historical and topographical knowledge ; or if he should have thrown some small light upon ancient customs and manners, and especially on those that were monastic ; his purpose will be fully answered. But if he should not have been successful in any of these his intentions, yet there remains this consolation behind — that these his pursuits, by keeping the body and mind employed, have, under Providence, contributed to much health and cheer- fulness of spirits, even to old age : and, what still adds to his happiness, have led him to the knowledge of a circle of gentle- men whose intelligent communications, as they have afforded him much pleasing information, so, could he flatter himself with a continuation of them, would they ever be deemed a matter of singular satisfaction and improvement. SELBORNE, January 1st, 1788. VILLAGE STREET — WHITE'S HOUSE. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. IN agreeing to the request of the proprietors of the National Illustrated Library, to give my assistance to their present edition of tke " Natural History of Selborne," I have felt that there was a danger of making repetitions, and a difficulty of adding much that was new to a work which had been printed in so many forms, and had been of late years so much written about. But the wish to extend among a new generation of readers the knowledge of a book which, in the opinion of every one, is well fitted for the perusal of young persons, and is a valuable record and example how the leisure hours of a country clergyman may be profitably and innocently employed, induced me to comply. There was also the desire to make some corrections incident to our more recent information on what I had already written in a previous edition, and to explain that several editions which bore my name were accompanied with some notes, and by illustrations vi INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. with which I had nothing whatever to do. In 1829, when Mr. Constable had proceeded so far with his " Miscellany," I was requested to read over and add some notes explanatory of various passages in " Selborne," which he then proposed to publish in his collection. To this I agreed, and that edition, with a few supplementary notes added to the volume in Mr. Bohn's "Standard Library," are all with which I have had any connection whatever. There is perhaps no work of the same class that has gone through more editions than White's Selborne. It originally appeared in 1789, four years before the author's death, in the then fashionable quarto size ; an octavo edition in two volumes, was published under the charge of Dr. Aitkin in 1802, to which various observations were added from White's journals.; and a second quarto edition was again published in 1813, with notes by the Eev. John Mitford, several of which are copied into the present volume ; after these, the edition projected and published by Constable in his " Miscellany" was the first to render the work better known and more popularly desired. When the disarrange- ment of Mr. Constable's affairs took place, and the " Miscellany" had passed into other hands, this edition assumed several forms, and was illustrated by woodcuts, some of them engraved for it, while some were inserted that had previously been used in other works on natural history. The demand for the work, however, still continued so great, as to induce Mr. Van Voorst and others, to speculate upon fresh reprints, some of them very beautifully illustrated, and the Eev. L. Jenyns, Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Jesse, have all contributed their share to the explanation of White's letters, and have been assisted by some of the first men of the day, in regard to such subjects as did not so immediately £orm a portion of their own studies, and we owe to Messrs. Bell and Owen, Yarrel and Herbert, many useful and instructive notes. The call now for another edition of The Natural History of Selborne, after so much has been illustrated and written about it, shows the continued estimation in which the work is held, and the confidence of the publishers in its value. What is the cause of this run after the correspondence of a country clergyman ] Just that it is the simple recording of valuable facts as they were really seen or learned, without embellishment except as received from truth, and without allowing the imagina- tion to ramble and assume conclusions the exactness of which it had not proved. He at the same time kept steadily in view INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. vii the moral obligation upon himself as a man and minister, to benefit his fellow creatures by impressing upon them the beneficence of the Creator, as exemplified in his works, and the contentment and cheerfulness of spirit which their study under proper restrictions imparts to the mind. And of this man we have handed down scarcely any biographical recollections, except what can be gathered from a short sketch by his brother, or that may be interspersed among his letters ; and these are very few, as he was not given to write of himself or his private affairs. Gilbert White, at one time the recluse, and almost obscure vicar of Selborne, had no biographer to record all the little outs and ins of his quiet career, lie was not thought of until his letters pointed him out as a man of observation, and it is only since they have been edited and re-edited, that every source has been ransacked, with the hope of finding some memoranda of the worthy vicar and naturalist. The sketch which his brother John appended to the octavo edition of his works in 1802, is, as we have stated, the only memorial of his life, and as it is authentic and very short, it is best to print- it as it was originally published. The same modest and retired habits never tempted him, so far as is known, to sit for any likeness, and no portrait or profile remains to recal the features of one whose writings have been so much and so widely read.* " Gilbert White was the eldest son of John White of Selborne, Esq., and of Anne, the daughter of Thomas Holt, rector of Streatham in Surrey. He was born at Selborne in July 18th, 1720 ; and received his school education at Basingstoke, under the !Rev. Thomas Warton, vicar of that place, and father of those two distinguished literary characters, Dr. Joseph Warton, master of Winchester school ; and Mr. Thomas Warton, poetry- professor at Oxford. He was admitted at Oriel College, Oxford, in December 1739, and^took_his degree of Bachelor of Arts in June, 1743. In March, 1744, he was elected fellow of his college. He became Master of Arts in October, 1746, and was admitted as one of the senior procters of the University in April, 1752. Being of an unambitious temper, and strongly attached to the * " Oriel College, of which Gilbert White was for more than fifty years a fellow, some years since offered to have a portrait painted of him for their hall. An inquiry was then made of all the members of his family.; but no portrait of any description could be found. I have heard my father say that Gilbert White was much pressed by his brother Thomas (my grandfather), to have his portrait painted, and that he talked of it; but it was never done." — A. HOLT WHITE. — Notes and Queries, September, No. 204, page 304. viii INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. charms of rural scenery, he early fixed his residence in his native village, where he spent the greater part of his life in literary occupations, and especially in the study of nature. This he followed with a patient assiduity, and a mind ever open to the lessons of piety and benevolence, which such a study is so well calculated to afford. Though several occasions offered of settling upon a college living, he could never persuade himself to quit the beloved spot, which was indeed a peculiarly happy situation for an observer. He was much esteemed by a select society of intelligent and worthy friends, to whom he paid occasional visits. Thus his days passed tranquil and serene, with scarcely any other vicissitudes than those of the seasons, till they closed at a mature age on June 26, 1793." And thus he was born, lived, and died, in his native parish and village, respected by those around him, contented in his own mind, and endeavouring to fulfil his various duties as a clergyman and member of society. A grave-stone, as unobtrusive as his life, marks upon the turf of the church-yard the place of his interment. While his relatives have endeavoured to erect a monument less exposed to decay, by placing in the interior of the chancel a simple marble tablet, bearing the arms of the family, and inscribed as follows. In the Fifth Grave from this wall are interred the Remains of THE REV. GILBERT WHITE, M.A. Fifty Years Fellow of Oriel College in Oxford, And Historian of this his native Parish. He was the eldest son of JOHN WHITE, Esquire, Barrister-at-Law, And ANNE his Wife, only child of THOMAS HOLT, Rector of Streatham in Surrey ; Which said JOHN WHITE was the only child of GILBERT WHITE, Formerly Vicar of this Parish. He was kind and heneficent to his Relations, Benevolent to the Poor, And deservedly esteemed hy all his Friends and Neighbours. He was born July 18, 1"20, O.S. And died June 20, 1793. Nee hono quicquam mali evenire potest nee vivo, nee mortuo. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. ix White was never married, but he had several brothers and sisters ; and the family generally seems to have been possessed of very considerable ability. I am not aware that any opinion has been handed down of his powers as a preacher ; but if we may judge from the letters, his sermons would probably possess that simplicity of language and staightforwardness of truth which would impress and render them acceptable to the minds of his hearers. The letters, though simply written, show both the poet and the scholar ; and the mass of facts which they contain in relation to our native animals, formed the main foun- dation to some of the principal zoological works of that time. Pennant often seeks information from him, and quotes his authority in the description of the swallow. He writes, " To the curious monographies on the swallow of that worthy corre- spondent (Mr. White), I must acknowledge myself indebted for numbers of the remarks above-mentioned ;" and he is elsewhere frequently referred to. Of his four brothers all of them seem to have had tastes some- what akin to Gilbert's, they devoted a considerable portion of their leisure to pursuits connected with literature or some of the branches of natural history. It is greatly to be regretted that the manuscripts of John White have not been recovered. He also was an English clergyman ; but for some portion of his life resided at Gibraltar, where he made collections and notes evidently with the view of working out and publishing a volume upon the natural history of that promontory; a "Fauna Calpensis," as he termed it. It must have been, in fact, written ; for in Letter LIII. to Mr. Barrington, Mr. White writes, "I shall now transcribe a passage from a ' Natural History of Gibraltar,' written by the Rev. John White, late vicar of Blackburn, in Lancashire, but not yet published." But although every inquiry has been made both by ourselves and others, no trace of that MS. can be discovered. His residence at Gibraltar is referred to in his brother's letters upon migration ; and he corresponded during his residence abroad with Mr. Pennant, who, when writing of the contents of his projected work, the " Outlines of the Globe," states that Volume V. would be particularly rich in drawings of the " birds and fishes of Gibraltar communicated to me by the reverend the late Mr. John White, long resident in that fortress." * John White corresponded also with naturalists abroad, and * Lit. Life, page 42. x INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. among others with Linnseus. Four letters from Linnaeus, were discovered a few years since, and were published in u Contributions to Ornithology" for 1849. They were addressed to him while resident at Gibraltar, and showed that his assist- ance was highly valued. In thanking him for some collections and memoranda, Linnaeus writes, " Accepi et dona verei aurea pro quibus omnibus ac singulis grates immortales reddo, reddamq. dum vixero." He was the means also of procuring for Linnaeus, who had not before seen them, two birds, which his brother mentions in his letters, Hirundo (cypselus) melba and rupestris " quam antea non vidi ;" "mihi antea ignota."* Another brother, Thomas, after retiring from business, devoted much of his time to literary pursuits and natural history, and for ten years contributed articles to the "Gentleman's Magazine," under the signature of T. H. W. A third, Benjamin White, was a publisher, and his name stands on the title-page of the first edition of " Selborne." There appears also to have been a fourth brother, Hairy White.f Upon the death of our author Gilbert, the estate of Selborne was succeeded to by his brother Benjamin, the publisher. We are not aware of the circumstances under which this was afterwards sold, but some years since it became, and now is, the property of as worthy a successor as could have been chosen, whether we regard his abilities as a naturalist, or the respect in which he holds all that belonged to White. Professor Thomas Bell is now the possessor of White's property and mansion ; and we know that he has been careful to preserve, as far as possibly could be done, in its original state, everything that belonged to the place, or that could throw light upon his correspondence. We consider that it is Professor Bell alone who can properly edit a new Selborne. From his own knowledge of natural history, and particularly of British Zoology, he is eminently qualified to illustrate the writings, and verify the observations, while his residence upon that spot, now his home, gives him opportunities possessed by no other. We believe that this is even now in progress : we would not wish to hurry it, but long much to see it. In writing thus, we have no desire to express ourselves dis- paragingly of previous editions ; on the contrary, we think they * Contributions to Ornithology, by Sir William Jar dine, Bart., 1849, pp. 2T f, Preface to Bennett's Edition, pp. xii. xiiL INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. xi have been all required, and that the call is still onward. Professor Bell's edition will, in all probability, be an expensive one, for we are sure no pains or expense will be spared in any of the departments ; it will therefore not be in circulation among certain classes. Now in a work so much read, and likely still to be so, when it can be obtained at so moderate a charge as that of the volumes of the "Illustrated Library," it is essen- tial that explanations should accompany it, and this is one reason for notes to such a book. Since the time of the letters from Selborne vast advances have been made in all branches of science. White was one of those who mainly assisted or tempted persons to observe. Studying, searching out, and inquiring himself, he incited others ; and in the letters he writes to Pennant and Barrington, he often asks questions, starts sub- jects for discussion, and brings forward objects new to the existing knowledge of the physical character of the district ; and it is very important that all those should be explained to the young reader, or to the person perhaps only entering upon the study of nature, and this it will be our object to do in any notes and commentary we may now add, and which can be done we think sufficiently for every purpose, even by one who has not seen the place or resided in the district. But there are other phenomena, which can only be illustrated by one who is resident, and has resided for some time, and continuously upon the spot. Sixty years, however short that time may appear, will produce important differences in particular localities; even during White's incumbency he complains of the changes that are occurring, and the disturbance to the " Ferae naturae," the increase or destruction of wood, acts remarkably on the Fauna and Flora and on the climate ; so does drainage, particularly that of any larger piece of water, and cultivation influences very materially the habits of the wild animals. Do the stone curlews now abound as they did in White's time, and is their shrill whistle yet heard at the parsonage ? Do the ring-ousels still find their resting places as formerly, are all the summer visitants yet found, and have no new ones been added and become common ? How does the meteorology now agree with White's tables ? What are the changes in the Hanger and in Wolmer Forest 1 these are all subjects for Professor Bell's edition, besides many others which the place itself will suggest, and which he will not omit to introduce. Meanwhile, let those who wish to hand down the annals of their own districts, study to follow White's example, xii INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. describe everything simply and truthfully, — record only as facts such as are known and can be proved to be such, — and never forget that one hand only fashioned all the objects which it gives them pleasure and interest to observe, and that the same power regulates their continuance or change. No pains have been spared by the publishers of the present edition to illustrate it fully. An artist, Mr. Pearson, was sent to Selborne to procure authentic sketches of the village and surrounding country, so that these may be depended upon as faithful representations, and not mere copies from previous engravings. These have also been accompanied by some notes describing the present condition of Selborne, which cannot fail to be interesting. " Selborne has probably suffered as little from change as any village that has obtained a similar celebrity. It has been so often described in former editions of White's fascinating and instructive volume, that any farther account of its present aspect might appear unnecessary, yet in some few particulars it may be interesting to note the result of a recent visit The first view of Selborne obtained by the visitor as he approaches the village from the New Elton road is peculiarly striking. The church and vicarage with a few of the houses lie embosomed among trees in the valley ; beyond these a small wooded park belonging to the residence of White extends to the " Hanger," or hanging wood, which is a striking feature in this locality. This wood, composed of luxuriant beech-trees, rises on the side of a steep hill to a great height, appearing to overhang the village and giving to the landscape a particular and striking beauty. Nore Hill, seen upon the left, is also a richly wooded eminence, divided from the Hanger by an undulating slope." The above is descriptive of the view placed at the commence- ment of our Introductory remarks. The view which has been selected as a frontispiece to this volume, and apparently taken from some point at no great distance from that chosen by the modern artist, is copied from the large engraving published with the first and original 4to edition, and upon comparing the one with the other it will be at once seen that there can be comparatively very little change, except such as would necessarityoccur by the growth of the timber and other unavoidable natural circumstances. " In looking along the village street of Selborne the ' Queen's Arms ' is seen upon the left, the chief inn of the place, where the visitor will be hospitably entertained ; but upon the right is INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. xiii the habitation which no pilgrim to this favourite locality will contemplate without extreme interest. It is the residence of the naturalist himself, remaining almost in the same condition externally as when tenanted by him. One wing has been added since his death, and this has been built in exact keeping with the other portions, and the present distinguished occupier has admirably improved the grounds and park behind the house without diminishing the interest attached to the locality by altering its leading features. The house as seen from behind BACK VIEW OF WHITE'S HOUSE. presents the appearance of a manorial residence, and with its walls covered with ivy and creeping plants, and its many roofs discoloured by the lapse of time, gives just that impression which one would wish to receive of the residence of our author. At the end of the lawn, opposite the house, stands White's sun- dial, set up and used by himself, and here also are pointed out the great oak-tree and juniper-tree referred to in his letters. The space from the lawn to the foot of the ' Hanger ' is occupied by a park now much improved." It has not been mentioned by any of his later editors whether the original manuscript of White's letters yet exist, and if so by whom they are possessed — neither are we aware of the preserva- tion of any of John's collections, or of the correspondence of his other brothers, and if we except the remains of the old tortoise xiv INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. and the picture of the hybrid pheasant by Elmer, which we learn from Mr. Bennet are still preserved in his former habita- WHITE'S SUN-DIAL. tion, few personal relics remain. His worth was not known until he had himself passed away, but his friends and relations may rejoice that in the simple annals of Selborne he has left a far more imperishable memorial than any that could have been erected by his most attached friends or wellwishers. WHITE'S TOMBSTONE IN CHURCHYARD. CONTENTS. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 1 THE ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE 201 OBSERVATIONS ON VARIOUS PARTS OF NATURE .... 267 SUMMARY OF THE WEATHER 307 A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE NATURALIST'S CALENDAR AS KEPT BY THE LATE GILBERT WHITE AND WILLIAM MARKWICK, ESQ. 313 POEMS SELECTED FROM THE MSS. OF THE REV. GILBERT WHITE , 331 LIST OE ILLUSTRATIONS. FRONTISPIECE — GENERAL VIEW OF SELBORNE. PAGE OLD VIEW OF SELBORNE ..'.... WELL-HEAD . . . . 3 WYCH ELM 5 OSTREA CARINATA 7 HOLLOW LANE ... ^. 10 ROCKY HOLLOW LANE 13 WOLMER FOREST 14 TEAL AND WIDGEON 21 WILD BOAR 23 WATER-RAT 26 HOOPOE 27 MILLER'S THUMB AND STICKLE-BACK 28 PIPISTRELLE AND LONG-EARED BAT 29 HARVEST MICE 30 BOHEMIAN WAX-WING 31 ORIFICE IN FALLOW-DEER 35 WEASEL .... 37 ABUM ... . ib. THE NUTHATCH 41 WATER-NEWTS 43 BLIND WORM 44 SANDPIPER 48 BING OUSEL 49 COCKCHAFFER 55 STONE CURLEW'S EGG 59 WOODCHAT 6) SNOW-FLECK 61 HEDGEHOG 63 HEAD OF MOOSE DEER 64 TROUT , 67 OTTER ib. ROCK SWALLOW 70 xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE 1. ATHALIA CENTIFOLIA. 2. BLACK DOLPHIN. 3. HALTICA NEMOKUM . . 73 HEADS OF EELS 81 STOCK DOVE 87 CUCKOO 97 REED-BUNTING 101 SPOTTED FLYCATCHER 113 1. HIPPOBOSCA HIRUNDINIS. 2. NIRMI 116 ESCULENT SWALLOW ' 127 WHITE-BELLIED SWIFT . 133 RUSH-HOLDER 142 SHREW-MOUSE . 144 RAVEN 164 RIVULET IN SHORT LITHE 172 MOLE-CRICKET 175 LONG-LEGGED PLOVER 177 MARTIN 184 SELBORNE CHURCH AND VICARAGE 204 VILLAGE PLEYSTOW 221 IRON KEY OF ANCIENT CONSTRUCTION 240 STEEL HINGE WITH GRIFFIN ON IT ib. OLD COINS 241 ENCAUSTIC TILES, NOW FORMING THE FLOOR OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE IN THE FARM-HOUSE GARDEN . 245 STONE COFFIN, KEPT IN THE FARM-HOUSE GARDEN 247 LEADEN TAP 249 PRIORY FARM-HOUSE , 261 PRIORY SEAL 265 COCKCHAFFER 288 PHALJENA QUERCUS 290 SPHYNX OCELLATA 291 GLOW-WORMS . 296 PLATES. GREAT BAT— HONEY BUZZARD. PEREGRINE FALCON — HYBRID PHEASANT. VIPER'S HEAD — TORTOISE. FALLOW DEER— RED DEER— STONE CURLEW. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, LETTEE I* TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. THE parish of Selborne lies in the extreme eastern corner of the county of Hampshire, bordering on the county of Sussex, and not far from the county of Surrey ; is about fifty miles south-west of London, in latitude fifty-one, and near mid-way between the towns of Alton and Petersfield. Being very large and extensive it abuts on twelve parishes, two of which are in Sussex, vie., Trotton and Rogate. If you begin from the south * The first series of Mr. White's Letters are addressed to Pennant, and run over a period of several years, during which that gentleman was engaged in writing his British Zoology; whether they were originally commenced as real letters between friends and naturalists, and were afterwards brought together for publication we are unable to say. Some bear the stamp of replies to actual letters, but when the idea of publication was fixed upon, it is probable that others may have been introduced, and such, as this first one written as intro- ductory to his parochial history. Mr. White tells us that they are published with the view of "laying before the public his idea of a Parochial History, which he thinks ought to consist of natural productions and occurrences as well as antiquities." (See Advertisement.) It is from such materials and records as these that the most complete County Histories might be drawn, axid he remarks that such are still wanting in several parts of the kingdom. In 1853 the same remark would continue to apply. The parish registers do not always go so far back, and have not always at an early period been kept with that exactness which White would have recommended, and it is often difficult to trace the origin of some old custom or pastime, or the etymology of some of the apparently now meaningless names of places, farms, or villages. Accordingly, in this his first ' letter, he at once goes into the necessary, though to some the dry and more tedious information, of the boundaries and situation of the parish ; some of its statistics, produce, springs, with a slight sketch of its geology and physical character. This is one of the few letters where the geology of the district is touched upon, and in only one of the numerous editions has this been explained ; Mr. Bennet is the only editor who seems to have examined it for himself and to him, as others have done we must apply for information. This is necessary, as upon the explanation depends the proper understanding of several 2 NATURAL HISTOEY OF SELBORNE. and proceed westward, the adjacent parishes are Emshot, Newton Yalence, Faringdon, Harteley Mauduit, Great Ward le ham, Kingsley, Hadleigh, Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lyffe, and Greatham. The soils of this district are almost as various and diversified as the views and aspects. The high part of the south-west consists of a vast hill of chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village, and is divided into a sheep-down, the high wood and a long hanging wood, called The Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech, the most lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The down, or sheep- walk, is a pleasing park-like spot, of about one mile by half that space, jutting out on the verge of the hill-country, where it begins to break down into the plains, and commanding a very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, wood-lands, heath, and water. The prospect is bounded to the south-east and east by the vast range of mountains called the Sussex Downs, by Guild-down near Guildford, and by the Downs round Dorking, and Ryegate in Surrey, to the north-east, which altogether, with the country beyond Alton and Farnham, form a noble and extensive outline. At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the uplands, lies the village, which consists of one single straggling street, three quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running parallel with The Hanger. The houses are divided from the hill by a vein of stiff clay (good wheat-land), yet stand on a rock of white stone, little in appear- ance removed from chalk ; but seems so far from being calcareous, that it endures extreme heat. Yet that the freestone still preserves some- what that is analogous to chalk, is plain from the beeches which descend as low as those rocks extend, and no farther, and thrive as well on them, where the ground is steep, as on the chalks. The cart-way of the village divides, in a remarkable manner, two very incongruous soils. To the south-west is a rank clay, that requires of White's remarks and expressions in the other parts of his work. Mr. Bennet writes in his note to page 5 of his edition ; "The parish of Selborne is situated in the lower part of the chalk formation, and embraces within it the upper members of the Weald. These are well displayed as they occur in succession, forming strips which run along the parish from north to south : in crossing it from east to west each of the strata is visited in the order of their superposition. They are four in number; comprising the chalk, the upper green-sand, the gault, and the lower green-sand. The chalk constitutes the mass of the Selborne hill, which is covered towards the village by the Hanger. Next in succession to the chalk is the formation technically known as the upper green-sand, designated in the text, ' freestone, or fires tone.' Below the rock of the upper green-sand formation is the gault, generally presenting a uniform lev*l, of the most fertile character; within Selborne it exists only as a perfect flat, but to the north in the forest of the Holt, it rises into hills. Last of the Selborne strata is the lower green-sand, which rises immediately east of the gault into ridges of various elevations, having usually a direction not very dissimilar to that of the Hanger." White also in this letter shows his appreciation of the beautiful, in celebrating the appearance of the beech tree, which grows with such peculiar grace or elegance on the chalk or oolite formations, and in spring forms groves of the freshest green. We have elsewhere stated that we thought other trees possessed more elegance of form, but this is a matter of mere taste and opinion, and need not be entered upon here ; certainly in spring it is preeminent for its enlivening green, and in autumn it exhibits a foliage of the warmest tints. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 3 the labour of years to render it mellow ; while the gardens to the north- east, and small enclosures behind, consist of a warm, forward, crumbling mould, called black malm, which seems highly saturated with vegetable and animal manure ; and these may perhaps have been the original site of the town ; while the woods and coverts might extend down to the opposite bank. At each end of the village, which runs from south-east to north-west, arises a small rivulet : that at the north-west end frequently fails ; but the other is a fine perennial spring, little influenced by drought or wet seasons, called Well-head.* This breaks out of some high grounds join- WELL-HEAD. ing to Nore Hill, a noble chalk promontory, remarkable for sending forth two streams into two different seas. The one to the south becomes a branch of the Arun, running to Arundel, and so sailing into the British Channel : the other to the north. The Selborne stream makes one branch of the Wey ; and, meeting the Black-down stream at * This spring produced, September 10, 1781, after a severe hot summer, and a preceding dry spring and winter, nine gallons of water in a minute, which is 640 in an hour, and 12,960, or 216 hogsheads, in twenty-four hours, or one natural day. At this time many of the wells failed, and all the ponds in the vale were dry. The "Well Head," as represented in the vignette, "breaks out of the land at the foot of the Hanger, and spreading into a picturesque pond contracts again into a narrow stream, which flows past the village, and swells into a river at Godalming." B 2 4 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. Hedleigh, and the Alton and Farnham stream at Tilford-bridge, swells into a considerable river, navigable at Godalming; from whence it passes to Guilford, and so into the Thames at Weybridge ; and thus at the Nore into the German Ocean. Our wells, at an average, run to about sixty-three feet, and when sunk to that depth seldom fail ; but produce a fine limpid water, soft to the taste, and much commended by those who drink the pure element, but which does not lather well with soap. To the north-west, north and east of the village, is a range of fair enclosures, consisting of what is called a white malm, a sort of rotten or rubble stone, which, when turned up to the frost and rain, moulders to pieces, and becomes manure to itself.* Still on to the north-east, and a step lower, is a kind of white land, neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough, yet kindly for hops, which root deep in the freestone, and have their poles and wood for charcoal growing just at hand. The white soil produces the brightest hops. As the parish still inclines down towards Wolmer-forest, at the juncture of the clays and sand the soil becomes a wet, sandy loam, remarkable for timber, and infamous for roads. The oaks of Temple and Blackmoor stand high in the estimation of purveyors, and have furnished much naval timber ; while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shaky, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing. Beyond the sandy loam the soil becomes a hungry lean sand, till it mingles with the forest ; and will produce little without the assistance of lime and turnips. LETTEE II. TO THE SAME. IN the court of Norton farm-house, a manor farm to the north-west of the village, on the white malms, stood within these twenty years a broad-leaved elm, or wych hazel, uLmus folio latissimo scabro of Ray, which, though it had lost a considerable leading bough in the great storm in the year 1703, equal to a moderate tree, yet, when felled, contained eight loads of timber ; and, being too bulky for a carriage, was sawn off at seven feet above the butt, where it measured near eight feet in the diameter. This elm I mention to show to what a bulk planted elms may attain ; as this tree must certainly have been such from its situation, f * This soil produces good wheat and clover. f Mr. White seems to have adopted no plan or rule in arranging the subjects of these letters. They are taken up as they occur or have been observed. This may have its advantages, as recording the observations when freshly made, or before the memory had failed, but a correspondence or journal kept in this way would almost require for the sake of convenience to have the subjects brought more together. Thus there are frequent observations afterwards upon the NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. In the centre of the village, and near the church, is a square piece ot forestry of Selborne, while here we have now only some of the more remarkable trees noted. The wych elm, the first tree alluded to has been a subject always annotated upon, this species being far less commonly grown in England than in Scotland. In the former country it is supplanted almost entirely by the small-leaved or English elm, as it is commonly named, a tree which reaches a large size, and of which there are magnificent specimens in our public parks or promenades ; but it produces a wood of inferior quality, and as it is now planted in the hedge- rows of the small enclosures of the south, it must very materially injure the crops by its spreading roots, which shoot up and would soon cover the ground. The tree mentioned in this letter is the ulmus campestris, Linn, it yields a timber valuable for various agricultural purposes, and is esteemed for making naves for cart-wheels ; it is of a more spreading character than the others, and often attains to a large size. The Selborne elm, though of less size than some others, the measurements of which have been recorded, must have been a large and very fine tree. The oak trees mentioned in the latter part of this letter gained their peculiar character by being very thickly planted, and as it might be called "neglected." According to our notion of timber management thinning is indispensable, but to obtain trees of the kind alluded to, the thicker they can be grown, the better. Beech trees with a clean stem of from fifty to seventy feet are very valuable for keel pieces, but the practice of growing wood of any kind in this way has scarcely been practised. Larch planted for hop-poles, or sweet chesnut grown for. the same purpose, are treated in this manner ; and what in commerce is called Norway poles, are I believe the first thinnings of the Baltic forests, which NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. ground surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called " The Plestor." * In the midst of this spot stood, in old times, a vast oak, with a short squat body, and huge horizontal arms extending 'almost to the extremity of the area. This venerable tree, surrounded with stone steps, and seats above them, was the delight of old and young, and a place of much resort in summer evenings ; where the former sat in grave debate, while the latter frolicked and danced before them. Long might it have stood, had not the amazing tempest in 1703 overturned it at once, to the infinite regret of the inhabitants, and the vicar, who bestowed several pounds in setting it in its place again : but all his care could not avail ; the tree sprouted for a time, then withered and died. This oak I mention to show to what a bulk planted oaks also may arrive : and planted this tree must certainly have been, as will appear from what will be said farther concerning this area, when we enter on the antiquities of Selborne. On the Blackmoor estate there is a small wood called Losel's, of a few acres, that was lately furnished with a set of oaks of a peculiar growth and great value; they were tall and taper like firs, but standing near together had very small heads, only a little brush without any large limbs. About twenty years ago the bridge at the Toy, near Hampton Court, being much decayed, some trees were wanted for the repairs that were fifty feet long without bough, and would measure twelve inches diameter at the little end. Twenty such trees did a purveyor find in this little wood, with this advantage, that many of them answered the description at sixty feet. These trees were sold for twenty pounds apiece. In the centre of this grove there stood an oak, which, though shapely and tall on the whole, bulged out into a large excrescence about the middle of the stem. On this a pair of ravens had fixed their residence for such a series of years, that the oak was distinguished by the title of the Raven Tree. Many were the attempts of the neighbouring youths to get at this eyry : the difficulty whetted their inclinations, and each was ambitious of surmounting the arduous task. But, when they arrived at the swelling, it jutted out so in their way, and was so far beyond their grasp, that the most daring lads were awed, and acknowledged the undertaking to be too hazardous : so the ravens built on, nest upon nest, in perfect security, till the fatal day arrived in which the wood was to be levelled. It was in the month of February, when these birds usually sit. The saw was applied to the butt, — the wedges were inserted into the opening, — the woods echoed to the heavy blow of the beetle or malle or mallet,— the tree nodded to its fall ; but still the dam sat on. At last, when it gave way, the bird was flung from her nest; and, though her parental affection deserved a better fate, was whipped down by the twigs, which brought her dead to the ground.f have been spindled up by the more vigorou of thickness, and which in all probability would have been ultimately killed. * s trees to great length and uniformity ility Vide the plate in the antiquities. t We have always found the raven, whether nesting upon a rock or upon tree, most unapproachable after she had been disturbed or alarmed. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. LET TEE III. TO THE SAME. THE fossil-shells of this district, and sorts of stone, such as have fallen within my observation, must not be passed over in silence. And first I must mention, as a great curiosity, a specimen that was ploughed up in the chalky fields, near the side of the Down, and given to me for the singularity of its appearance, which, to an incurious eye, seems like a petrified fish of about four inches long, the cardo passing for an head and mouth. It is in reality a bivalve of the Linnaean Genus of Mytilus OSTREA CARINATA. and the species of Crista Galli; called by Lister, Rastellum ; by Rumphius, Ostreum plicatum minus ; by D'Argenville, Auris Porci, s. Crista Galli; and by those who make collections, Cock's Comb. Though I applied to several such in London, I never could meet with an entire specimen ; nor could I ever find in books any engraving from a perfect one. In the superb museum at Leicester House permission was given me to examine for this article ; and, though I was disap- pointed as to the fossil, I was highly gratified with the sight of several of the shells themselves in high preservation. This bivalve is only known to inhabit the Indian ocean, where it fixes itself to a zoophyte, known by the name Gorgonia. The curious foldings of the suture the one into the other, the alternate flutinge or grooves, and the curved form of my specimen being much easier expressed by the pencil than by words, I have caused it to be drawn and engraved.* * Our author was mistaken in referring this fossil to the Mytilus crista galli of Linnaeus. Mr. Bennet, who has explained the subject in a note to his edition 8 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. Cornua Ammonia are very common about this village. As we were cutting an inclining path up the Hanger, the labourers found them frequently on that steep, just under the soil, in the chalk, and of a considerable size. In the lane above "Wall-head, in the way to Emshot, they abound in the bank in a darkish sort of marl ; and are usually very small and soft : but in Clay's Pond, a little farther on, at the end of the pit, where the soil is dug out for manure, I have occasionally observed them of large dimensions, perhaps fourteen or sixteen inches in diameter. But as these did not consist of firm stone, but were formed of a kind of terra lapidosa, or hardened clay, as soon as they were exposed to the rains and frost they mouldered away. These seemed as if they were a very recent production. In the chalk-pit, at the north-west end of the Hanger, large nautili are sometimes observed. In the very thickest strata of our freestone, and at considerable depths, well-diggers often find large scallops or pectines, having both shells deeply striated, and ridged and furrowed alternately. They are highly impregnated with, if not wholly composed of, the stone of the quarry. LETTEE IY. TO THE SAME. As in a former letter the freestone of this place has been only mentioned incidentally, I shall here become more particular. This stone is in great request for hearth-stones, and the beds of ovens : and in lining of lime-kilns it turns to good account ; for the workmen use sandy loam instead of mortar ; the sand of which fluxes,* and runs by the intense heat, and so cases over the whole face of the kiln with a strong vitrified coat-like glass, that it is well preserved from injuries of weather, and endures thirty or forty years. When chiseled smooth, it makes elegant fronts for houses, equal in colour and grain to the Bath stone; and superior in one respect, that, when seasoned, it does not scale. Decent chimney-pieces are worked from it of much closer and finer grain than Portland ; and rooms are floored with it ; but it proves rather too soft for this purpose. It is a freestone cutting in all directions ; yet has something of a grain parallel with the horizon, and therefore should not be surbedded, but laid in the same position that it grows in the quarry.f On the ground abroad this of Selborne, refers it to the Ostrea carinata of Lamarck, a species peculiar to the green-sand formation, upon which the village of Selborne is built, and which from its white colour would be easily confounded with the chalk, especially at a time when geology was much less attended to than at present. * There may probably be also in the chalk itself that is burnt for lime a proportion of sand : for few chalks are so pure as to have none. t To surled stone is to set it edgewise, contrary to the posture it had in the quarry, says Dr Plot, " Oxfordshire," p. 77. But surbedding does not succeed in our dry walls ; neither do we use it so in ovens, though he says it is best for Teynton stone. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 9 firestone will not succeed for pavements, because, probably some degree of saltness prevailing within it, the rain tears the slabs to pieces.* Though this stone is too hard to be acted on by vinegar, yet both the white part, and even the blue rag, ferments strongly in mineral acids. Though the white stone will not bear wet, yet in every quarry at intervals there are thin strata of blue rag, which resist rain and frost ; and are excellent for pitching of stables, paths and courts, and for building of dry walls against banks, a valuable species of fencing much in use in this village, and for mending of roads. This rag is rugged and stubborn, and will not hew to a smooth face, but is very durable ; yet, as these strata are shallow and lie deep, large quantities cannot be procured but at considerable expense. Among the blue rags turn up some blocks tinged with a stain of yellow or rust colour, which seem to be nearly as lasting as the blue ; and every now and then balls of a friable substance, like rust of iron, called rust balls. In Wolmer Forest I see but one sort of stone, called by the workmen sand, or forest-stone. This is generally of the colour of rusty iron, and might probably be worked as iron ore ; is very hard and heavy, and of a firm, compact texture, and composed of a small roundish crystalline grit, cemented together by a brown, terrene, ferruginous matter ; will not cut without difficulty, nor easily strike fire with steel. Being often found in broad flat pieces, it makes good pavement for paths about houses, never becoming slippery in frost or rain ; is excellent for dry- walls, and is sometimes used in buildings. In many parts of that waste it lies scattered on the surface of the ground; but is dug on Weaver's Down, a vast hill on the eastern verge of that forest, where the pits are shallow and the stratum thin. This stone is imperishable. From a notion of rendering their work the more elegant, and giving it a finish, masons chip this stone into small fragments about the size of the head of a large nail, and then stick the pieces into the wet mortar along the joints of their freestone walls ; this embellishment carries an odd appearance, and has occasioned strangers sometimes to ask us pleasantly, " whether we fastened our walls together with ten- penny nails." * " Firestone is full of salts, and has no sulphur: must be close-grained, and have no interstices. Nothing supports fire like salts ; saltstone perishes exposed to wet and frost."— PLOT'S Staff, p. 152. 10 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. HOLLOW LANE. LETTEK Y. TO THE SAME. AMONG the singularities of this place the two rocky hollow lanes, the one to Alton, and the other to the forest, deserve our attention. These roads, running through the malm lands, are, by the traffic of ages, and the fretting of water, worn down through the first stratum of our freestone, and partly through the second ; so that they look more like water-courses than roads ; and are bedded with naked rag for furlongs together. In many places they are reduced sixteen or eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields ; and after floods, and in frosts, exhibit very grotesque and wild appearances, from the tangled roots that are twisted among the strata, and from the torrents rushing down their broken sides ; and especially when those cascades are frozen into icicles, hanging in all the fanciful shapes of frost-work. These rugged gloomy scenes affright the ladies when they peep down into them from the paths above, and make timid horsemen shudder while they ride NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 11 along them ; but delight the naturalist with their various botany, and particularly with their curious filices with which they abound. The manor of Selborne, was it strictly looked after, with all its kindly aspects, and all its sloping coverts, would swarm with game ; even now hares, partridges, and pheasants abound ; and in old days woodcocks were as plentiful. There are few quails, because they more affect open fields than enclosures ; after harvest some few land- rails are seen. The parish of Selborne, by taking in so much of the forest, is a vast district. Those who tread the bounds are employed part of three days in the business, and are of opinion that the outline, in all its curves and indentings, does not comprise less than thirty miles. The village stands in a sheltered spot, secured by the Hanger from the strong westerly winds. The air is soft, but rather moist from the effluvia of so many trees ; yet perfectly healthy and free from agues. The quantity of rain that falls on it is very considerable, as may be supposed in so woody and mountainous a district. As my experience in measuring the water is but of short date, I am not qualified to give the mean quantity.* I only know that Inch. Hund. From May 1, 1779, to the end of the year there fell . 28 37 ! Jan. 1, 1780, to Jan. 1 Jan. 1, 1781, to Jan. 1 Jan. 1, 1782, to Jan. 1 Jan. 1, 1783, to Jan. 1 Jan. 1, 1784, to Jan. 1 Jan.], 1785, to Jan. 1 Jan. 1, 1786, to Jan. 1 1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 27 32 30 71 50 26! 33 71 33 80 1786 . . . . . . 31 55 1787 . 39 57f The village of Selborne, and large hamlet of Oakhanger, with the single farms, and many scattered houses along the verge of the forest, contain upwards of six hundred and seventy inhabitants. J * A very intelligent gentleman1 assures me (and he speaks from upwards of forty years experience), that the mean rain of any place cannot be ascertained till a person has measured it for a very long period. " If I had only measured the rain," says he, " for the four first years, from 1740 to 1743, I should have said the mean rain at Lyndon was 16£ inches for the year; if from 1740 to 1750, 18i inches. The mean rain before 1763 was 20i inches, from 1763 and since *25i inches, from 1770 to 3780, 26 inches. If only 1773, 1774 and 1775, had been measured, Lyndon mean rain would have been called 32 inches. t Mr. Bennet has given a continuation of the register of the rain-gauge up to 1793. Some of the years show a greater quantity than any of the previous ones, except 1782. Three of them considerably above 40, the last 48 '56. J A STATE OF THE PARISH OF SELBORNE, TAKEN OCTOBER 4, 1783. The number of tenements or families, 136. The number of inhabitants in the street is 313 ) Total 676; near five inhabitants In the rest of the parish . . . . 363 J to each tenement. In the time of the Rev. Gilbert White, Vicar, who died in 1727-8, the number of inhabitants was computed at about 500. 1 The intelligent gentleman, referred to in the author's note to this letter, was Thomas Barker, of an ancient and respectable family in the county of Eutland, brother-in-law to Mr. White. The vignettes at commencement and conclusion of the letter represent those hollow lanes so quaintly alluded to in its first paragraph. 12 NATUEAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. We abound with poor ; many of whom are sober and industrious, and live comfortably in good stone or brick cottages, which are glazed, and Average of baptisms for 60 years. From 1720 to 1729, both years inclus From 1730 to) M1 fi 1739, both j-^g6; ;0) Males 6, 9) 3 J Fern. 6,0 1 ,9q 12'9 years inclus. . From 1740 to 1749 incl. jF-6»6 )M ,- „) [M'HU, j *• 8'1) ,7 From 1760 From 1770 1779^1 From 1750 to 1759 incl. Total of baptisms of Males . . 515 ) .,.» „ „ Females . . 465) Total of baptisms from 1720 to 1779, both inclusive, 60 years M 18,0 20,3 Average of burials for 60 years. From 1720 to )M , . R) 1729, both VMales J'H 9,9 years inclus. )Fem- 6' 1) From 1730 to") ,, , Q) 1732, both [M,±SHU,6 years inclus. JFem> 5» 8J From 1740 ) to V 1749 incl. ) From 1750 ) to [ 1759 incl. j > « a -3»8 From 1760 to 1769 incl. From 1770 )M . to VM- 2' 1779 incl. JF- 6« Total of burials of Males Females 315 325 640 640 Total of burials from 1720 to 1779, both inclusive, 60 years . Baptisms exceed burials by more than one third. Baptisms of Males exceed Females by one tenth, or one in ten. Burials of Females exceed Males by one in thirty. It appears that a child, born and bred in this parish, has an equal chance to live above forty years. Twins thirteen tunes, many of whom dying young have lessened the chance for Chances for life in men and women appear to be equal. A TABLE OF THE BAPTISMS, BURIALS, AND MARRIAGES, FROM JANUARY 2, 1761, TO DECEMBER 25, 1780, IN THE PARISH OF SELBORNE. 1761 1762 . 1763 1764 . 1765 1766 . 1767 1768 . 1769 . 1770 . 1771 . 1772 . 1773 1774 . , . 1775 1776 . 1777 . 1778 . 1779 1780 . During this period of twenty years the births of males exceeded those of females i n BAPTISMS. BURIALS. MAR. M F. Tot. M. F. Tot. 8 10 18 2 4 6 3 7 8 15 10 14 24 6 8 10 18 3 4 7 5 11 9 20 10 8 18 6 12 6 18 9 7 16 6 9 13 22 10 6 16 4 14 5 19 6 5 11 2 7 6 13 2 5 7 6 9 14 23 6 5 11 2 10 13 23 4 7 11 3 10 6 16 3 4 7 4 11 10 21 6 10 16 3 8 5 13 7 5 12 3 6 13 19 2 8 10 1 20 7 27 13 8 21 6 11 10 21 4 6 10 6 8 13 21 7 3 10 4 7 13 20 3 4 7 5 14 8 22 5 6 11 5 8 9 17 11 4 15 3 198 1S8 386 123 123 246 83 females The burials of each sex were equal. And the births exceeded the deaths . 10 140 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOKNE. 13 have chambers above 'stairs : mud buildings we have none. Besides the employment from husbandry, the men work in hop-gardens, of which we have many ; and fell and bark timber. In the spring and summer the women weed the corn ; and enjoy a second harvest in September by hop-picking. Formerly, in the dead months they availed themselves greatly by spinning wool, for making of barragons, a genteel corded stuff, much in vogue at that time for summer wear ; and chiefly manufactured at Alton, a neighbouring town, by some of the people called Quakers : but from circumstances this trade is at an end.* The inhabitants enjoy a good share of health and longevity ; and the parish swarms with children. * Since the passage above was written, I am happy in being able to say that the spinning employment is a little revived, to the no small comfort of the industrious housewife. KOCKY HOLLOW LANE. 14 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. WOLMER FOREST. LETTER VI. TO THE SAME. SHOULD I omit to describe with some exactness the forest of Wolmer, of which three-fifths perhaps lie in this parish, my account of Selborne would be very imperfect, as it is a district abounding with many curious productions, both animal and vegetable ; and has often afforded me much entertainment both as a sportsman and as a naturalist. The royal forest of Wolmer is a tract of land of about seven miles in length, by two and a half in breadth, running nearly from north to south, and is abutted on, to begin to the south, and so to proceed eastward, by the parishes of Greatham, Lysse, Kogate, and Trotton, in the county of Sussex ; by Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty consists entirely of sand covered with heath and fern ; but is somewhat diversified with hills and dales, without having one standing tree in the whole extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees; though Dr. Plot says positively,* that "there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the southern counties." But he was mistaken : for I myself have seen cottages on the verge of this wild * See his " History of Staffordshire." NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 15 district, whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or some such instruments : but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so well examined, that none has been found of late.* Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants called fir : but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them ; and therefore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic tree. This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but breed there in the summer ; such as lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered within these few years, teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good seasons on the verge of this forest, into which they love to make excursions : and in particular, in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they swarmed to such a degree that parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a day. But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting flying became so common, and that was the heath-cock, black-game, or grouse. When I was a little boy I recollect one coming now and then to my father's table. The last pack remembered was killed about thirty-five years ago ; and within these ten years one solitary greyhen was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The sportsmen cried out, "A hen pheasant;" but a gentleman present, who had often seen grouse in the north of England, assured me that it was a greyhen.f * Old people have assured me, that on a winter's morning they have discovered these trees, in the bogs, by the hoar frost, which lay longer over the space where they are concealed than in the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem to be a fanciful notion, but consistent with true philosophy. Dr. Hales saith, " That the warmth of the earth, at some depth under ground, has an influence in promoting a thaw, as well as the change of the weather from a freezing to a thawing state, is manifest, from this observation, viz., Nov. 29, 1731, a little snow having fallen in the night, it was, by eleven the next morning, mostly melted away on the surface of the earth, except in several places in Bushy Park, where there were drains dug and covered with earth, on which the snow continued to lie, whether those drains were full of water or dry ; as also where elm-pipes lay under ground : a plain proof this, that those drains intercepted the warmth of the earth from ascending from greater depths below them ; for the snow lay where the drain had more than four feet depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie on thatch, tiles, and the tops of walls."— See Hales's " Hsemastatics, " p. 360. QUERY, Might not such observations be reduced to domestic use, by promoting the discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about houses ; and in Roman stations and camps lead to the finding of pavements, baths and graves, and other hidden relics of curious antiquity? t The vignette at the head of Letter VI., represents a view of Wolmer Forest as it now appears, taken from the yard of Temple Farm House. Wolmer Pond is seen upon the right. This letter with the next alludes to subjects of far more interest to the naturalist than would be at first supposed. At the time when White wrote, it may have been considered that a wild " tract," seven miles by two-and-a-half in extent, consisting of moss and muir, heath and fern, would not be worthy of much remark. Fortunately our author viewed it differently, and it was, we have no doubt, one of his " charming places ; " he writes, "it has often afforded 16 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the Fauna Selborniensis ; for another beautiful link in the chain of beings is wanting, I mean the red deer, which toward the beginning of this century amounted to about five hundred head, and made a stately appearance. There is an old keeper, now alive, named Adams, whose great grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation taken in 1635), grand- father, father and self, enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer Forest in succession for more than an hundred years. This person assures me, that his father has often told him, that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the Portsmouth road, did not think the forest of Wolmer beneath her royal regard. For she came out of the great road at Lippock, which is just by, and, reposing herself on a bank smoothed for that purpose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer Pond, and still called Queen's Bank, saw with great complacency and satisfaction the whole herd of red deer brought by the keepers along the vale before her, consisting then of about five hundred head. A sight this, worthy the attention of the greatest sovereign ! But he farther adds that, by means of the Waltham blacks or, to use his own expression, as soon as me much entertainment both as a sportsman and as a naturalist." With how much interest will the present proprietor of Selborne, or any one who can follow the feeling of these letters, now visit Wolmer Forest, and compare its present state with the above description. Such facts as those recorded by White, are invaluable to either zoologist or botanist, and the reclamation there, with the great changes which have taken place incident to the increase of population and other causes, — the change almost from desolation to cultivation, must have materially affected the existence and distribution of the wild animals and plants. In a series of years where attention has been given to the results of these unavoidable changes, we have seen some species extirpated and others assume their places. The influence of population on the existence and geographical distribution of animal and vegetable life, with all its attendant circumstances of commerce, and the necessity for increasing human food by cultivation, though comparatively unperceived, is not so very slow in its results ; fifty years may almost entirely change the zoology and botany of a district, and within such limited bounds as Wolmer Forest, the extirpation of the black game would easily occur, though cultivation, particularly on the borders of a sub-alpine county, is rather favourable than the reverse for this game. Drainage makes a most important change on the wild vegetation : a large extent of new plantation in the growth of half a century will materially affect the character of a county, by rendering it a suitable abode for animals, birds, and insects before unknown to it, and so would the cutting down of extensive old woods destroy or drive away other species that delighted only in them. But population and cultivation bring other evils attendant upon themselves. They extirpate or reduce the numbers of the rapacious animals, and allow the increase of others, which naturally follow and accommodate themselves to the circumstances, finding a more abundant supply of food. Rabbits have followed cultivation, and are often exceedingly injurious, their rapid increase rendering their extirpation no easy matter. Books accom- pany cultivation, are familiar birds, and accommodate themselves easily ; they are of immense utility in keeping under various entomological pests that annoy the farmer, but they have in some parts increased most rapidly, and finding in the produce of the land a sure and ample supply of food, they have resorted to that and do occasionally much damage, so much so that in some districts anti-crow associations have been formed for their destruction, and many thousands are annually killed. The indiscriminate destruction of rapacious animals and birds by game-keepers has led to the increase of other species, and of one in particular, the common wood-pigeon ; this bird hi some localities has become exceedingly numerous, assembling in flocks of many hundreds, and in whiter doing very great injury to the turnip crops ; anti-pigeon associations have also been formed, and in Berwickshire no less than 8000 were destroyed in one yeai'. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 17 they began blacking, they were reduced to about fifty head, and so continued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumberland. It is now more than thirty years ago that his highness sent down an huntsman, and six yeoman-prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with gold, attended by the stag-hounds ; ordering them to take every deer in this forest alive, and to convey them in carts to Windsor. In the course of the summer they caught every stag, some of which showed extraordi- nary diversion : but in the following winter, when the hinds were also carried off, such fine chases were exhibited as served the country people for matter of talk and wonder for years afterwards. I saw myself one of the yeoman-prickers single out a stag from the herd, and must confess that it was the most curious feat of activity I ever beheld, superior to anything in Mr. Astley's riding-school. The exertions made by the horse and deer much exceeded all my expectations; though the former greatly excelled the latter in speed. When the devoted deer was separated from his companions, they gave him, by their watches, law, as they called it, for twenty minutes; when, sounding their horns, the stop-dogs were permitted to pursue, and a most gallant scene ensued. LETTEE VII. TO THE SAME. THOUGH large herds of deer do much harm to the neighbourhood, yet the injury to the morals of the people is of more moment than the loss of their crops. The temptation is irresistible ; for most men are sportsmen by constitution : and there is such an inherent spirit for hunting in human nature, as scarce any inhibitions .can restrain. Hence, towards the beginning of this century all this country was wild about deer-steeling. Unless he was a hunter, as they affected to call themselves, no young person was allowed to be possessed of manhood or gallantry. The Waltham blacks at length committed such enor- mities, that government was forced to interfere with that severe and sanguinary act called the " Black Act," * which now comprehends more felonies than any law that ever was framed before. And, therefore, a late Bishop of Winchester, when urged to re-stock Waltham Chase, t refused, from a motive worthy of a prelate, replying " that it had done mischief enough already." £ Our old race of deer-stealers are -hardly extinct yet : it was but a * Statute 9 Geo. I. cap. 22. t This chase remains un-stocked to this day ; the bishop was Dr. Hoadly. t Poaching and its effects are deplored in Letter VII., and the reduction of the stock of deer kept in the forest, the maintenance of which could not be of any very great public or private utility, was then in consequence resolved upon. The propriety of keeping up of the large stock of deer in the royal forests being for these and other reasons at the present time questionable, a reduction was 0 18 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. little while ago that, over their ale, they used to recount the exploits of their youth ; such as watching the pregnant hind to her lair, and, when the calf was dropped, paring its feet with a penknife to the quick to prevent its escape, till it was large and fat enough to be killed ; the shooting at one of their neighbours with a bullet in a turnip-field by moonshine, mistaking him for a deer ; and the losing a dog in the following extraordinary manner : — Some fellows, suspecting that a calf new-fallen was deposited in a certain spot of thick fern, went, with a lurcher, to surprise it ; when the parent-hind rushed out of the brake, and, taking a vast spring with all her feet close together, pitched upon the neck of the dog, and broke it short in two. Another temptation to idleness and sporting was a number of rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks and dry places : but these being incon- venient to the huntsmen, on account of their burrows, when they came to take away the deer, they permitted the country-people to destroy them all. Such forests and wastes, when their allurements to irregularities are removed, are of considerable service to neighbourhoods that verge upon them, by furnishing them with peat and turf for their firing ; with fuel for the burning tbeir lime ; and with ashes for their grasses ; and by maintaining their geese and their stock of young cattle at little or no expense. The manor-farm of the parish of Greatham has an admitted claim, I see (by an old record taken from the Tower of London), of turning all live stock on the forest, at proper seasons, " bidentibus exceptis." * contemplated a few years since ; and a Bill was lately proposed to be introduced into Parliament "to extinguish the right of the crown to stock the New Forest in Hampshire with deer and other wild beasts of the forest, and to empower her Majesty to enclose the several portions of the said Forest." This would have been regretted by White, for the wild and natural character of the county will be changed, and with that a corresponding variation will occur in its inhabitants. On the continent this is carried to a greater and more serious extent. In a book lately published, "Chamois Hunting in Bavaria," it is stated that by the increase ot poaching, and the assumed right of the peasantiy to consider the game as their own, bro\ight on probably by the excessive preservation, and therefore temptation, it has been deemed necessary to extirpate it. In one chase of a circumference of about 60 English miles, a sporting count calculated that he would be able every year to kill 300 roebucks, 80 stags, and 100 chamois, but this was done at some cost. The count kept twenty-four game-keepers picked men, at the commencement of their preservation they shot seven poachers, and one of the keepers who had killed four was himself shot. Where the game was thus abundant and kept up at such a price ! one of those political changes took place which gave the right of shooting to every individual of the community, and the count, some- what to diminish his pecuniary losses, ordered the game to be destroyed. This was done by proprietors and people, and in a very short period the extermination was almost completed. In another chapter the same author writes : " The noble proprietors of the forests bordering the Danube, in the neighbourhood of Donan Stauf, paid every year a considerable sum to the peasants, as indemnity for the damage done to their crops by the game ; and according as the price of corn rose these sums were increased. As the money received was generally more than adequate to the loss sustained, the peasantry were satisfied, and found in the arrangement no cause of complaint; when suddenly, in 1848, although the S receding years the indemnity received by them had been nearly doubled, they iscovered that such a state of things could exist no longer ; and thus, supreme authority ceding to popular will, a general extermination of the game took place throughout the land." * For this privilege the owners of that estate used to pay to the king annually seven bushels of oats. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 19 The reason, I presume, why sheep * are excluded, is, because, bei close grazers, they would pick out all the finest grasses, and hinder the deer from thriving. Though (by statute 4 and 5 W. and Mary, c. 23) " to burn on any waste, between Candlemas and Midsummer, any grig, ling, heath and furze, goss or fern, is punishable with whipping and confinement in the house of correction ; " yet, in this forest, about March or April, according to the dryness of the season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up, that they often get to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes been communicated to the underwoods, woods, and coppices, where great damage has ensued. The plea for these burnings is, that, when the old coat of heath, &c., is consumed, young will sprout up, and afford much tender brouze for cattle ; but, where there is large old furze, the fire, following the roots, consumes the very ground ; so that for hundreds of acres nothing is to be seen but smother and desolation, the whole circuit round looking like the cinders of a volcano ; and, the soil being quite exhausted, no traces of vegetation are to be found for years. These conflagrations, as they take place usually with a north- east or east wind, much annoy this village with their smoke, and often alarm the country ; and, once in particular, I remember that a gentle- man, who lives beyond Andover, coming to my house, when he got on the downs between that town and Winchester, at twenty -five miles distance, was surprised much with smoke and a hot smell of fire ; and concluded that ' Alresford was in flames ; but, when he came to that town, he then had apprehensions for the next village, and so on to the end of his journey. On two of the most conspicuous eminences of this forest stand two arbours or bowers, made of the boughs of oaks ; the one called Waldon Lodge, the other Brimstone Lodge : these the keepers renew annually on the feast of St. Barnabas, taking the old materials for a perquisite. The farm called Blackmoor, in this parish, is obliged to find the posts and brush-wood for the former ; while the farms at Greatham, in rotation, furnish for the latter; and are all enjoined to cut and deliver the materials at the spot. This custom 1 mention, because I look upon it to be of very remote antiquity. * In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept up till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day. c 2 20 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. LETTER VIII. TO THE SAME. § ON the verge of the forest, as it is now circumscribed, are three considerable lakes, two in Oakhanger, of which I have nothing particular to say ; and one called Bin's, or Bean's Pond, which is worthy the attention of a naturalist or a sportsman. For, being crowded at the upper end with willows, and with the carex cespitosa,* it affords such a safe and pleasing shelter to wild ducks, teals, snipes, &c., that they breed there. In the winter this covert is also frequented by foxes, and sometimes by pheasants ; and the bogs produce many curious plants. (For which consult Letter XLI. to Mr. Barrington.) t By a perambulation of Wolmer Forest and the Holt, made in 1635, and the eleventh year of Charles the First (which now lies before me), it appears that the limits of the former are much circum- scribed. For, to say nothing of the farther side, with which I am not so well acquainted, the bounds on this side, in old times, came into Binswood; and extended to the ditch of Ward le Ham Park, in which stands the curious mount called King John's Hill, and Lodge Hill ; and to the verge of Hartley Mauduit, called Mauduit Hatch ; comprehending also Short Heath, Oakhanger, and Oakwoods ; a large district, now private property, though once belonging to the royal domain. It is remarkable that the term purlieu is never once mentioned in this long roll of parchment. It contains, besides the perambulation, a rough estimate of the value of the timbers, which were consider- able, growing at that time in the district of the Holt ; and enumerates the officers, superior and inferior, of those joint forests, for the time being, and their ostensible fees and perquisites. In those days, as at present, there were hardly any trees in Wolmer Forest. Within the present limits of the forest are three considerable lakes, Hogmer, Cranmer, and Wolmer ; all of which are stocked with carp, * I mean that sort which, rising into tall hassocks, is called by the foresters torrets ; a corruption, I suppose, of turrets. NOTK. In the beginning of the summer 1787, the royal forests of Wolmer and Holt were measured by persons sent down by government. t Here is one of those records so useful in a local history. We learn from Mr. Bern let's edition, that Bin's Pond has been drained, and that cattle now graze upon its bed. The character of the place, so correctly yet simply described in this letter, has thus been completely altered, and we see improvement working out the changes alluded to in the note to p. 15. It would be in vain now to look for the plants, or for the water-fowl that found there a "pleasing shelter." The hassocks of carex alluded to, form a very marked feature in such a place ; they are most uncomfortable to walk among, and form a complete cover and shelter to various animals and birds. From age and successive growths, they form high " toirets" with a solid base. The foliage hangs down, and a covered way is formed underneath, where young water-fowl, water rails, &c., can run and escape detection for a long time, even from a dog. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 21 tench, eels, and perch : but the fish do not thrive well, because the water is hungry, and the bottoms are a naked sand. A circumstance respecting these ponds, though by no means peculiar to them, I cannot pass over in silence ; and that is, that instinct by which in summer all the kine, whether oxen, cows, calves, or heifers, retire constantly to the water during the hotter hours ; where, being more exempt from flies, and inhaling the coolness of that element, some belly deep, and some only to mid-leg, they ruminate and solace themselves from about ten in the morning till four in the afternoon, and then return to their feeding. During this great proportion of the day they drop much dung, in which insects nestle ; and so supply food for the fish, which would be poorly subsisted but from this contingency. Thus Nature, who is a great economist, converts the recreation of one animal to the support of another ! Thomson, who was a nice observer of natural occurrences, did not let this pleasing circumstance escape him. He says, in his Summer, "A various group the herds and flocks compose ; on the grassy bank Some ruminating lie ; while others stand Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip The circling surface. " Wolmer Pond, so called, I suppose, for eminence sake, is a vast lake for this part of the world, containing, in its whole circumfereuce, 2646 yards, or very near a mile and an half. The length of the north-west and opposite side is about 704 yards, and the breadth of the south-west end about 456 yards. This measurement, which I caused to be made with good exactness, gives an area of about sixty-six acres, exclusive of a large irregular arm at the north-east corner, which we did not take into the reckoning. TEAL AND WIDGEON. On the face of this expanse of waters, and perfectly secure from fowlers, lie all day long, in the winter season, vast flocks of ducks, teals, 22 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. and widgeons, of various denominations ; where they preen and solace, and rest themselves, till towards sunset, when they issue forth in little parties (for in their natural state they are all birds of the night) to feed in the brooks and meadows ; returning again with the dawn of the morning. Had this lake an arm or two more, and were it planted round with thick covert (for now it is perfectly naked), it might make a valuable decoy. Yet neither its extent, nor the clearness of its water, nor the resort of various and curious fowls, nor its picturesque groups of cattle, can render this meer so remarkable as the great quantity of coins that were found in its bed about forty years ago. But, as such discoveries more properly belong to the antiquities of this place, I shall suppress all particulars for the present, till I enter professedly on my series of letters respecting the more remote history of this village and district. LETTEE IX. TO THE SAME. BY way of supplement, I shall trouble you once more on this subject, to inform you that Wolmer, with her sister forest Ayles Holt, alias Alice Holt,* as it is called in old records, is held by grant from the crown for a term of years. The grantees that the author remembers are Brigadier-General Emanuel Scroope Howe, and his lady, Euperta, who was a natural daughter of Prince Eupert by Margaret Hughes ; a Mr. Mordaunt, of the Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pembroke ; Henry Bilson Legge and lady ; and now Lord Stawell, their son. The lady of General Howe lived to an advanced age, long surviving her husband ; and, at her death, left behind her many curious pieces of mechanism of her father's constructing, who was a distinguished mechanic and artist,t as well as warrior ; and among the rest, a very complicated clock, lately in possession of Mr. Elmer, the celebrated game painter at Farnham, in the county of Surrey. Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow range of enclosures, yet no two soils can be more d-ifferent ; for the Holt consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, carrying a good turf, and abounding with oaks that grow to be large timber ; while Wolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste. The former being all in the parish of Binsted, is about two miles in extent from north to south, and near as much from east to west ; and * "In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar. 36 Edw. III., it is called Aisholt." In the same, "Tit. Woolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. Dominus Rex habet unam capellam in haia sua de Kingesle. " ' ' Haia, sepes, sepimentum, parcus ; a Gall, hale and haye." — SPELMAN'S Glossary. t This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 23 contains within it many woodlands and lawns, and the great lodge where the grantees reside, and a smaller lodge called Goose Green ; and is abutted on by the parishes of Kingsley, Frinsham, Farnham, and Bentley ; all of which have right of common. One thing is remarkable, that though the Holt has been of old well stocked with fallow-deer, unrestrained by any pales or fences more than a common hedge, yet they were never seen within the limits of Wolmer; nor were the red deer of Wolmer ever known to haunt the thickets or glades of the Holt. At present the deer of the Holt are much thinned and reduced by the night hunters, who perpetually harass them in spite of the efforts of numerous keepers, and the severe penalties that have been put in force against them as often as they have been detected, and rendered liable to the lash of the law. Neither fines nor imprisonments can deter them ; so impossible is it to extinguish the spirit of sporting which seems to be inherent in human nature. General Howe turned out some German wild boars and sows in his forests, to the great terror of the neighbourhood, and, at one time, a wild bull oj buffalo ; but the country rose upon them and destroyed them.* ^v^r A very large fall of timber, consisting of about one thousand oaks, has been cut this spring (viz., 1784) in the Holt forest : one fifth of which, it is said, belongs to the grantee, Lord Stawell. He lays claim also to the lop and top ; but the poor of the parishes of Binsted and Frinsham, Bentley and Kingsley, assert that it belongs to them, and assembling in a riotous manner, have actually taken it all away. One man, who keeps a team, has carried home for his share forty stacks of wood. Forty -five of these people his lordship has served with actions. * "German boars and sows were also turned out by Charles I. in the New Forest, which bred and increased. Their stock is supposed to exist now, remark- able for the smalluess of their hind-quarters." — MITFOBD'S Edit. 24 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. These trees, which were very sound and in high perfection, were winter- cut, viz., in February and March, before the bark would run. In old times the Holt was estimated to be eighteen miles, computed measure from water-carriage, viz., from the town of Chertsey, on the Thames ; but now it is not half that distance, since the Wey is made navigable up to the town of Godalming in the county of Surrey. LETTEE X.* TO THE SAME. AugvM 4th, 1767. IT has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge ; so that, for want of a companion to quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, I have made but slender progress in a kind of information to which I have been attached from my childhood. As to swallows (hirundines rusticce) being found in a torpid state during the winter in the Isle of Wight or any part of this country, I never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergyman, of an inquisitive turn, assures me, that when he was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts (hirundines apodes] among the rubbish, which were at first appearance dead, but on being carried towards the fire revived. He told me, that out of his great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated. * This letter is extremely interesting in many points, it is the earliest in date, and as such tends to confirm what we suggested in the note to p. 1, that the first letter of this series was written at a later date as introductory. Its early date also accounts for the apologetical expression in the first paragraph, and in it we find mentioned the two subjects for which White always entertained the greatest interest : these were migration and hybemation. White at the commencement of his meditations on this subject was inclined to the belief of a partial hybemation taking place among birds, which Mr. Barrington, with whom he was also corresponding, tended to confirm. Neither could he get rid of the various accounts in circulation, in regard to swallows being found torpid, and of their retiring under water at stated periods. His candid mind would not allow him to credit these, but at the same time he could not divest them of all foundation. Birds migrate, and the instinct thus implanted may be looked upon generally as the provision to supply the wants of a peculiar season. All those summer visitants that have been found after the usual period of their departure, have been detained by other causes than a will to remain, and as the season advanced and the supplies of food and warmth failed, they sought retreats which by-and-by they were probably unable to leave. Some found in such places have been dead at the time or have died almost immediately after being discovered, and a few have revived just according to the time they were concealed, or were able to withstand the cold or want of sustenance. Our winter visitants are in the same way occasionally detained; a short time since we took a woodcock which had the tip of the wing slightly injured, it could perhaps fly about thirty yards. This bird could not have migrated, but it had not the scarcity of food to contend with that a summer visitant would incur, and there is no doubt it would have lived through the season, as it was perfectly healthy and in good condition. NATUEAL HISTORY OF SELBOENE. 25 Another intelligent person has informed me, that while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people found swallows among the rubbish; but, on my questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small disappoint- ment, he answered me in the negative ; but that others assured him they did. Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the llth, and young martins (hirundines urbicce) were then fledged in their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see by my fauna of last year, that young broods came forth so late as September the 18th. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration'? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so late as September the 29th; and yet they totally dis- appeared with us by the 5th of October. How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly the same life with the swallow and house martin, should leave us before the middle of August invariably ! while the latter stay often till the middle of October ; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the 7th of November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in sight together, an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds ! A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the alauda trivialis, or rather perhaps of the motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods.* The stoparola of Eay (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called in your zoology the fly-catcher, f There is one circumstance characteristic of this bird which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together. I perceive there are more than one species of the motacilla trochilus. Mr. Derham supposes, in " Kay's Philos. Letters," that he has discovered three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds that have as yet no English name. Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the black-cap (motacilla atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not : I think there is no doubt of it: for, in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping, all at once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They are delicate songsters.^ Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes. I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which * The woodwren or warbler, yellow-willow wren, of British authors, Sylvia sibilatrix, Latham, frequents old woods, and is easily known by the peculiar note alluded to. t The spotted-flycatcher of British authors, Muscicapa grisola, Linn. j The black-cap warbler, Sylvia atricapilla, Latham, is a rather late summer visitant, and his arrival is immediately betrayed either by his song, or by the few peculiar notes warbled as he flits from bush to bush. The voice is much 26 NATURAL HISTOIIY OF SELBORNE. WATER-RAT. I mentioned to you in town. The person that brought me the last says they are plenty in harvest, at which time I will take care to get more ; and will endeavour to put the matter out of doubt, whether it be a nondescript species or not. I suspect much there may be two species of water-rats. Ray says, and Linnaeus after him, that the water-rat is web-footed behind. Now I have discovered a rat on the banks of our little stream that is not web-footed, and yet is an excellent swimmer and diver : it answers exactly to the mus amphibius of Linnaeus (see Syst. Nat.) which he says "natal in fossis et urinatur." I should be glad to procure one " plantis palma- tis."* Linnaeus seems to be in a puzzle about his mus amphibius, and to doubt whether it differs from his mus terrestris ; which if it be, as he allows, the " mus agrestis capite grandi brachyuros,"^ of Ray, is widely different from the water-rat, both in size, make, and manner of life. As to the falco, which I mentioned in town, I shall take the liberty to send it down to you into Wales ; presuming on your candour, that you will excuse me if it should appear as familiar to you as it is strange to me. Though mutilated " qualem dices . . . antehacfuisse, tales cum sint reliquice ! " It haunted a marshy piece of ground in quest of wild-ducks and snipes; but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was tearing in pieces. I cannot make it answer to any of our English clearer in tone than any of the other warblers, the nightingale excepted ; he is a delightful addition to our summer songsters. The black-cap has a very extensive geographical distribution, reaching northward to Norway and Lapland, and we have good authorities for its occurrence in Africa, Japan, Java, Madeira, and the Azores. Mr. Beiinet has copied a note from Mr. Rennie's edition, in which the latter states : " Dr. Heiueken informs us, that it (the black-cap) is stationary in Madeira, consequently Sir W. Jardine is wrong in thinking our birds retire thither. " We have no doubt whatever in Dr. Heineken being right, but it does not follow from that, that some do not migrate there also. The song-thrush generally is stationary in Great Britain, but hundreds migrate to and from every year, so do goldcrests, and many other species. "Where it is probable they partly retire," are the words of the original note. * There is only one species of water-rat in Great Britain, Arvicnla, amphibius, Desmarest. The feet are not webbed or palmated. The black coloured water- rat of the north is now considered as a variety only. t In the short-tailed field-mouse, or field-vole, Arvicola agrestis of Fleming and Ball. The Rev. Leonard Jenyns has given the distinctions of the British arvicolse in " Annals of Natural History," vol. vii. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 27 hawks ; neither could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed birds in Spring Gardens. I found it nailed up at the end of a barn, which is the countryman's museum. The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds. LETTEE XL TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, September 9th, 1767. IT will not be without impatience that I shall wait for your thoughts with regard to the falco ; as to its weight, breadth, &c., I wish I had set them down at the time ; but, to the best of my remembrance, it weighed two pounds and eight ounces, and measured, from wing to wing, thirty-eight inches. Its cere and feet were yellow, and the circle of its eyelids a bright yellow. As it had been killed some days, and the eyes were sunk, I could make no good observation on the colour of the pupils and the irides.* The most unusual birds I ever observed in these parts were a pair of hoopoes (upupa), which came several years ago in the summer, and frequented an ornamented piece of ground, which joins to my garden, for some weeks. They used to march about in a stately manner, feeding in the walks, many times in the day ; and seemed disposed to breed in my outlet ; but were frighted and persecuted by idle boys, who would never let them be at rest. Three grossbeaks (loxia cocco- thraustes) appeared some years ago in my fields, in the winter; one of which 1 shot. Since that, now and then, one is occasionally seen in the same dead season. A crossbill (loxia curvirostra) was killed last year in this neigh- bourhood. Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the village, yield nothing but the bull's head or miller's thumb (gobius fluviatilis * Mr. Bennet states that the falco, proved to be the F. peregrinus, or peregrine falcon, and. the authority given is W. Y. The yellow "circle of its eyelids" does not refer to the irides as we had imagined, when remarking upon this passage in another edition. White states he could not "make a good observation." The irides of the British species of falcons (and we know of no foreign exception) are all dark brown. Mr. Pennant states that it was a variety differing, in having the whole under side of the body a dirty, deep yellow. 28 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. MILLER S THUMB AND STICKLE-BACK. capitatus), the trout (truttafluviatilis), the eel (anguilla), the lampern (lampcetra parva et fluviatilis], and the stickle-back (piscicidus aculeatus). We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many from a great river, and therefore see but little of sea birds. As to wild fowls, we have a few teems of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed; ^^j^Slf^^m^ifK^K^^''.. and multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard weather fre- quent our lakes in the forest. Having some ac- quaintance with a tame brown owl, I find that it casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner of hawks ; when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot eat. The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a constant supply of fresh mice ; whereas the young of the brown owl will eat indiscriminately all that is brought ; snails, rats, kittens, puppies, magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal. The house-martins have eggs still, and squab young. The last swift I observed was about the 21st of August : it was a straggler. Red-stars, fly-catchers, white-throats, and reguli non cristati, still appear : but I have seen no black-caps lately. I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College quad- rangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house-martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the 20th of November. At present I know only two species of bats, the common vespertilio murinus and the vespertilio auribus* I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects * It is to be desired that the fishes mentioned in a previous paragraph, as well as the bats were identified. There are at least three British species of eels, and it is more than probable that two of these are found at Selborne. There are also several species of stickle-back found in our fresh waters, one of the most common, and to which Ray's name as applied belongs, is the smooth-tailed stickle-back, gasterosteus leiurus, Cuvier. Of the bats Professor Bell describes seventeen British species. The first noted by White was most probably the pipistrelle. The true vespertilio murinus being one of the most rare. The other would be the common long -eared bat, plecotus auritus. NATUEAL HISTORY OP SELBOENE. 29 seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I was aware of; but in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner. Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as they play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, not only PIPISTRELLE. LONG-EARED BAT. for the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which are found over them in the greatest plenty. As I was going some years ago, pretty late, in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on a warm summer's evening, I think I saw myriads of bats between the two places ; the air swarmed with them all along the Thames, so that hundreds were in sight at a time. I am, &c. LETTEE XII. TO THE SAME. November, jjikv wor^/cot, e£w Se faor6Koi, as is known to be the case with the viper. The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it ; for Swammerdam proves that the male has no penis intrans) is notorious to everybody : because we see them sticking upon each others backs for a month together in the spring : and yet I never saw, or read of toads being observed in the same situation. It is strange that the matter with regard to the venom of toads has not been yet settled. 42 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. That they are not noxious to some animals is plain : for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone curlews, and snakes, eat them, to my knowledge, with impunity. And I well remember the time, but was not eye- witness to the fact (though numbers of persons were) when a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make the country-people stare ; afterwards he drank oil.* I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, for many years, till he grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh-flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from a hole under the garden-steps ; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished for some time and died. I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of the excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, in Ray's " Wisdom of God in the Creation," (p. 365), concerning the migration of frogs from their breeding ponds. In this account he at once subverts that foolish opinion of their dropping from the clouds in rain ; showing that it is from the grateful coolness and moisture of those showers that they are tempted to set out on their travels, which they defer till those fall. Frogs are as yet in their tadpole state ; but, in a few weeks, our lanes, paths, fields, will swarm for a few days with myriads of those emigrants, no larger than my little finger nail. Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the method and situation in which the male * This is a letter upon reptiles, the natural history of which, as well as that of fishes, White had little opportunity of studying. Toads procreate exactly in the same manner as frogs, and both are oviparous, the bead-like chains which are often seen in pools in spring, as if they were looped over each other, is the newly deposited spawn of the former. The venom of toads is discarded as a fable, but there is an excretion from the skin which can be exuded upon irritation and serves for protection. It causes the excessive secretion of saliva in the mouth of a dog, and evidently gives pain. Mr. Herbert says a pike will seize a toad, but immediately disgorges it, while a frog is swallowed. There has always been an aversion or disgust at toads. The older poets clothed him in a garb " ugly and venemous," and one of our master-bards has likened the Evil Spirit to him, as a semblance of all that is devilish or disgusting. Him they found Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying with all his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy. Thus we are taught, and the feeling is handed down from family to family, to loath a harmless animal. The bite is innocent of any after consequences, and we never saw a toad attempt to bite. The exudation of the skin is only used in self- defence. They are extremely useful in the destruction of insects, and they will be found to be valuable as well as amusing assistants in a greenhouse or con- servatory. Sir Joseph Banks wrote — " I have from my childhood, in conformity with the precepts of a mother void of all imaginary fear, been in the constant habit of taking toads in my hand, holding them there some time, aud applying them to my face and nose, as it may happen. My motive for doing this very frequently is to inculcate the opinion I have held, since I was told by my mother, that the toad is actually a harmless animal ; and to whose manner of life man is certainly under some obligation, as its food is chiefly those insects which devour his crops and annoy him in various ways." NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 43 impregnates the spawn of the female. How wonderful is the economy of Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile ! While it is an aquatic it has a fish-like tail, and no legs : as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as useless, and the animal betakes itself to the land ! Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that the Rana arborea is an English reptile ; it abounds in Germany and Switzerland. It is to be remembered that the Salamandra aquatica of Eay (the Avater-newt or eft) will frequently bite at the angler's bait, and is often caught on his hook. I used to take it for ^^''^1,/z;^^:- _ -* granted that the Sa- lamandra aquatica was hatched, lived, and died, in the water. But John Ellis, Esq., F.R.S. (the coralline Ellis) asserts, in a letter to the Royal Society, dated June the 5th, 1766, in his account of the mud inguana, an amphibious bipes from South Carolina, that the water-eft, or newt, is only the larva of the land-eft, as tadpoles are of frogs. Lest I should be suspected to misunderstand his meaning, I shall give it in his own words. Speaking of the opercula or coverings to the gills of the mud inguana, he proceeds to say that, " The form of these pennated coverings approach very near to what I have some time ago observed in the larva or aquatic state of our English lacerta, known by the name of eft, or newt ; which serve them for coverings to their gills, and for fins to swim with while in this state ; and which they lose, as well as the fins of their tails, when they change their state and become land animals, as I have observed, by keeping them alive for some time myself." Linnaeus, in his " Systema Naturae," hints at what Mr. Ellis advances more than once. Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one venemous reptile of the serpent kind in these kingdoms, and that is the viper. As you propose the good of mankind to be an object of your publications, you will not omit to mention common salad-oil as a sovereign remedy against the bite of the viper. As to the blind worm (Anguis fragilis, so called because it snaps in sunder with a small blow), I have found, on examination, that it is perfectly innocuous. A neigh- bouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper about the 27th of May : he found her filled with a chain of eleven eggs, about the size of those of a blackbird ; but WATER-NEWTS. 44 NATU11AL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. none of them were advanced so far towards a state of maturity as to contain any rudiments of young. Though they are oviparous, yet they are viviparous also, hatch- ing their young within their bellies, and then bringing them forth. Whereas snakes lay chains of eggs every summer in my melon beds, in spite of all that my people can do to prevent them ; which eggs do not hatch till the spring fol- lowing, as I have often ex- perienced. Several intelli- gent folks assure me that they have seen the viper open her mouth and admit her helpless young down her throat on sudden surprises, just as the female opossum does her brood into the pouch under her belly, upon the like emergencies; and yet the London viper-catchers insist on it, to Mr. Barrington, that no such thing ever happens.* The serpent kind eat, I believe, but once in a year; or rather, but only just at one season of the year. Country people talk much of a water-snake, but, I am pretty sure, without any reason ; for the common snake (Coluber natrix) delights much to sport in the water, perhaps with a view to procure frogs and other food. I cannot well guess how you are to make out your twelve species of reptiles, unless it be by the various species, or rather varieties, of our lacerti, of which Ray enumerates five. I have not had opportunity of BLIND WORM. * This question remains, we believe, nearly as it did in White's time. There have been statements upon both sides, and some tune since it gave rise to a very long discussion in the " Gardener's Chronicle," but which, with the others, ended in nothing that could be taken as undoubted proof of the fact. We have always looked upon this as a popular delusion, and the supposed habit is so much at variance with what we know of the general manners and instincts of animals that, without undoubtedproofofiis occurrence, we incline still to consider it as such. Something always occurs to prevent the adder that has swallowed her young being captured, and the evidence rests on such an one having seen the young enter the mouth of the parent. Now, we do not mean to call in question the veracity of the observers reporting what they at the time believed to be the case, but we know how easy it is to be deceived, and how difficult it is to observe correctly. Mr. Bennet leaves the question open ; but in the latest edition of " Selborne," in Bonn's Illus- trated Library, the following note by the editor occurs : — " Having taken much pains to ascertain the fact of young vipers entering the mouth of their mother, I can now have little doubt but that such is the case, after the evidence of persons who assured me that they had seen it. I also found young vipers in the stomach of the* mother of a much larger size than they would be when first ready to be excluded." We presume that the young vipers in the stomach of the mother were found alive ; it is not so stated. Could the Zoological Society not do something to solve this problem? A comparatively trifling expense would procure a good collection of adders were it known they were wanted, and among them a female might be found and watched. See also Mr. White's remarks, Letter XXXI., to Mr. Barrington, where he cut up an adder, and found young in the "abdomen," by which term he evidently means the uterus or ovarium, for he adds, "there was little room to suppose they were taken in for refuge." Letter XXXI. should bo turned to and read with this one to Pennant. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 45 ascertaining these ; but remember well to have seen, formerly, several beautiful green lacerti on the sunny sand-banks near Farnham, in Surrey ; and Ray admits there are such in Ireland.* LETTEE XVIII. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, July 27th, 1768. DEAR SIR,— I received your obliging and communicative letter of June the 28th, while I was on a visit at a gentleman's house, where I had neither books to turn to, nor leisure to sit down, to return you an answer to many queries, which I wanted to resolve in the best manner that I am able. A person, by my order, has searched our brooks, but could find no such fish as the Gasterosteus pungitius : he found the Gasterosteus aculeatus in plenty. This morning, in a basket, I packed a little earthen pot full of wet moss, and in it some sticklebacks, male and female ; the females big with spawn : some lamperns ; some bull's heads ; but I could procure no minnows. This basket will be in Fleet Street by eight this evening ; so I hope Mazel will have them fresh and fair to-morrow morning. I gave some directions, in a letter, to what particulars the engraver should be attentive.t Finding, while I was on a visit, that I was within a reasonable distance of Ambresbury, I sent a servant over to that town, and procured several living specimens of loaches, which he brought, safe and brisk, in a glass decanter. They were taken in the gullies that were cut for watering the meadows. From these fishes (which measured from two to four inches in length) I took the following description : " The loach, in its general aspect, has a pellucid appearance ; its back is mottled with irregular collections of small black dots, not reaching much below the linea lateralis, as are the back and tail fins ; a black line runs from each eye down to the nose ; its belly is of a silvery- white;. the upper jaw projects beyond the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side ; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller; the fin behind its anus small; its dorsal-fin large, containing eight spines; its tail, where it joins to the tail-fin, remarkably broad, without any taperness, so as to be characteristic of this genus; the tail-fin is broad, and square at the end. From the * In Mr. Bell's work on British Reptiles, fourteen species may be said to be given. Two of these, however, are Chelonians, or tortoises, and of accidental occur- rence only, so that Mr. White's difficulty is not unnatural, considering the general state of information when he wrote. t The obliging and anxious disposition of Mr. White to forward the views and studies of his correspondent are here shown, as also his own homely manner, and without attributing any merit to himself of giving his opinion of such remedies as curing cancers by toads. Mazel, the person to whom the specimens were addressed, was Pennant's engraver, and his name also stands as the artist upon some of the plates of antiquities in the original 4to edition. 46 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. breadth and muscular strength of the tail it appears to be an active nimble fish." In my visit I was not very far from Hungerford, and did not forget to make some inquiries concerning the wonderful method of curing cancers by means of toads. Several intelligent persons, both gentry and clergy, do I find give a great deal of credit to what is asserted in the papers, and I myself dined with a clergyman who seemed to be persuaded that what is related is matter of fact ; but, when I came to attend to his account, I thought I discerned circumstances which did not a little invalidate the woman's story of the manner in which she came by her skill. She says of herself " that, labouring under a virulent cancer, she went to some church where there was a vast crowd ; on going into a pew, she was accosted by a strange clergyman, who, after expressing compassion for her situation, told her that if she would make such an application of living toads as is mentioned she would be well." Now is it likely that this unknown gentleman should express so much tenderness for this single sufferer, and not feel any for the many thousands that daily languish under this terrible disorder ] Would he not have made use of this invaluable nostrum for his own emolument ; or at least, by some means of publication or other, have found a method of making it public for the good of mankind] In short, this woman (as it appears to me) having set up for a cancer-doctress, finds it expedient to amuse the country with this dark and mysterious relation. The water-eft has not, that I can discern, the least appearance of any gills ; for want of which it is continually rising to the surface of the water to take in fresh air. I opened a big-bellied one indeed, and found it full of spawn. Not that this circumstance at all invalidates the assertion that they are larvae ; for the larvce of insects are full of eggs, which they exclude the instant they enter their last state. The water-eft is continually climbing over the brims of the vessel, within which we keep it in water, and wandering away ; and people every summer see numbers crawling out of the pools where they are hatched up the dry banks. There are varieties of them, differing in colour ; and some have fins up their tail and back, and some have not.* * The fins or membrane upon the tail and back are an appendage to the males only, and are developed at the season of their breeding. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORKE. 47 LETTEE XIX. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, August Vlth, 1768. DEAR SIR, — I have now, past dispute, made out three distinct species of the willow-wrens (motacillce trochili) which constantly and invariably use distinct notes. But at the same time I am obliged to confess that I know nothing of your willow-lark.* In my letter of April the 18th, I had told you peremptorily that I knew your willow-lark, but had not seen it then ; but when I came to procure it, it proved in all respects a very motacilla trochilus, only that it is a size larger than the two other, and the yellow-green of the whole upper part of the body is more vivid, and the belly of a clearer white. I have specimens of the three sorts now lying before me, and can discern that there are three gradations of sizes, and that the least has black legs, and the other two flesh-coloured ones. The yellowest bird is considerably the largest, and has its quill-feathers and secondary feathers tipped with white, which the others have not. This last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise, now and then, at short intervals, shivering a little with its wings when it sings ; and is, I make no doubt now, the regulus non cristatus of Ray, which he says " cantat voce stridula locustce." Yet this great ornithologist never suspected that there were three species. LETTEE XX. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, October 8th, 1768. IT is I find in zoology as it is in botany ; all nature is so full that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined. Several birds, which are said to belong to the north only, are it seems often in the south. I have discovered this summer three species of birds with us, which writers mention as only to be seen in the northern counties. The first that was brought me (on the 14th of May), was the sandpiper, tringa hypoleucus : it was a cockbird, and haunted the banks of some ponds near the village ; and, as it had a companion, doubtless intended to have bred near that water. Besides, the owner has told me since, that on recollection, he has seen some of the same birds round his ponds in former summers.t * "Brit. Zool." edit. 1776, 8vo, p. 381. t Of the sandpiper we may remark that it would be the unfavourable localities in the vicinity of Selborne that caused its scarcity. The common sandpiper, totanus (tringa of Linnaeus) hypoleucus, is not particularly a northern bird. It has 43 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. The next bird that I procured (on the 21st of May) was a male red- backed butcher bird, lanius collurio. My neighbour, who shot it, says that it might easily have escaped his notice, had not the outcries and chattering of the white- throats and other small tbn'to'thTbush wheTe" it was ; its craw was filled with the legs and wings of beetles. The next rare birds (which were procured for me last week) were some ring-ousels, turdi torquati. SANDPIPER. This week twelve months a gentleman from London, being with us, was amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told us, on an old yew hedge where there were berries some birds like blackbirds, with rings of white round their necks : a neighbouring farmer also at the same time observed the same ; but, as no specimens were procured, little notice was taken. I mentioned this circumstance to you in my letter of November the 4th, 1767 (you, however, paid but small regard to what I said, as I had not seen these birds myself) ; but last week the aforesaid farmer, seeing a large flock, twenty or thirty of these birds, shot two cocks and two hens, and says, on recollection, that he remembers to have observed these birds again last spring, about Lady-day, as it were on their return to the north. Now perhaps these ousels are not the ousels of the north of England, but belong to the more northern parts of Europe ; and may retire before the excessive rigour of the frosts in those parts, and return to breed in the spring, when the cold abates. If this be the case, here is discovered a new bird of winter passage, concerning whose migrations the writers are silent ; but if these birds should prove the ousels of the north of England, then here is a migration disclosed within our own kingdom never before remarked. It does not yet appear whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island to the south ; but it is most probable that they usually do, or else one cannot suppose that they would have continued so long unnoticed in the southern countries. The ousel is larger than a black-bird, and feeds on haws; but last autumn (when there were no haws) it fed on yew-berries : in the spring it feeds a very extensive foreign range, as well as British, and in this country frequents, during the breeding season, lakes with gravelly margins, or clear rocky streams, where it arrives in spring and remains until its broods are ready to remove. It is a regular summer visitant, and to the angler is a pleasant companion, enlivening the streams with its shrill whistle, and by its active motions. During winter there seems to be a partial as well as general migration, some leaving the country altogether, others retiring only to the sea-shores. NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 49 on ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March and April* I must not omit to tell you (as you have been so lately on the study of rep- tiles) that my people, every now and then of late, draw up with a bucket of water from my well, which is sixty-three feet deep, a large black warty lizard with a fin-tail and yellow belly. How they first came down at that depth, and how they were ever to have got out thence without help, is more than I am able to say. My thanks are due to you for your trouble and care in the examina- tion of a buck's head. As far as your discoveries reach at present, they seem much to corroborate my suspicions ; and I hope Mr. may find reason to give his decision in my favour ; and then, I think, we may advance this extraordinary provision of nature as a new instance of the wisdom of Grod in the creation. As yet I have not quite done with my history of the oedicnemus, or stone-curlew ; for I shall desire a gentleman in Sussex (near whose house these birds congregate in vast flocks in the autumn) to observe nicely when they leave him (if they do leave him), and when they return again in the spring : I was with this gentleman lately, and saw several single birds. RING OUSEL. LETTER XXI. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Nov. 28t7i, 1768. DEAR SIR, — With regard to the oedicnemus, or stone-curlew, I intend to write very soon to my friend near Chichester, in whose neighbourhood these birds seem most to abound ; and shall urge him to take particular * White's observations upon the ring-ousel, at the time he wrote, were very important, and made with great accuracy. As in other matters, it will be very interesting for Professor Bell to give his attention to their present habits in the vicinity of Selborne, to ascertain if their numbers continue as many, and their appearance as regular. In Scotland the ring-ousel is a regular summer visitant, extending from the English border to Sutherlandshire ; in the rocky districts of the latter county it is tolerably frequent. In autumn and before their departure they visit the lower country, and remain a day or a week according to circum- stances, feeding at this time upon various berries, and occasionally visiting gardens. The broods are now joined and mixed together, and the young appeal in their imperfect mottled dress. 50 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOIINE. notice when they begin to congregate, and afterwards to watch them most narrowly whether they do not withdraw themselves during the dead of the winter. When I have obtained information with respect to this circumstance, I shall have finished my history of the stone-curlew ; which I hope will prove to your satisfaction, as it will be, I trust, very near the truth. This gentleman, as he occupies a large farm of his own, and is abroad early and late, will be a very proper spy upon the motions of these birds; and besides, as I have prevailed on him to buy the Naturalist's Journal (with which he is much delighted), I shall expect that he will be very exact in his dates. It is very extraordinary, as you observe, that a bird so common with us should never straggle to you. And here will be the properest place to mention, while I think of it, an anecdote which the above-mentioned gentleman told me when I was last at his house; which was that, in a warren joining to his outlet, many daws (corvi monedulce) build every year in the rabbit-burrows under ground. The way he and his brothers used to take their nests, while they were boys, was by listening at the mouths of the holes ; and, if they heard the young ones cry, they twisted the nest out with a forked stick. Some water-fowls (viz. the puffins) breed, I know, in that manner ; but I should never have suspected the daws of building in holes on the flat ground. Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of antiquity : which circumstance alone speaks the pro- digious height of the upright stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of shepherd-boys, who are always idling round that place. One of my neighbours last Saturday, November the 26th, saw a martin in a sheltered bottom : the sun shone warm, and the bird was hawking briskly after flies. I am now perfectly satisfied that they do not all leave this island in the winter. You judge very right, I think, in speaking with reserve and caution concerning the cures done by toads: for, let people advance what they will on such subjects, yet there is such a propensity in mankind towards deceiving and being deceived, that one cannot safely relate anything from common report, especially in print, without expressing some degree of doubt and suspicion. Your approbation, with regard to my new discovery of the migration of the ring-ousel, gives me satisfaction ; and I find you concur with me in suspecting that they are foreign birds which visit us. You will be sure, I hope, not to omit to make inquiry whether your ring-ousels leave your rocks in the autumn. What puzzles me most, is the very short stay they make with us ; for in about three weeks they are all gone. I shall be very curious to remark whether they will call on us at their return in the spring, as they did last year. I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. If fortune had settled me near the sea-side, or near some great river, my natural propensity would soon have urged me to have made myself acquainted NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 51 with their productions : but as I have lived mostly in inland parts, and in an upland district, my knowledge of fishes extends little farther than to those common sorts which our brooks and lakes produce. I am. &c. LETTER XXII. TO THE SAME.* 0 SELBORNE, Jan. 2nd, 1769. DEAR SIR, — As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us under the ground in rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon the reason ; for, in reality, there are hardly any towers or steeples in all this country. And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as meanly furnished with churches as almost any counties in the king- dom. We have many livings of two or three hundred pounds a year, whose houses of worship make little better appearance than dovecots. When I first saw Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdon- shire, and the fens of Lincolnshire, I was amazed at the number of spires which presented themselves in every point of view. As an admirer of prospects, I have reason to lament this want in my own country ; for such objects are very necessary ingredients in an elegant landscape. What you mention with respect to reclaimed toads raises my curiosity. An ancient author, though no naturalist, has well remarked that " Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed, of mankind." f It is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has actually been procured for you in Devonshire ; because it corroborates my discovery, which I made many years ago, of the same sort, on a sunny sandbank near Farnham, in Surrey. I am well acquainted with the South Hams of Devonshire; and can suppose that district, from its southerly situation, to be a proper habitation for such animals in their best colours. Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not forsake them against winter, our suspicions that those which visit this neigh- bourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the frosts, are still more reasonable ; * This letter with the preceding one are as usual full of observation, and might have been written to any correspondent without the view of publication. The jackdaw is one of those familiar birds which accommodates its habits to circumstances. In Great Britain it may be said to be altogether in an artificial condition incidental to population and commerce, and the works of man form very convenient retreats to sleep or nestle in, which it would otherwise have had to discover in some natural locality. In an entirely natural state the rugged precipices and caves on the sea-coast, mountainous rocks abounding with holes and fissures and clothed with ivy, are the places resorted to, or in a woodland district an aged and hollow tree may be chosen. The selection of rabbit burrows is accidental, and they are used instead of natural or scraped holes, sometimes by a very miscellaneous assemblage; rabbits and jackdaws, sheldrakes and puffins are sometimes to be found in the same warren, and not very far from each other. t James, chap. iii. 7. s 2 52 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. and it will be worth your pains to endeavour to trace from whence they come, and to inquire why they make so very short a stay. In your account of your error with regard to the two species of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your description of the heronry at Cressi Hall ; which is a curiosity I never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have a sight of. Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressi Hall is, and near what town it lies.* I have often thought that those vast extents of fens have never been sufficiently explored. If half a dozen gentlemen, furnished with a good strength of water-spaniels, were to beat them over for a week, they would certainly find more species. There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied more than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it is a wonderful and curious creature ; but I have always found that though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting on a bough ; and I have for many an half hour watched it as it sat with its under mandible quivering, and particularly this summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, with its head lower than its tail, in an attitude well expressed by your draughtsman in the folio " British Zoology." This bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day ; so exactly that I have known it strike up more than once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which we can hear when the weather is still. It appears to me past all doubt that its notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe, formed for sound, just as cats pur. You will credit me, I hope, when I assure you that, as my neighbours were assembled in an hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink tea, one of these churn-owls came and settled on the cross of that little straw edifice and began to chatter, and continued his note for many minutes ; and we were all struck with wonder to find that the organs of that little animal, when put in motion, gave a sensible vibration to the whole building ! This bird also sometimes makes a small squeak, repeated four or five times ; and I have observed that to happen when the cock has been pursuing the hen in a toying way through the boughs of a tree. It would not be at all strange if your bat, which you have procured, should prove a new one, since five species have been found in a neighbouring kingdom. The great sort that I mentioned is certainly a non-descript ; I saw but one this summer, and that I had no opportunity of taking, f Your account of the Indian grass was entertaining. I am no angler myself; but inquiring of those that are, what they supposed that part of their tackle to be made of ] — they replied, " Of the intestines of a silkworm." Though I must not pretend to great skill in entomology, yet I cannot say that I am ignorant of that kind of knowledge ; I may now and then perhaps be able to furnish you with a little information. * Cressi Hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. t Sea Letters XXVI., XXXVI., and note. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBO11NE. 53 The vast rains ceased with us much about the same time as with you, and since we have had delicate weather. Mr. Barker, who has measured the rain for more than thirty years, says, in a late letter, that, more has fallen this year than in any he ever attended to ; though from July 1763 to January 1764, more fell than in any seven months of this year. LETTEE XXJII. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Feb. 28th, 1760. DEAR SIR, — It is not improbable that the Guernsey lizard and our green lizards may be specifically the same ; all that I know is, that, when some years ago many Guernsey lizards were turned loose in Pembroke college garden, in the University of Oxford, they lived a great while, and seemed to enjoy themselves very well, but never bred. Whether this circumstance will prove anything either way I shall not pretend to say. I return you thanks for your account of Cressi Hall ; but recollect, not without regret, that in June 1746 I was visiting for a week together at Spalding, without ever being told that such a curiosity was just at hand. Pray send me word in your next what sort of tree it is that contains such a quantity of herons' nests ; and whether the heronry consists of a whole grove of wood, or only of a few trees. It gave me satisfaction to find we accorded so well about the caprimulgus; all I contended for was to prove that it often chatters sitting as well as flying ; and therefore the noise was voluntary, and from organic impulse, and not from the resistance of the air against the hollow of its mouth and throat. If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last Michaelmas Day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning ; at first there was a vast fog ; but, by the time that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath or common, and I could discern, as the mist began to break away, great numbers of swallows (hirundines rusticce) clustering on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As soon as the air became clear and pleasant they all were on the wing at once ; and, by a placid and easy flight, proceeded on southward towards the sea ; after this I did not see any more flocks, only now and then a straggler. I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow kind disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once ; only some stragglers stay behind a long while, and do never, there is the greatest reason to believe, leave this island. Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come forth in a warm day, as bats do continually of a warm evening, after they have disappeared for weeks. For a very respectable gentleman assured me that, as he was walking with some friends under Merton Wall on a remarkably hot noon, either in the last week in December or the first 54 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. week in January, he espied three or four swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of the windows of that college. I have frequently remarked that swallows are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere ; is it owing to the vast massy buildings of that place, to the many waters round it, or to what else 1 * When I used to rise in a morning last autumn, and see the swallows and martins clustering on the chimneys and thatch of the neighbouring cottages, I could not help being touched with a secret delight, mixed with some degree of mortification ; with delight, to observe with how much ardour and punctuality those poor little birds obeyed the strong impulse towards migration, or hiding, imprinted on the" ir minds by their great Creator ; and with some degree of mortification, when I reflected that, after all our pains and inquiries, we are yet • not quite certain to what regions they do migrate ; and are still farther embarrassed to find that some do not actually migrate at all. These reflections made so strong an impression on my imagination, that they became productive of a composition that may perhaps amuse you for a quarter of an hour when next I have the honour of writing to you. * This letter is a reply to some of Mr. Pennant's inquiries, and is remarkable for the very distinct observations made upon the swallows. In a small pamphlet printed at Rotherham in 1815, the author of which we never ascertained, there are some observations made that agree with many of those recorded by Mr. White. These were also made by a clergyman, as it is told in his short preface, " to rescue a beautiful and instructive phenomenon from oblivion, and to render it subservient to the moral improvement of his numerous and highly respected charge. " " Early in the month of September, 1815, the swallows began to assemble in the neighbourhood of Rotherham, at the willow ground near the glass-house on the banks of the canal, preparatory to then- migration to a warmer climate, and their numbers were daily augmented until they became a vast flock which no man could easily number. It was then- manner while there, to rise from the willows in the morning a little before six o'clock, when their thick columns literally darkened the sky. In the evening, about five o'clock, they began to return to their station, and continued coming in from all quarters until nearly dark." The year advanced, and "accordingly their mighty army broke up then- encamp- ment, debouched from their retreat, and rising covered the heavens with their legions ; then directed by an unerring guide took their trackless way. On the day of their flight they left behind them about a hundred of then- companions, after these a few stragglers only remained. These might be the sick or too young to attempt so great an expedition ; whether this was the fact or not they did not remain after the next day." The common house swallow is seen eveiy autumn to congregate in large bodies as above described. The willow aits in the Thames are very favourite resorts, and we have no doubt that similar localities will, in like manner, be taken advantage of. They also assemble on some bare tree, upon rails and house-tops, making excursions therefrom as if to exercise their young broods in flying, and at this autumnal period we have often seen them assemble and roost upon the alders fringing the side of a river. While at Malvern, some years since, in the month of September, the little white-rumped martin (H. urbica) congregated in hundreds upon the roof, cornices, and window tops of Mr. Wilson's large house there. This was continued daily until the great departure took place, and in twenty-four hours only a few stragglers remained of the large concourse. The balcony and windows beneath that part of the building where they "generally assembled, were covered with specimens of the swallow fly (see woodcut, p. 116J. We have never seen, nor do we recollect it recorded, that swifts congregate in this manner before migration. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 55 LETTEE XXIV. TO THE SAME. SELBOEXE, May 29tfi, 1769. DEAR SIR,— The scarabceus fullo I know very well, having seen it in collections ; but have never been able to discover one • wild in its natural state. Mr. Banks told me he thought it might be found on the seacoast.* On the thirteenth of April I went to the sheep-down, where the ring-ousels have been observed to make their appearance at spring and fall, in their way perhaps to the north or south ; and was much pleased to see these birds about the usual spot. We shot a cock and a hen ; they were plump and in high condition. The hen had but very small rudiments of eggs within her, COCKCHAFER. * Melalontha fullo, FABRICIUS. Chafer or cock-chafer, but not the species that is so well known co schoolboys. This species is a rare British insect, very local in its distribution, being hitherto chiefly found in Kent ; it is remarkable for the large size and development of the antennae. These insects are almost all extremely destruc- tive, feeding voraciously on the leaves of shrubs and trees. The common cockchafer, sometimes called May bug (woodcut), often appears in immense numbers, and commits great havoc. On the continent they are even more destructive than in this country, and governments have directed their attention to the best mode of compassing their destruction. In the larva state they are vegetable eaters, feeding upon the roots of plants, while in the perfect or beetle state they attack the foliage. It is in this condition they are most easily destroyed ; being a large insect they can be collected by labourers or children, and in some parts they are so numerous that oil is extracted from them by boiling. There are several allusions to this insect in the ancient writers, and we are indebted to W. B. Macdonald of Rammerscales for selecting the' following quotations — Jrfti is mentioned by Aristophanes, " Clouds," n. 761. Socrates loq, .— " Do not now always revolve your thoughts around yourself, but set your medi- tation (give rein to your meditation) free into the air, fastened with a strong thread to its foot like a cockchafer. " Greek boys, without the fear of Martin's act before their eyes, were wont thus to amuse themselves with cockchafers chained by a thread. Madame Dacier however here supposes an allusion to an opinion of Socrates that the^ human soul had wings. The scholiast to Aristophanes remarks that it is 5>t!'t«.v$«.%ov.— i.e. A little animal of goldish hue like a cantharus, otherwise a chrysocantharus ; in barbaric Greek ".Zina," — which rests upon flowers — and some call it a " golden cantharus." Aristophanes in his "Wasps," 1342, calls a young glee-maiden "a little golden cock-chafer." 56 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. which proves they are late breeders ; whereas those species of the thrush kind that remain with us the whole year have fledged young before that time. In their crops was nothing very distinguishable, but somewhat that seemed like blades of vegetables nearly digested. In autumn they feed on haws and yew-berries, and in the spring on ivy-berries. I dressed one of these birds, and found it juicy and well flavoured. It is remark- able that they make but a few days' stay in their spring visit, but rest near a fortnight at Michaelmas. These birds, from the observations of three springs and two autumns, are most punctual in their return ; and exhibit a new migration unnoticed by the writers, who supposed they never were to be seen in any southern countries. One of my neighbours lately brought me a new salicaria, which at first I suspected might have proved your willow-lark,* but, on a nicer examination, it answered much better to the description of that species which you shot at Revesby,t in Lincolnshire. My bird I describe thus : " It is a size less than the grasshopper-lark ; the head, back, and coverts of the wings, of a dusky brown, without those dark spots of the grasshopper-lark ; over each eye is a milkwhite stroke ; the chin and throat are white, and the under parts of a yellowish white ; the rump is tawny, and the feathers of the tail sharp-pointed ; the bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs are dusky ; the hinder claw long and crooked." The person that shot it says that it sung so like a reed- sparrow that he took it for one ; and that it sings all night : but this account merits farther inquiry. For my part, I suspect it is a second sort of locustela, hinted at by Dr. Derham in Ray's Letters : seep. 108.£ He also procured me a grasshopper-lark. The question that you put with regard to those genera of animals that are peculiar to America, viz., how they came there, and whence 1 is too puzzling for me to answer ; and yet so obvious as often to have struck me with wonder. If one looks into the writers on that subject little satisfaction is to be found. Ingenious men will readily advance plausible arguments to support whatever theory they shall choose to maintain ; but then the misfortune is, every one's hypothesis is each as good as another's, since they are all founded on conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in whom may be seen all the arguments of those that have gone before, as I remember, stock America from the western coast of Africa and the south of Europe ; and then break down the Isthmus that bridged over the Atlantic. But this is making use of a Julius Pollux, B. 9, ch. 7, says, ^ Jg /M.^AeA.cyflij, ££i«v srT*jve» 'UTTIV, yv xoii fjir,^.o^.ac>6r» xatXovtny, foot \x rys otvtiviTlw; ruv ftfauv % j Toutrt £«jAaXov0ijs u.u.u,a.r l^iifrTcav TOV xfirxsou, fjc.it rb» ys^ovrat A.ai/3>jra< . — "Or tieing strings of tow to the cockchafers, jeer at the old man for me." * For this Salicaria see next letter. f The seat of Sir Joseph Banks. J Dr. Derham writes— " Doubtless this bird was the locustela in Willoughby's ornithology, and not the regulus non-cristatus, which I call the yellow wren, and of which I have discovered three distinct species, but not one of them that sings as here described, and as I have seen two sorts (if I mistake not) of locustelce birds do."— W. D.— Corres. O/RAY, Ray Society, p. 96. The bird here meant is "the titlark that sings like a grasshopper. "— WiLLoroHBY , p. 207 ; and the Salicaria locustella (Selby) alluded to Letter XVI. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 57 violent piece of machinery : it is a difficulty worthy of the interposition of a god ! " Incredulus odi" * TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING WALK. equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis Ingenium. Vrao. Georg. WHEN day declining' sheds a milder gleam, What time the may -fly f haunts the pool or stream ; When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed ; Then be the time to steal adown the vale, And listen to the vagrant J cuckoo's tale; To hear the clamorous § curlew call his mate, Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; To see the swallow sweep the dark'ning plain Belated, to support her infant train ; To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing : Amusive birds ! — say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat ; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ? Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The GOD of NATURE is your secret guide ! While deep'ning shades obscure the face of day To yonder bench leaf-shelter'd let us stray, * The zoology of the New World is essentially distinct from that of the old, so is that of Africa from India, and both the latter from those of Australia and the Pacific. There may be a few forms common to some of these divisions, but the great type of the zoology of each is distinct. That of the western coast of A frica is quite distinct from that of America; among the birds, for instance, which possess the greatest amount of locomotive power, none of the migratory species travel from continent to continent, and the generic forms even are almost entirely different. In later times, where there is a much more frequent communication between Europe and the west coast of Africa, and by means of the slave trade between that country and South America and the West Indian islands, there have been various introductions from the one country to the other, and particularly of the Vegetable Kingdom, but even with these the great mass of both Fauna and Flora continue distinct. There is no more interesting study than that of the geographical distribution of animals and plants, and of the very remarkable incidents which sometimes occur to effect the transportation of some which are almost entirely without the power of crossing seas or oceans. t The angler's may-fly, the ephemera vulgata LINN., comes forth from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, &c. t Vagrant cuckoo ; so called because, being tied down by no incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without control. § Charadrius oedicnemus. 58 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 'Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, And all the fading landscape sinks in night ; To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by With buzzing wing, or the shrill * cricket cry ; To see the feeding bat glance through the wood ; To catch the distant falling of the flood ; "While o'er the cliff th' awaken'd churn-owl hung Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song While high in air, and poised upon his wings, Unseen, the soft enamour'd f woodlark sings : These, NATURE'S works, the curious mind employ, Inspire a soothing melancholy joy : As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain Steals o'er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein ! Each rural sight, each sound, each smell, combine ; The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine ; The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze, Or cottage-chimney smoking through the trees. The chilling night-dews fall : — away, retire ! For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire ! J Thus, ere night's veil had half obscured the sky, Th' impatient damsel hung her lamp on high : True to the signal, by love's meteor led, Leander hasten'd to his Hero's bed. § I am, &c. LETTER XXV. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Aug. 30th, 1769. DEAR SIR, — It gives me satisfaction to find that my account of the ousel migration pleases you. You put a very shrewd question when you ask me how I know that their autumnal migration is southward 1 Was not candour and openness the very life of natural history, I should pass over this query just as a fly commentator does over a crabbed passage in a classic ; but common ingenuousness obliges me to confess, not without some degree of shame, that I only reasoned in that case from analogy. For as all other autumnal birds migrate from the northward to us, to partake of our milder winters, and return to the northward again when the rigorous cold abates, so I concluded that the ring-ousels did the same, as well as their congeners the fieldfares ; and especially as ring-ousels are known to haunt cold mountainous countries : * Gryllus campestris. t In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and hang singing in the air. t The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up the stalk of a grass to make herself more conspicuous) is a signal to the male, which is a slender dusky scarabceus. § See the story of Hero and Leander. NATURAL HISTOEY OF SELBOKNE. 59 but I have good reason to suspect since that they may come to us from the westward ; because I hear, from very good authority, that they breed on Dartmoor ; and that they forsake that wild district about the time that our visitors appear, and do not return till late in the spring. I have taken a great deal of pains about your salicaria and mine, with a white stroke over its eye and a tawny rump. I have surveyed it alive and dead, and have procured several specimens, and am perfectly persuaded myself (and trust you will soon become convinced of the same) that it is no more nor less than the passer arundinaceus minor of Eay. This bird, by some means or other, seems to be entirely omitted in the British Zoology ; and one reason probably was because it is so strangely classed in Ray, who ranges it among his picis affines. It ought no doubt to have gone among his aviculce caudd unicolore, and among your slender-billed small birds of the same division. Linnasus might with great propriety have put it into his genus of motacilla; and motacilla salicaria of his fauna suecica seems to come the nearest to it. It is no uncommon bird, haunting the sides of ponds and rivers where there is covert, and the reeds and sedges of moors. The country people in some places call it the sedge-bird. It sings incessantly night and day during the breeding-time, imitating the note of a sparrow, a swallow, a sky-lark ; and has a strange hurrying manner in its song. My specimens correspond most minutely to the description of your fen salicaria shot near Eevesby.* Mr. Eay has given an excellent characteristic of it when he says, " Rostrum et pedes in hdc aviculd multd majores sunt qudm pro corporis ratione." See letter, May 29, 1769. (Preceding letter, xxiv.) I have got you the egg of an oedicnemus, or stone-curlew, which was picked up in a fallow on the naked ground ; there were two, but the finder inadvertently crushed one with his foot before he saw them. When I wrote to you last year on reptiles, I wish I had not forgot to mention the faculty that snakes have of stinking se defendendo. I knew a gentleman who kept a tame snake, which was in its person as sweet as any animal while in good humour and unalarmed ; but as soon as a stranger, - or a dog or cat, came in, it fell to hissing, and filled the room with such STONE CURLEW'S EGG, nauseous effluvia as ren- dered it hardly supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck, of Bay's " Synop. Quadr." is an innocuous and sweet animal ; but, when pressed * This is the Salicaria phragmitis, the sedge warbler, sedge bird, or Reed fauvette of British authors. It is by far the most common and generally distributed of our native species of Salicaria, and is distinct from that referred to in preceding letters. 60 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORXE. hard by dogs and men, it can eject such a most pestilent and fetid smell and excrement, that nothing can be more hor- rible. A gentleman sent me lately a fine specimen of the lanius minor cinerascens cum maculd in scajjulis alba, Rail ; * which is a bird that, at the time of your publishing your two first volumes of " British Zoology," I find you had not seen. You have described it well from Edwards's drawing. LETTER XXVI. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, December Sth, 1769. DEAR SIR, — I was much gratified by your communicative letter on your return from Scotland, where you spent some considerable time, and gave yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry, because men seldom allot themselves half the time they should do ; but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey that required dispatch, than as philosophers investigating the works of nature. You must have made, no doubt, many discoveries, and laid up a good fund of materials for a future edition of the " British Zoology ; " and will have no reason to repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a part of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well examined before. It b ;.i always been matter of wonder t9 me that fieldfares, which are so co /enerous to thrushes and blackbirds, should never choose to breed in England ; but that they should not think even the highlands cold ap^ northerly, and sequestered enough, is a circumstance still more strange and wonderful. The ring-ousel, you find, stays in Scotland the whole year round ; so that we have reason to conclude that those migrators that visit us for a short space every autumn do not come from thence, f * This is the Lanius rufus, or woodchat of British authors, and is extremely rare as a British bird, resting upon the authority of a few straggling specimens being procured. t How true is the opening to this letter. Even now the north of Scotland is not known zoologically ; it would still require to be explored leisurely, and we have no doubt that there is yet much in what are called the "lower departments " to reward the care of a diligent investigation. We are not aware that the ring-ousel "stays in Scotland the whole year round." Mr. Yarnell states or rather mentions without stating authority, that Scotch in- NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 61 And here, I think, will be the proper place to mention that those birds were most punctual again in their migration this autumn, appearing, as before, about the 30th of September ; but their flocks were larger than common, and their stay protracted somewhat beyond the usual time. If they came to spend the whole winter with us, as some of their congeners do, and then left us, as they do, in spring, I should not be so much struck with the occurrence, since it would be similar to that of the other winter birds of passage ; but when I see them for a fortnight at Michaelmas, and again for about a week in the middle of April, I am seized with wonder, and long to be informed whence these travellers come, and whither they go, since they seem to use our hills merely as an inn or baiting place. Your account of the greater brambling, or snow-fleck, is very amusing; and strange it is that such a short-winged bird should delight in such perilous voyages over the northern ocean ! Some country people in the winter time have every now and then told me that they have seen two or three white larks on our downs; but, on considering the mat- ter, I begin to suspect that these are some stragglers of the birds we are talking of, which sometimes perhaps may rove so far to the southward. It pleases me to find that white hares are so frequent on the Scottish moun- tains, and especially as you inform me that it is a distinct species; stances of the fieldfare breeding have occurred, and that nests have been found in the southern counties. We have never known an authentic instance in Scotland, and we have received many letters upon the subject which invariably turned out that the supposed fieldfare was the missel-thrush. They often remain very late, until the middle of May, according to the season, and may sometimes be seen after some of the summer visitants have arrived. We should not consider it at all remarkable that the breeding of some solitary pairs should be authentically recorded. In the northern countries where it breeds, it is naturally a late incubator. The " snow-fleck" (plectrophanes nivalis) is not a short winged bird, and the first quill is the longest, which is the formation generally seen in birds of powerful or lengthened flight. This bird may occasionally remain and breed in Scotland. Professor Macgillivray and Dr. Greville observed a male on Ben-na Mac-Dui on the 4th of August, and some days after a brood was observed on Lochnagar, but these are only exceptions, and no rule for the general breeding of the species in the north of Scotland. The white hare is the lepus variabilis, a northern species, but very common in the higher parts of the highlands of Scotland ; in summer the fur is of a bluish grey, and in some districts they are called "blue hares." It differs in habits from the common hare by making its retreat among rocks or large loose stones. The eagle owl is now admitted into most works on British ornithology, but its right to stand as a British species depends only on a few instances of its capture, and on ouo or two records of its appearance. SNOW-FLECK. 62 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORXE. for the quadrupeds of Britain are so few, that every new species is a great acquisition. The eagle-owl, could it be proved to belong to us, is so majestic a bird, that it would grace our fauna much. I never was informed before where wild-geese are known to breed. You admit, I find, that I have proved your fen salicaria to be the lesser reed-sparrow of Ray ; and I think you may be secure that I am right, for I took very particular pains to clear up that matter, and had some fair specimens ; but, as they were not well preserved, they are decayed already. You will, no doubt, insert it in its proper place in your next edition. Your additional plates will much improve your work. De Buffon, I know, has described the water shrew-mouse : but still I am pleased to find you have discovered it in Lincolnshire, for the reason I have given in the article of the white hare. As a neighbour was lately ploughing in a dry chalky field, far removed from any water, he turned out a water-rat, that was curiously lain up in an hybernaculum artificially formed of grass and leaves. At one end of the burrow lay above a gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on which it was to have supported itself for the winter. But the difficulty with me is how this amphibius mus came to fix its winter station at such a distance from the water. Was it determined in its choice of that place by the mere accident of finding the potatoes which were planted there ; or is it the constant practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the neighbourhood of the water in the colder months 1 Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, knowing how fallacious it is with respect to natural history ; yet, in the following instance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may conduce towards the explanation of a difficulty that I have mentioned before, with respect to the invariable early retreat of the hirundo apus, or swift, so many weeks before its congeners ; and that not only with us, but also in Andalusia, where they also begin to retire about the beginning of August. The great large bat * (which by the by is at present a nondescript in England,f and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires or migrates very early in the summer ; it also ranges very high for its food, feeding in a different region of the air ; and that is the reason I never could procure one. Now this is exactly the case with the swifts ; for they take their food in a more exalted region than the other species, and are very seldom seen hawking for flies near the ground, or over the surface of the water. From hence I would conclude that these hirundines and the larger bats are supported by some sorts of high- flying gnats, scarabs, orphalcence, that are of short continuance ; and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their food. By my journal it appears that curlews clamoured on to October the thirty -first ; since which I have not seen or heard any. Swallows were observed on to November the third. * The little bat appears almost every month in the year ; but I have never seen the large ones till the end of April, nor after July. They are most common in June, but never in any plenty : are a rare species with us. t See also Letters XXII., XXXVI., and note. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELB011NE. 63 LETTEE XXVII. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Feb. 22nd, 1770. DEAR SIR, — Hedgehogs abound in my gardens and fields. The manner in which they eat the roots of the plantain in my grass-walks is very curious ; with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are serviceable, as they destroy a very troublesome weed ; but they deface the walks in some measure by digging little round holes. It appears, by the dung that they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no incon- siderable part of their food. In June last I procured a litter of four or five young hedgehogs, which appeared to be about five or six days old : they, I find, like puppies, are born blind, and could not see when they came to my hands. Fo doubt their spines are soft and flexible at the time of their birth, or else the poor dam would have but a bad time of it in the critical moment of parturition, but it is plain they soon harden ; for these little pigs had such stiff prickles on their backs and sides as would easily have fetched blood, had they not been handled with caution. Their spines are quite white at this age ; and they have little hanging ears, which I do not remember to be discernible in the old ones. They can, in part, at this age draw their skin down over their faces ; but are not able to contract themselves into a ball, as they do, for the sake of defence, when full grown. The reason, I suppose, is, because the curious muscle that enables the creature to roll itself up in a ball was not then arrived at its full tone and firmness. Hedgehogs make a deep and warm hybernaculum with leaves and moss, in which they con- ceal themselves for the winter: but I HEDGEHOG. never could find that they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do. I have discovered an anecdote with^ respect to the fieldfare (turdus 64 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. pilaris), which I think is particular enough ; this bird, though it sits on trees in the day-time, anc1. procures the greatest part of its food from white-thorn hedges ; yea, moreover, builds on very high trees, as may be seen by the fauna suecica ; yet always appears with us to roost on the ground.* They are seen to come in flocks just before it is dark, and to settle and nestle among the heath on our forest. And besides, the larkers in dragging their nets by night, frequently catch them in the wheat stubbles ; while the bat-fowlers, who take many red-wings in the hedges, never entangle any of this species. Why these birds, in the matter of roosting, should differ from all their congeners, and from themselves also with respect to their proceedings by day, is a fact for which I am by no means able to account. I have somewhat to inform you of concerning the moose-deer ; but in general foreign animals fall seldom in my way; my little intel- ligence is confined to the narrow sphere of my own observations at home. LETTER XXVIII. TO THE SAME. SELBOENE, March, 1770. ON Michaelmas-day 1768 I managed to get a sight of the female moose belonging to the Duke of Eichmond, at Goodwood ; but was greatly disappointed, when I arrived at the spot, to find that it died, after having appeared in a languishing way for some time, on the morning before. However, understanding that it was not stripped, I proceeded to exa- mine this rare quad- ruped; I found it in an old green- house, slung under the belly and chin by ropes, and in a standing posture ; but, though it had been dead for so short a time, it was in so putrid a state that the stench was hardly supportable. The grand distinc- tion between this deer, and any other species that I have ever met with, consisted in the strange length of its legs ; on which it was tilted up much in the manner of the birds of the grallce order. I measured * See also Letter XXVI. They generally sleep on the ground, but sometimes also in low pine trees, or evergreen bushes. HEAD OF MOOSE DEER. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 65 it, as they do an horse, and found that, from the ground to the withers it was just five feet four inches ; which height answers exactly to sixteen hands, a growth that few horses arrive at : but then, with this length of legs, its neck was remarkably short, no more than twelve inches; so that, by straddling with one foot forward and the other backward, it grazed on the plain ground, with the greatest difficulty, between its legs ; the ears were vast and lopping, and as long as the neck ; the head was about twenty inches long, and ass-like ; and had such a redundancy of upper lip as I never saw before, with huge nostrils. This lip, travellers say, is esteemed a dainty dish in North America. It is very reasonable to suppose that this creature supports itself chiefly by browsing of trees, and by wading after water plants ; towards which way of livelihood the length of legs and great lip must contribute much. I have read somewhere that it delights in eating the nymphcea, or water-lily. From the fore-feet to the belly behind the shoulder it measured three feet and eight inches : the length of the legs before and behind consisted a great deal in the tibia, which was strangely long ; but, in my haste to get out of the stench, I forgot to measure that joint exactly. Its scut seemed to be about an inch long ; the colour was a grizzly black; the mane about four inches long; the fore-hoofs were upright and shapely, the hind flat and splayed. The spring before it was only two years old, so that most probably it was not then come to its growth. What a vast tall beast must a full grown stag be ! I have been told some arrive at ten feet and an half ! This poor creature had at first a female companion of the same species, which died the spring before. In the same garden was a young stag, or red deer, between whom and this moose it was hoped that there might have been a breed ; but their inequality of height must have always been a bar to any commerce of the amorous kind. I should have been glad to have examined the teeth, tongue, lips, hoofs, &c. minutely ; but the putre- faction precluded all farther curiosity. This animal, the keeper told me, seemed to enjoy itself best in the extreme frost of the former winter. In the house they showed me the horn of a male moose, which had no front antlers, but only a broad palm with some snags on the edge. The noble owner of the dead moose proposed to make a skeleton of her bones. Please to let me hear if my female moose corresponds with that you saw ; and whether you think still that the American moose and European elk are the same creature.* I am, with the greatest esteem, &c. * The American moose, cervus alces, Linnaeus ; and, I believe, the alces americanus of modern zoologists, "is," writes Major Hamilton Smith, "an inhabitant of northern latitudes, in Europe between the 53° and 65°, in Asia from 35° to 15°, and in America between the 44° and 53°, round the great lakes, and over the whole of Canada and New Brunswick. But this is quite a different animal from that found in a fossil state and known as the elk. It is the cervus gigo.nteus of Cuvier, and fine specimens of the remains have been found in the bogs of Ireland and the Isle of Man. The American elk, for it is possible the animal of Europe and Asia may prove distinct, has a very marked character in the form of the upper lip ; it is undoubtedly an organ of prehension necessary for its mode of life." NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOHNE. LETTEE XXIX. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, May llth, 1770. DEAR SIR, — Last month we had such a series of cold turbulent weather, such a constant succession of frost, and snow, and hail, and tempest, that the regular migration or appearance of the summer birds was much interrupted. Some did not show themselves (at least were not heard) till weeks after their usual time ; as the blackcap and white- throat ; and some have not been heard yet, as the grasshopper-lark and largest willow-wren. As to the fly-catcher, I have not seen it ; it is indeed one of the latest, but should appear about this time : and yet, amidst all this meteorous strife and war of the elements, two swallows discovered themselves as long ago as the eleventh of April, in frost and snow ; but they withdrew quickly, and were not visible again for many days. House-martins, which are always more backward than swallows, were not observed till May came in.* Among the monogamous birds several are to be found, after pairing- time, single, and of each sex ; but whether this state of celibacy is matter of choice or necessity, is not so easily discoverable. When the house-sparrows deprive my martins of their nests, as soon as I cause one to be shot, the other, be it cock or hen, presently procures a mate, and so for several times following. I have known a dove-house infested by a pair of white owls, which made great havoc among the young pigeons : one of the owls was shot as soon as possible ; but the survivor readily found a mate, and the mischief went on. After some time the new pair were both destroyed, and the annoyance ceased, f Another instance I remember of a sportsman, whose zeal for the increase of his game being greater than his humanity, after pairing- time he always shot the cock-bird of every couple of partridges upon his grounds ; supposing that the rivalry of many males interrupted the breed : he used to say, that, though he had widowed the same hen several times, yet he found she was still provided with a fresh paramour, that did not take her away from her usual haunt. * Weather such as described has an effect upon the arrival of our summer birds of passage, and we may suppose therefore that where there is no great extent of ocean to cross that the migration takes place gradually ; the birds being delayed as they approached the north for the appearance of genial weather. The present season, 1853, has been such an one as Mr. White describes 1770 to have been ; this year all the migrating species are unusually late and few in numbers. t This takes place generally, and in the case of carrion crows, we have known it occur more than once in the same spring. Birds of prey immediately find another mate when any accident happens to one of the pair. The grey-backed or hooded crow, corvus cot-nix, Linn, is a migratoiy species in many parts, and when any accidental circumstances cause one or two birds to remain, they mate in spring with the carrion crow. This instinctive desire for procreation is not however confined to birds, when the male salmon has been killed from his mate on the spawning-bed, his place is immediately supplied by another. NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 67 Again ; I knew a lover of setting, an old sportsman, who has often told me that soon after harvest he has frequently taken small coveys of partridges, consisting of cock-birds alone ; these he pleasantly used to call old bachelors. There is a propensity belonging to common house-cats that is very remarkable ; I mean their violent fondness for fish, which appears to be their most favourite food : and yet nature in this instance seems to have planted in them an appetite that, unassisted, they know not how to gratify : for of all quadrupeds cats are the least disposed towards water ; and will not, when they can avoid it, deign to wet a foot, much less to plunge into that element. Quadrupeds that prey on fish are am- phibious : such is the otter, which by nature is so well formed for diving, that it makes great havoc among the inhabitants of the waters. Not supposing that we had any of OTTER. those beasts in our shallow brooks, I was much pleased to see a male otter brought to me, weighing twenty-one pounds, that had been shot on the bank of our stream below the Priory, where the rivulet divides the parish of Selborne from Harteley Wood. v 2 68 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. LETTEE XXX. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Aug. 1st, 1770. DEAR SIR, — The French, I think, in general are strangely prolix in their natural history. What Linnaeus says with respect to insects holds good in every other branch : " Verbositas prcesentis smculi, calamitas artis." Pray how do you approve of Scopoli's new work ? As I admire his " Entomologia," I long to see it. I forgot to mention in my last latter (and had not room to insert in the former) that the male moose, in rutting time, swims from island to island, in the lakes and rivers of North America, in pur- suit of the females. My friend, the chaplain, saw one killed in the water as it was on that errand in the river St. Lawrence : it was a monstrous beast, he told me ; but he did not take the dimensions. When I was last in town our friend Mr. Harrington most obligingly carried me to see many curious sights. As you were then writing to him about horns, he carried me to see many strange and wonderful specimens. There is, I remember, at Lord Pembroke's, at Wilton, an horn room furnished with more than thirty different pairs ; but I have not seen that house lately. Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections of stuffed and living birds from all quarters of the world. After I had studied over the latter for a time, I remarked that every species almost that came from distant regions, such as South America, the coast of Guinea, &c., were thick-billed birds of the loxia and fringilla genera ; and no motacillce, or muscicapm, were to be met with. When I came to consider, the reason was obvious enough ; for the hard-billed birds subsist on seeds which are easily carried on board ; while the soft-billed birds, which are supported by worms and insects, or, what is a succedaneum for them, fresh raw meat, can meet with neither in long and tedious voyages. It is from this defect of food that our collections (curious as they are) are defective, and we are deprived of some' of the most delicate and lively genera. I am, &c. LETTEE XXXI. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Sept. Uth, 1770. DEAR SIR, — You saw, I find, the ring-ousels again among their native crags ; and are farther assured that they continue resident in those cold regions the whole year. From whence then do our ring- ousels migrate so regularly every September, and make their appearance again, as if in their return, every April ] They are more early this year NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 69 than common, for some were seen at the usual hill on the fourth of this month. An observing Devonshire gentleman tells me that they frequent some parts of Dartmoor, and breed there ; but leave those haunts about the end of September, or beginning of October, and return again about the end of March. Another intelligent person assures me that they breed in great abundance all over the peak of Derby, and are called there tor-ousels ; withdraw in October and November, and return in spring. This information seems to throw some light on my new migration. Scopoli's* new work (which I have just procured) has its merit in ascertaining many of the birds of the Tirol and Carniola. Mono- graphers, come from whence they may, have, I think, fair pretence to challenge some regard and approbation from the lovers of natural history ; for, as no man can alone investigate the works of nature, these partial writers may, each in their department, be more accurate in their discoveries, and freer from errors, than more general writers ; and so by degrees may pave the way to an universal correct natural history. Not that Scopoli is so circumstantial and attentive to the life and conversation of his birds as I could wish : he advances some false facts ; as when he says of the hirundo urbica that "pullos extra nidum non nutrit" This assertion I know to be wrong from repeated observation this summer ; for house-martins do feed their young flying, though it must be acknowledged not so commonly as the house-swallow ; and the feat is done in so quick a manner as not to be perceptible to indif- ferent observers. He also advances some (I was going to say) improbable facts; as when he says of the woodcock that " pullos rostro portatfugi- ens ah hoste" But candour forbids me to say absolutely that any fact is false, because I have never been witness to such a fact. I have only to remark that the long unwieldy bill of the woodcock is perhaps the worst adapted of any among the winged creation for such a feat of natural affection. I am, &c. LETTEE XXXII. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, October 29th, 1770. DEAR SIR, — After an ineffectual search in Linnaeus, Brisson, &c., I begin to suspect that I discern my brother's hirundo hyberna in Scopoli's new discovered hirundo rupestris, p. 167. His description of "Supra, murina, subtus albida ; rectrices maculd ovali alba in latere interno ; pedes nudi, nigri ; rostrum nigrum ; remiges obscuriores quam plumes * "Annus I. Historicp Naturalis, — descriptiones avium musei proprii earum- que rariorum, quos vidit in vivaria augustiss. imperatoris, et in museo excell. comitis Francisci Annib. Turriani." Lipsise, MDCCLXVIII. In the preface to the above work Scopoli states, " Obseryationes meas ad scientiam naturalem et agriculturam pertinentes singulis annis erudito orbi in posterum communicabo, " and the Anni were continued for five years, and contain some very valuable papers and observations, the first is devoted entirely to ornithology. The last (Annus V.) bears the date of MDCCLXXII. 70 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. dorsales ; rectrices remigibus concolores ; caudd emarginatd, nee ford- patd ; " agrees very well with the bird in question : but when he cOines to advance that it is " stature hirundinis urbicce" and that " definitio to! ROCK SWALLOW. hirundinis riparice Linncei huic quoque convemit," he in some measure invalidates all he has said ; at least he shows at once that he compares them to these species merely from memory : for I have compared the birds themselves, and find they differ widely in every circumstance of shape, size, and colour. However, as you will have a specimen, I shall be glad to hear what your judgment is in the matter.* * There is little doubt that the bird in question was the H. rupestris of Linnaeus. In the correspondence of Linnaeus published in " Contributions" for 1849, he fre- quently refers to this bird by name in reply to questions put by Mr. White's brother, who had evidently written to Linnseus about it under that appellation. John White was, in fact, Linnaeus's authority for this swallow, and first communicated specimens to him from Gibraltar; Linnaeus says, "H. rupestris, mihi an tea ignota ; vere distincta." NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 71 Whether my brother is forestalled in his non-descript or not, he will have the credit of first discovering that they spend their winters under the warm and sheltery shores of Gibraltar and Barbary. Scopoli's characters of his ordines and genera are clear, just, and expressive, and much in the spirit of Linnaeus. These few remarks are the result of my first perusal of Scopoli's " Annus Primus." The bane of our science is the comparing one animal to the other by memory : for want of caution in this particular Scopoli falls into errors : he is not so full with regard to the manners of his indigenous birds as might be wished, as you justly observe : his Latin is easy, elegant, and expressive, and very superior to Kramer's.* I am pleased to see that my description of the moose corresponds so well with yours. I am, &e. LETTER XXXIII. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Nov. 26th, 1770. DEAR SIR, — I was much pleased to see, among the collection of birds from Gibraltar, some of those short-winged English summer- birds of passage, concerning whose departure we have made so much inquiry. Now if these birds are found in Andalusia to migrate to and from Barbary, it may easily be supposed that those that come to us may migrate back to the continent, and spend their winters in some of the warmer parts of Europe. This is certain, that many soft-billed birds that come to Gibraltar appear there only in spring and autumn, seeming to advance in pairs towards the northward, for the sake of breeding during the summer months ; and retiring in parties and broods towards the south at the decline of the year : so that the rock of Gibraltar is the great rendezvous, and place of observation, from whence they take their departure each way towards Europe or Africa. It is therefore no mean discovery, I think, to find that our small short-winged summer birds of passage are to be seen spring and autumn on the very skirts of Europe ; it is a presumptive proof of their emigrations. Scopoli seems to me to have found the hirundo melba, the great Gibraltar swift, in Tirol, without knowing it. For what is his hirundo alpina but the afore-mentioned bird in other words 1 Says he " Omnia prioris" (meaning the swift); " sed pectus album; paulo major priore" I do not suppose this to be a new species. It is true also of the melba, that " nidificat in excelsis Alpium rupibus." Vid. Annum Primum.i- * See his " Elenchus Vegetabilium et Animalium per Austriam Inferiorem, &c." f "Annus I." p. 166. Quite right, it is the cypselus melba, Gmelin. The alpine or white-bellied swift of British authors, and communicated to Linnaeus by John White during his residence at Gibraltar. There are a few instances recorded of its having been killed in Great Britain and Ireland. The letters from his brother while at Gibraltar would be exceedingly interesting to White while his attention was turned to migration, and there is little doubt that the great bulk of our migratory species follow the line as suggested in the 72 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. My Sussex friend, a man of observation and good sense, but no naturalist, to whom I applied on account of the stone-curlew, oedi- cnemus, sends me the following account : " In looking over my Natu- ralist's Journal for the month of April, I find the stone-curlews are first mentioned on the seventeenth and eighteenth, which date seems to me rather late. They live with us all the spring and summer, and at the beginning of autumn prepare to take leave by getting together in flocks. They seem to me a bird of passage that may travel into some dry hilly country south of us, probably Spain, because of the abundance of sheep- walks in that country ; for they spend their summers with us in such districts. This conjecture I hazard, as I have never met with any one that has seen them in England in the winter. I believe they are not fond of going near the water, but feed on earth-worms, that are common on sheep-walks and downs. They breed on fallows and lay-fields abounding with grey mossy flints, which much resemble their young in colour; among which they skulk and conceal themselves. They make no nest, but lay their eggs on the bare ground, producing in common but two at a time. There is reason to think their young run soon after they are hatched ; and that the old ones do not feed them, but only lead them about at the time of feeding, which, for the most part, is in the night." Thus far, my friend. In the manners of this bird you see there is something very analogous to the bustard, whom it also somewhat resembles in aspect and make, and in the structure of its feet.* text ; at the same time, however, some of the species, the common swallow for instance, has a very extensive range, and I believe is permanently resident no- where. The more distant cannot be expected to reach northern Europe or Great Britain, which in all probability are supplied from North or North-Eastern Africa. * The bustard is only mentioned twice in White's Letters, above where referred to, and in Letter II. to Barrington, p. 96. Mitford has the following note. "The bustard is extinct in England : and as it is now so scarce in Scotland owing to population and enclosures, it becomes interesting to remark that two birds of this kind (male and female) have been kept in the garden-ground belonging to the Norwich Infirmary, and have been but lately sold by the owner of them. The male bird was very beautiful and courageous, apparently afraid of nothing, seizing any one that came near him by the coat, yet on the appearance of any small hawk high in the air, he would squat close to the ground, expressing strong marks of fear. The female was very shy." In England they may be said to be almost extirpated, or if a few do remain they will not long be preserved. Upon the continent, however, as we learn by a very interesting paper read before the Linnsean Society, by Mr. Yarrell in January last, they are still abundant, particularly in some parts of Spain, upon the extensive grass marshes which stretch along the banks of the Guadalquiver, and in the corn plains of Seville ; but the important part of this paper is a correction of an anatomical error which has been handed down and copied, and the parts figured even in the most recent ornithological works. Edwards in his "Gleanings" figures a gular pouch, supposed to be a bag for the purpose of holding water, when in desert lands or removed from it. This was given upon the authority of Dr. Douglas, of the College of Physicians in London. Mr. Yarrell, anxious to satisfy himself of the presence of this pouch or bag, took the opportunity of a mature male bustard dying in the Zoological Gardens, to examine this structure. He carefully did so, but could find no enlargement of the membrane or any sac. Not satisfied with his own accuracy he examined the descriptions of animals dissected by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, where he was equally unsuccessful; and he concludes his interesting paper in the following worda : ' ' unwilling, however, to offer my statement to the notice of the Linnsean Society without consulting the best living authority in this country, namely. Professor Owen, I mentioned the subject to him, and had the satisfaction to find that Mr. Owen agreed with NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 73 For a long time I have desired my relation to look out for these birds in Andalusia; and now he writes me word that, for the first time, he saw one dead in the market on the third of September. When the oedicnemus flies it stretches out its legs straight behind, like an heron. I am, &c. LETTEE XXXIV. TO THE SAME. SELBOENE, March 30th, 1771. DEAR SIR, — There is an insect with us, especially on chalky districts, which is very troublesome and teasing all the latter end of the summer, getting into people's skins, especially those of women and children, and raising tumours which itch intolerably. This animal (which we call an harvest bug) is very minute, scarce discernible to the naked eye ; of a bright scarlet colour, and of the genus of Acarus. They are to be met 1. ATHALIA CENTIFOLIA. 2. BLACK DOLPHIN. 3. HALTICA NEMORUM. with in gardens on kidneybeans, or any legumens, but prevail only in the hot months of summer. Warreners, as some have assured me, are much infested by them on chalky downs ; where these insects swarm sometimes to so infinite a degree as to discolour their nets, and to give them a reddish cast, while the men are so bitten as to be thrown into fevers. There is a small long shining fly in these parts very troublesome to the housewife, by getting into the chimneys, and laying its eggs in the bacon while it is drying ; these eggs produce maggots called jumpers, me entirely ; that there is in the great bustard neither an orifice under the tongue, nor a gular pouch. He writes, ' The following was the result of my dis- section of a full-grown bustard, with the view of obtaining a preparation of the alleged gular pouch for the Physiological Series, No. 772, Q. (Museum of Col. of Surgeons). The head of a bustard, otis tarda, with the mouth and fauces exposed, showing the glandular orifices between the rami of the lower jaw, the tongue, glottis, internal nostrils, and Eustachian orifice. There is no trace of a gular pouch.'" 74 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. which, harbouring in the gammons and best parts of the hogs, eat down to the bone, and make great waste. This fly I suspect to be a variety of the musca putris of Linnaeus ; it is to be seen in the summer in farm- kitchens on the bacon-racks and about the mantel-pieces, and on the ceilings. The insect that infests turnips and many crops in the garden (destroying often whole fields while in their seedling leaves) is an animal that wants to be better known. The country people here call it the turnip-fly and black-dolphin ; but I know it to be one of the coleoptera ; the " chrysomela oleracea, saltatoria, femoribus posticis crassissimis" In very hot summers they abound to an amazing degree, and, as you walk in a field or in a garden, make a pattering like rain, by jumping on the leaves of the turnips or cabbages. There is an oestrus, known in these parts to every ploughboy ; which, because it is omitted by Linnaeus, is also passed over by late writers; and that is the curvicauda of old Mouset, mentioned by Derham in his " Physico-Theology," p. 250 ; an insect worthy of remark for depositing its eggs as it flies in so dextrous a manner on the single hairs of the legs and flanks of grass-horses. But then Derham is mistaken wheu he advances that this oestrus is the parent of that wonderful star-tailed maggot which he mentions afterwards ; for more modern entomologists have discovered that singular production to be derived from the egg, or the musca chamceleon ; see Geoffroy, t. xvii. f. 4. A full history of noxious insects hurtful in the field, garden, and house, suggesting all the known and likely means of destroying them, would be allowed by the public to be a most useful and important work. What knowledge there is of this sort lies scattered, and wants to be collected ; great improvements would soon follow of course. A know- ledge of the properties, economy, propagation, and in short of the life and conversation of these animals, is a necessary step to lead us to some method of preventing their depredations.* * Many good papers have been published upon the insects injurious to the husbandman and gardener, and the Messrs. Loudon and Westwood, have trans- lated Roller's German treatise upon " Noxious Insects." The harvest-bug as it is popularly termed, leptus autumnalis, Latreille, is generally very abundant where it does occur, and is extremely troublesome ; it is, however, local, most abundant in the south, and in Scotland by no means frequent ; it attacks both mankind and animals ; we have seen the nose of a dog literally red with their numbers. The fly attacking bacon-hams Mr. Benuet refers as similar to that which infests cheese, tyrophaga casece, but of this I am not quite sure, and recommend some of our readers who may keep hams up their chimneys to send specimens to the "Gardener's Chronicle," who will submit them to their able entomologist Mr. "Westwood. The insect most usually known as the ' ' turnip-fly " is, as Mr. White observes, a small beetle, haltica nemorum, by some called flea- beetle, from being an active jumper. This minute insect commits most serious depredations to the crops when in the seed-leaf, and some seasons a vast extent is destroyed. This present year, 1853, in the south of Scotland, it has been extremely destructive, and a very great breadth of crop has been sown a second time. The insect is very generally distributed, and I have never missed finding it among a young crop, but its depredations are most successful when dry weather or any other cause prevents the young plant from growing freely and vigorously. The best remedy, therefore, is to have the land well managed and in good condition from manure ; in most seasons this will have the effect of producing the young plants strong and healthy, and causing them to grow so rapidly as to be very soon beyond the ravages of the fly. A clergyman at Dorste, in Hanover, NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 75 As far as I am a judge, nothing would recommend entomology more than some neat plates that should well express the generic distinctions of insects according to Linnaeus ; for I am well assured that many people would study insects, could they set out with a more adequate notion of those distinctions than can be conveyed at first by words alone.* LETTEE XXXV. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, 1771. DEAR SIR, — Happening to make a visit to my neighbour's peacocks, I could not help observing that the trains of those magnificent birds appear by no means to be their tails ; those long feathers growing not from their uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and top-heavy, when set an end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck ; but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey-cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer ; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run backwards towards the females. I should tell you that I have got an uncommon calculus cegogropila, taken out of the stomach of a fat ox ; it is perfectly round, and about the size of a large Seville orange ; such are, I think, usually flat. mentions that he has employed, successfully, an infusion of wormwood to water the drills, or the application of very dry dust ; but these could scarcely be employed upon a large extent of farm, although useful in a garden. Numerous other appli- cations are recommended, but one of the easiest, and said to be efficacious, is that of smoke by means of weeds, or any other material kindled, so as to be carried across the field by wind. There may be occasional seasons remarkable for drought or cold, and inimical to rapid vegetation, but these are exceptional, and the ordinary remedies will in all probability be unavailing. But there is another insect scourge to the turnip-field, which fortunately is not nearly of such frequent occurrence ; it is one of those insects that return at times without warning, the periodicity of which has not been accounted for. It belongs to the same family as the caterpillar which attacks gooseberry-bushes, and which must be so generally known, and both are the larvae of what are called "saw-flies." The caterpillars do the injury, and when they do appear they are in thousands, and soon strip the tender or leaf-part of the turnip plant, which is sometimes in a considerably advanced state when the ravages commence, generally after hoeing has been performed. The surest remedy is hand-picking by children. This is the Athalia centifolia of entomologists ; the popular name of the caterpillar " black dolphin. " * There are several works now of this kind, Curtis's "British Entomology," has dissections of the parts from which the generic characters are taken, but this is expensive. Westwood's " Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects," gives capital wood-cut illustrations of the parts, besides other information. This work is in 2 vols. 8vo. 76 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORXE. LETTEE XXXVL TO THE SAME. Sept 1771. DEAR SIR, — The summer through I have seen but two of that large species of bat which I call vespertilio cdtivolans, from its manner of feeding high in the air ; I procured one of them, and found it to be a male ; and made no doubt, as they accompanied together, that the other was a female ; but, happening in an evening or two to procure the other likewise, I was somewhat disappointed, when it appeared to be also of the same sex. This circumstance, and the great scarcity of this sort, at least in these parts, occasions some suspicions in my mind whether it is really a species, or whether it may not be the male part of the more known species, one of which may supply many females ; as is known to be the case in sheep and some other quadrupeds. But this doubt can only be cleared by a farther examination, and some attention to the sex, of more specimens ; all that I know at present is, that my two were amply furnished with the parts of generation, much resembling those of a boar.* In the extent of their wings they measured fourteen inches and an half; and four inches and an half from the nose to the tip of the tail ; their heads were large, their nostrils bilobated, their shoulders broad and muscular ; and their whole bodies fleshy and plump. Nothing could be more sleek and soft than their fur, which was of a bright chesnut colour ; their maws were full of food, but so macerated that the quality could not be distinguished ; their livers, kidneys, and hearts, were large, and their bowels covered with fat. They weighed each, when entire, full one ounce and one drachm. Within the ear there was somewhat of a peculiar structure that I did not understand perfectly ! but refer it to the observation of the curious anatomist. These creatures sent forth a very rancid and offensive smell. LETTEE XXXVII. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, 1771. DEAR SIR, — On the twelfth of July I had a fair opportunity of contemplating the motions of the caprimudgus, or fern-owl, as it was playing round a large oak that swarmed with scarabcei solstitiales, or fern-chafers. The powers of its wing were wonderful, exceeding, if * See Letters XXII. XXVI. The British fauna is indebted to White for the first notice of this species ; it is locally distributed, and although not common generally is found in numbers together, so many as 185 having been taken in one night from the eaves of Queen's College, Cambridge. It was first described by Daubenton, under the name of La noctule, which name Latinised was after- wards continued, and is prior to White's name of altivolans, which we regret has not been retained, as it is so characteristic of the habits of the species. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 77 possible, the various evolutions and quick turns of the swallow genus. But the circumstance that pleased me most was, that I saw it distinctly, more than once, put out its short leg while on the wing, and, by a bend of the head, deliver somewhat into its mouth. If it takes any part of its prey with its foot, as I have now the greatest reason to suppose it does these chafers, I no longer wonder at the use of its middle toe, which is curiously furnished with a serrated claw. Swallows and martins, the bulk of them I mean have forsaken us sooner this year than usual ; for on September the twenty-second, they rendezvoused in a neighbour's walnut-tree, where it seemed probable they had taken up their lodging for the night. At the dawn of the day, which was foggy, they arose all together in infinite numbers, occasioning such a rushing from the strokes of their wings against the hazy air, as might be heard to a considerable distance : since that no flock has appeared, only a few stragglers. Some swifts staid late, till the twenty-second of August— a rare instance ! for they usually withdraw within the first week.* On September the twenty-fourth three or four ring-ousels appeared in my fields for the first time this season; how punctual are these visitors in their autumnal and spring migrations ! LETTEE XXXVIII. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, March 15th, 1773. DEAR SIR, — By my journal for last autumn it appears that the house- martins bred very late, and stayed very late in these parts ; for, on the first of October, I saw young martins in their nest nearly fledged ; and again on the twenty-first of October, we had at the next house a nest full of young martins just ready to fly ; and the old ones were hawking for insects with great alertness. The next morning the brood forsook their nest, and were flying round the village. From this day I never saw one of the swallow kind till November the third ; when twenty, or perhaps thirty, house-martins were playing all day long by the side of the hanging wood, and over my field. Did these small weak birds, some of which were nestling twelve days ago, shift their quarters at this late season of the year to the other side of the northern tropic? Or rather, is it not more probable that the next church, ruin, chalk-cliff,, steep covert, or perhaps sandbank, lake or pool (as a more northern naturalist would say), may become their hybernaculum, and afford them a ready and obvious retreat ] We now begin to expect our vernal migration of ring-ousels every week. Persons worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels were seen at Christmas 1770 in the forest of Bere, on the southern verge of this county. Hence we may conclude that their migrations are only internal, and not extended to the continent southward, if they do at * See Letter LIII. to Mr. Barrington. 78 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. first come at all from the northern parts of this island only, and not from the north of Europe. Come from whence they will, it is plain, from the fearless disregard that they show for men or guns, that they have been little accustomed to places of much resort. Navigators mention that in the Isle of Ascension, and other such desolate districts, birds are so little acquainted with the human form that they settle on men's shoulders ; and have no more dread of a sailor than they would have of a goat that was grazing.* A young man at Lewes, in Sussex, assured me that about seven years ago ring-ousels abounded so about that town in the autumn that he killed sixteen himself in one afternoon ; he added further, that some had appeared since in every autumn ; but he could not find that any had been observed before the season in which he shot so many. I myself have found these birds in little parties in the autumn cantoned all along the Sussex downs, wherever there were shrubs and bushes, from Chichester to Lewes; particularly in the autumn of 1770. I am, &c. LETTEE XXXIX.f TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Nov. 9th, 1773. DEAR SIR, — As you desire me to send you such observations as may occur, I take the liberty of making the following remarks, that you may, according as you think me right or wrong, admit or reject what I here advance, in your intended new edition of the " British Zoology." The ospreyj was shot about a year ago at Frinsham Pond, a great lake, at about six miles from hence, while it was sitting on the handle of a plough and devouring a fish : it used to precipitate itself into the water, and so take its prey by surprise. A great ash-coloured § butcher-bird was shot last winter in Tisted Park, and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne : they are rarce aves in this county. Crows || go in pairs all the year round. Cornish choughs H abound, and breed on Beechy Head, and on all the cliffs of the Sussex coast. The common wild-pigeon,** or stock-dove, is a bird of passage in the south of England, seldom appearing till towards the end of November j * Darwin, writing of the Galapagos islands remarks of the birds, "there is not one which will not approach sufficiently near to be killed with a switch, and sometimes with a cap or hat ; a gun is here almost superfluous, for with the muzzle of one I pushed a hawk off the branch of a tree. One day a mocking-bird alighted on the edge of a pitcher which I held in my hand lying down, it began very quietly to sip the water, and allowed me to lift it with the vessel from the ground. I often tried, and very nearly succeeded in catching these birds by their legs." — Voyage of Adventure and Beagle, iii. p. 475. I This with the following letter were written apparently at the request of Mr. Pennant for the use of his "British Zoology," in which they were used as the references show. J British Zoology, vol. i. p. 128. § p 161. I p. 167. 1 p. 198. ** p- 216. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 79 is usually the latest winter-bird of passage. Before our beechen woods were so much destroyed we had myriads of them, reaching in strings for a mile together as they went out in a morning to feed. They leave us early in spring : where do they breed 1* The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird f the storm-cock, because it sings early in the spring in blowing showery weather ; its song often commences with the year : with us it builds much in orchards. A gentleman assures me he has taken the nests of ring-ousels J on Dartmoor : they build in banks on the sides of streams. Titlarks § not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also as they play and toy about on the wing; and particularly while they are descending, and sometimes they stand on the ground. || Adanson's H testimony seems to me to be a very poor fevidence that European swallows migrate during our winter to Senegal : he does not talk at all like an ornithologist ; and probably saw only the swallows of that country, which I know build within Governor O'Hara's hall against the roof. Had he known European swallows, would he not have mentioned the species ] ** The house-swallow washes by dropping into the water as it flies : this species appears commonly about a week before the house-martin, and about ten or twelve days before the swift. In 1772 there were young house-martins ft in their nest till October the twenty-third. The swift t J appears about ten or twelve days later than the house- swallow : viz., about the twenty-fourth or twenty-sixth of April. Whin-chats and stone-chatters §§ stay with us the whole year. Some wheat-ears continue with us the winter through. || || Wag-tails, all sorts, remain with us all the winter. ^jf[ Bullfinches,*** when fed on hempseed, often become wholly black. We have vast" flocks of female chaffinches ttt all the winter, with hardly any males among them. When you say that in breeding-time the cock-snipes make a bleating noise, and I a drumming (perhaps I should have rather said an hum- ming), I suspect we mean the same thing. However, while they are * Columba anas, is a more locally distributed species than the other British pigeons. In open countries this species makes its nest in holes of the ground, selecting a rabbit's burrow for the purpose ; it also selects old hollow and pollard trees. t p. 224. + P- 229. § vol. ii. p. 237. || The anthus arboreus, or tree-pipit is meant here. The common titlark, A . pratensis, does not perch or sing from trees. Pennant confounds these two also, as well as their habits. <$ p. 242. ** We have received H. rustica from Western Africa, Sierra Leone, &c., but it is not likely they form any of the parties which migrate to Europe. ft p. 244. JJ pp. 270, 271. §§ We almost suspect that it is the similarity of the females of these two birds that has caused this assertion, a straggling whinchat may remain, but will form the exception. Mr. Yarrell is aware of only two authentic instances. Of the wheat-ear we are still more in doubt. See letter to Barrington, No. XVII. These remarks are again repeated, Letter XLI., but there we again suspect the stone- chat mistaken for whin-chat. HII See Letter XIII. , and note. ITf P- 300. *** p. 306. ttt P- 358. 80 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOKNE. playing about on the wing they certainly make a loud piping with their mouths : but whether that bleating or humming is ventriloquous, or proceeds from the motion of their wings, I cannot say ; but this I know, that when this noise happens the bird is always descending, and his wings are violently agitated. Soon after the lapwings * have done breeding they congregate, and, leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs and sheep- walks. Two years ago t last spring the little auk was found alive and unhurt, but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from Alresford, where there is a great lake : it was kept awhile, but died. I saw young teals J taken alive in the ponds of Wolmer Forest in the beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild-ducks. Speaking of the swift, § that page says " its drink the dew ; " whereas it should be " it drinks on the wing ; " for all the swallow kind sip their water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers : like Yirgil's bees, they drink flying ; "flumina summa libant." In this method of drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar. Of the sedge-bird || be pleased to say it sings most part of the night ; its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds ; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits you immediately set it a-singing ; or in other words, though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it reassumes its song. LETTEE XL. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Sept. 2nd, 1774. DEAR SIR, — Before your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had been remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female swallow, and this ere any young broods appeared ; so that there was no danger of confounding the dams with their pidli : and besides, as they were then always in pairs, and busied in the employ of nidification, there could be no room for mistaking the 'sexes, nor the individuals of different chimneys the one for the other. From all my observations, it constantly appeared that each sex has the long feathers in its tail that give it that forked shape ; with this difference, that they are longer in the tail of the male than in that of the female. Nightingales, when their young first come abroad, and are helpless, make a plaintive and a jarring noise ; and also a snapping or cracking, pursuing people along the hedges as they walk : these last sounds seem intended for menace and defiance. The grasshopper-lark chirps all night in the height of summer. TJ * p. 360. f p. "409. J p. 475. § p. 15. |] p. 16. 1 Salicaria locustella, see Letter XVI. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 81 Swans turn white the second year, and breed the third. Weasels prey on moles, as appears by their being sometimes caught in mole-traps. Sparrow-hawks sometimes breed in old crows' nests, and the kestril in churches and ruins.* There are supposed to be two sorts of eels in the island of Ely. The threads sometimes discovered in eels are perhaps their young : the genera- tion of eels is very dark and myste- rious, f Hen-harriers breed on the ground, and seem never to settle on trees. When redstarts shake their tails they move them horizontally, as dogs do when they fawn : the tail of a wagtail, when in motion, bobs up and down like that of a jaded horse. Hedge-sparrows have a remarkable HEADS OF EELS. flirt with their wings in breeding-time ; as soon as frosty mornings come they make a very piping plaintive noise. Many birds which become silent about Midsummer reassume their notes again in September ; as the thrush, blackbird, woodlark, willow- wren, «&c. ; hence August is by much the most mute month, the spring, summer, and autumn through. Are birds induced to sing again because the temperament of autumn resembles that of spring ? Linnaeus ranges plants geographically ; palms inhabits the tropics, grasses the temperate zones, and mosses and lichens the polar circles ; no doubt animals may be classed in the same manner with propriety. House-sparrows build under eaves in the spring; as the weather becomes hotter they get out for coolness, and nest in plum-trees and apple-trees. These birds have been known sometimes to build in rooks' nests, and sometimes in the forks of boughs under rooks' nests. As my neighbour was housing a rick he observed that his dogs devoured all the little red mice that they could catch, but rejected the common mice; and that his cats ate the common mice, refusing the red. Eed-breasts sing all through the spring, summer, and autumn. The reason that they are called autumn songsters is, because in the two first seasons their voices are drowned and lost in the general chorus ; in the latter their song becomes distinguishable. Many songsters of the autumn seem to be the young cock red-breasts of that year : notwith- * We have known a kestril breed in the deserted nest of a magpie, t Three species of British eels have now been clearly made out. Two very distinct by the form of the head, in the one narrow, in the other broad, and consequently have been named sharp and broad-nosed eels. The third is of intermediate form, and called the mig. Ely was famous for its eels, and is said to have derived its name from the circumstance of its rents being formerly paid in eels. The "threads" would be intestinal worms, perhaps Filariae. — Eels are oviparous and generate like most other fishes having bony skeletons. 82 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. standing" the prejudices in their favour, they do much mischief in gardens to the summer-fruits.* The titmouse, which early in February begins to make two quaint notes, like the whetting of a saw, is the marsh titmouse : the great titmouse sings with three cheerful joyous notes, and begins about the same time.f Wrens sing all the winter through, frost excepted. House-martins came remarkably late this year both in Hampshire and Devonshire : is this circumstance for or against either hiding or migration ? Most birds drink sipping at intervals; but pigeons take a long continued draught, like quadrupeds. Notwithstanding what I have said in a former letter, no gray crows were ever known to breed oil Dartmoor ; it was my mistake. The appearance and flying of the Scarabceus solstitialis, or fern-chafer, commence with the month of July, and cease about the end of it. These scarabs are the constant food of Caprimulgi, or fern owls, through that period. They abound on the chalky downs and in some sandy districts, but not in the clays. In the garden of the Black Bear inn in the town of Reading is a stream or canal running under the stables and out into the fields on the other side of the road : in this water are many carps, which lie rolling about in sight, being fed by travellers, who amuse themselves by tossing them bread ; but as soon as the weather grows at all severe these fishes are no longer seen, because they retire under the stables, where they remain till the return of spring. Do they lie in a torpid state ] if they do not, how are they supported ] The note of the white-throat, which is continually repeated, and often attended with odd gesticulations on the wing, is harsh and displeasing. These birds seem of a pugnacious disposition ; for they sing with an erected crest and attitudes of rivalry and defiance ; are shy and wild in breeding-time, avoiding neighbourhoods, and haunting lonely lanes and commons ; nay even the very tops of the Sussex Downs, where there are bushes and covert ; but in July and August they bring their broods into gardens and orchards, and make great havoc among the summer- fruits. The black cap has in common a full, sweet, deep, loud, and wild pipe ; yet that strain is of short continuance, and his motions are desultory ; but when that bird sits calmly and engages in song in earnest, he pours forth very sweet, but inward melody, and expresses great variety of soft and gentle modulations, superior perhaps to those of any of our warblers, the nightingale excepted. Black-caps mostly haunt orchards and gardens ; while they warble their throats are wonderfully distended. The song of the redstart is superior, though somewhat like that of the white-throat; some birds have a few more notes than others. * They eat also the berries of the ivy, the honey-suckle, and the Euonymus europceus, or spindle-tree. - f It is the notes of the greater and cole titmice, Parus major and ater, that resemble the whetting of a saw. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 83 Sitting very placidly on the top of a tall tree in a village, the cock sings from morning to night : he affects neighbourhoods, and avoids solitude, and loves to build in orchards and about houses ; with us he perches on the vane of a tall maypole. The fly-catcher is of all our summer birds the most mute and the most familiar ; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a vine, or a sweetbriar, against the wall of a house, or in the hole of a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a door where people are going in and out all day long. This bird does not make the least pretension to song, but uses a little inward wailing note when it thinks its young in danger from cats or other annoyances : it breeds but once, and retires early. Selborne parish alone can and has exhibited at times more than half the birds that are ever seen in all Sweden ; the former has produced more than one hundred and twenty species, the latter only two hundred and twenty-one. Let me add also that it has shown near half the species that were ever known in Great Britain.* On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with it a quaint and magisterial air, and is very sententious ; but when I recollect that you requested stricture and anecdote, I hope you will pardon the didactic manner for the sake of the information it may happen to contain. LETTEE XLI. TO THE SAME. IT is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of soft- billed birds that continue with us the winter through, subsist during the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems not to be the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters ; for the robust wry- neck (so much resembling the hardy race of wood-peckers) migrates, while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves our severest frosts without availing himself of houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while this keeps aloof in fields and woods ; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know. I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, which winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All the species of wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams near their spring- heads, where they never freeze ; ahd, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the genus of Phryganece^ &c. * Sweden 221, Great Britain 252 species.1 t See Derham's "Physico-theology," p. 235, and note, Letter XIII., p. 35. 1 In the British islands generally, between 320 and 350 are now known, and occasional additions are continuing to be made. Thus Mr. Yarrel has within the last month noticed the dusky petrel as occurring within the limits of the British seas. Mr. William Thompson in 1849 gave 262 species to Ireland. G 2 84 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings : and in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass- plot on any mild winter's night. Red-breasts and wrens in the winter haunt out-houses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and flies that have laid themselves up during the cold season. But the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aurelia of the Lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks ; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings ; and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the ground itself. Every species of titmouse winters with us ; they have what I call a kind of intermediate bill between the hard and the soft, between the Linnsean genera ofFringilla and Motacilla. One species alone spends its whole time in the woods and fields, never retreating for succour in the severest seasons to houses and neighbourhoods ; and that is the delicate long-tailed titmouse, which js almost as minute as the golden-crowned wren; but the blue titmouse or nun (Parus cceruleus), the cole-mouse (Parus cuter), the great black-headed titmouse (Fringillago), and the marsh titmouse ( Parus palustris), all resort at times to buildings, and in hard weather particularly. The great titmouse, driven by stress of weather, much frequents houses'; and, in deep snows, I have seen this bird, while it hung with its back downwards (to my no small delight and admiration), draw straws lengthwise from out the eaves of thatched houses, in order to pull out the flies that were concealed between them, and that in such numbers that they quite defaced the thatch, and gave it a ragged appearance. The blue titmouse, or nun, is a great frequenter of houses, and a general devourer. Besides insects, it is very fond of flesh; for it frequently picks bones on dunghills : it is a vast admirer of suet, and haunts butchers' shops. When a boy, I have known twenty in a morning caught with snap mouse-traps, baited with tallow or suet. It will also pick holes in apples left on the ground, and be well enter- tained with the seeds on the head of a sun-flower. The blue, marsh, and great titmice will, in very severe weather, carry away barley and oat-straws from the sides of ricks. How the wheat-ear and whin-chat support themselves in winter cannot be so easily ascertained, since they spend their time on wild heaths and warrens; the former especially, where there are stone quarries : most probably it is that their maintenance arises from the aureliae of the Lepidoptera ordo, which furnish them with a plentiful table in the wilderness, t 1 am, &c. * See Letter XXXIX., and note. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 85 LETTEE XLIL • TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, March Qth, 1775. DEAR SIR, — Some future faunist, a man of fortune, will, I hope, extend his visits to the kingdom of Ireland ; a new field and a country little known to the naturalist.* He will not, it is to be wished, under- take that tour unaccompanied by a botanist, because the mountains have scarcely been sufficiently examined ; and the southerly counties of so mild an island may possibly afford some plants little to be expected within the British dominions. A person of a thinking turn of mind will draw many just remarks from the modern improvements of that country, both in arts and agriculture, where premiums obtained long before they were heard of with us. The manners of the wild natives, their superstitions, their prejudices, their sordid way of life, will extort from him many useful reflections. He should also take with him an able draughtsman; for he must by no means pass over the noble castles and seats, the extensive and picturesque lakes and waterfalls, and the lofty stupendous mountains, so little known, and so engaging to the imagination when described and exhibited in a lively manner ; such a work would be well received. As I have seen no modern map of Scotland, I cannot pretend to say how accurate or particular any such may be ; but this I know, that the best old maps of that kingdom are very defective. " The great obvious defect that I have remarked in all maps of Scotland that have fallen in my way is, a want of a coloured line, or stroke, that shall exactly define the just limits of that district called the Highlands. Moreover, all the great avenues to that mountainous and romantic country want to be well distinguished. The military roads formed by General Wade are so great and Roman-like an undertaking that they well merit attention. My old map, Moll's Map, takes notice of Fort William, but could not mention the other forts that have been erected long since ; therefore a good representation of the chain of forts should not be omitted. The celebrated zigzag up the Coryarich must not be passed over. Moll takes notice of Hamilton and Drumlanrig, and such capital houses ; * Since the date of these letters we have had several excellent inquirers into the natural history of Ireland, and the present century has seen her possessed of a Zoologist in one of her own sons, who, in private character and scientific acquire- ments, would have done honour to any country. William Thompson, Esq., of Belfast, devoted himself to the pursuits of literature and science, with the view of publishing the "Zoology " of his native island. He prepared himself for the task by every opportunity of study, and by expeditions through various parts of Europe His researches were communicated from time to time to the British Association and other learned societies, and generally appeared in their proceedings or in the Zoological periodicals of the day ; and before his death he had completed and published the "Ornithology of Ireland" in three volumes, a work replete with information. Materials for the other departments of zoology had been collected, and were in a state of preparation to continue the work, and we understand that these have been entrusted to the care of friends and trustees, who have undertaken the charge of their publication. 86 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. but a new survey, no doubt, should represent every seat and castle remarkable for any great event, or celebrated for its paintings, &c. Lord Breadalbane's seat and beautiful policy are too curious and extra- ordinary to be omitted; The seat of the Earl of Eglintoun, near Glasgow, is worthy of notice. The pine plantations of that nobleman are very grand and extensive indeed. I am, &c. LETTEE XLIII. TO THE SAME. A PAIR of honey buzzards, Buteo opivorus, sive Vespivorus Rail, built them a large shallow nest, composed of twigs and lined with dead beechen leaves, upon a tall slender beech near the middle of Selborne Hanger, in the summer of 1780.* In the middle of the month of June a bold boy climbed this tree, though standing on so steep and dizzy a situation, and brought down an egg, the only one in the nest, which had been sat on for some time, and contained the embryo of a young bird. The egg was smaller, and not so round as those of the common buzzard ; was dotted at each end with small red spots, and surrounded in the middle with a broad bloody zone. The hen-bird was shot, and answered exactly to Mr. Bay's description of that species ; had a black cere, short thick legs, and a long tail. When on the wing this species may be easily distinguished from the common buzzard by its hawk-like appearance, small head, wings not so blunt, and longer tail. This specimen contained in its craw some limbs of frogs and many grey snails without shells. The irides of the eyes of this bird were of a beautiful bright yellow colour. About the tenth of July in the same summer a pair of sparrow- hawks bred in an old crow's nest on a low beech in the same hanger ; and as their brood, which was numerous, began to grow up, became so daring and ravenous, that they were a terror to all the dames in the village that had chickens or ducklings under their care. A boy climbed the tree, and found the young so fledged that they all escaped from him ; but discovered that a good house had been kept : the larder was well-stored with provisions; for he brought down a young black- * The honey-buzzard is a rare bird in Great Britain, and extends chiefly along the east coast to the south of Scotland, where we have known a few specimens to have been killed ; its manner of breeding and habits during that time have not again been observed. With the exception of what is stated above by Mr. White all the observations that have been made upon their food have tended to show that it was almost entirely insectivorous. One which was captured at Twizel, by Mr. Selby, was discovered by having scratched out the nest of a wasp ( Vespa vulgaris), and cleaned the comb of the immature young and grubs. This bird was procured by setting traps around the plundered nest, and upon dissection afterwards no remains of animals or birds were discovered, the contents of the stomach being entirely insects, and chiefly the remains of the contents of the wasp-comb. The vignette at the head of this chapter represents the honey-buzzard in a state of plumage which is sometimes met with ; the head and neck being yellowish white or cream colour. This we think is incidental to the young males. The specimen figured was taken, in Northumberland some years since. GREAT BAT. HONEY-BUZZARD. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 37 bird, jay, and house-martin, all clean picked, and some half devoured. The old birds had been observed to make sad havoc for some days among the new-flown swallows and martins, which, being but lately out of their nests, had not acquired those powers and command of wing that enable them, when more mature, to set such enemies at defiance. LETTEE XLIY, TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Nov. SQth, 1780. DEAR SIR, — Every incident that occasions a renewal of our corre- spondence will ever be pleasing and agreeable to me. As to the wild wood-pigeon, the (Enas, or Vinago, of Eay, I am much of your mind; and see no reason for making it the origin of the common house-dove : but suppose those that have advanced that opinion may have been misled by another appellation, often given to the (Enas, which is that of stock-dove. Unless the stock-dove in the winter varies greatly in manners from itself in summer, no species seems more unlikely to be domes- ticated, and to make an house-dove. We very rarely see the %££&£: -m « ££££•££ ^ " it stays with us, from November perhaps to February, lives the same wild life with the ring-dove, Palum- bus tolrguatus ; fre- STOCK DOVB. quents coppices and groves, supports itself chiefly by mast, and delights to roost in the tallest beeches. Could it be known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be settled with me at once, provided they construct their nests on trees, like the ring-dove, as I much suspect they do.* You received, you say, last spring a stock-dove from Sussex ; and are informed that they sometimes breed in that country. But why did not your correspondent determine the place of its nidification, whether on rocks, cliffs, or trees 1 If he was not an adroit ornithologist I should doubt the fact, because people with us perpetually confound the stock- dove with the ring-dove. See Letter XXXIX., and note. 88 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing that house- doves are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon, for many reasons. In the first place the wild stock-dove is manifestly larger than the common house-dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which generally enlarges the breed. Again, those two remarkable black spots on the remiges of each wing of the stock-dove, which are so character- istic of the species, would not, one should think, be totally lost by its being reclaimed ; but would often break out among its descendants. But what is worth an hundred arguments is, the instance you give in Sir Roger Mostyn's house-doves in Caernarvonshire ; which, though tempted by plenty of food and gentle treatment, can never be prevailed on to inhabit their cote for any time ; but, as soon as they begin to breed, betake themselves to the fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns, and precipices of that stupendous promontory.* " Naturam expellas furc& . . . tamen usque recurret. " I have consulted a sportsman, now in his seventy-eighth year, who tells me that fifty or sixty years back, when the beechen woods were much more extensive than at present, the number of wood-pigeons was astonishing ; that he has often killed near twenty in a day : and that with a long wild-fowl piece he has shot seven or eight at a time on the wing as they came wheeling over his head : he moreover adds, which I was not aware of, that often there were among them little parties of small blue doves, which he calls rockiers. The food of these number- less emigrants was beech-mast and some acorns; and particularly barley, which they collected in the stubbles. But of late years, since the vast increase of turnips, that vegetable has furnished a great part of their support in hard weather ; and the holes they pick in these roots greatly damage the crop. From this food their flesh has contracted a rancidness which occasions them to be rejected by nicer judges of eating, who thought them before a delicate dish. They were shot not only as they were feeding in the fields, and especially in snowy weather, but also at the close of the evening, by men who lay in ambush among the woods and groves to kill them as they came in to roost, f These are the principal circumstances relating to this wonderful internal migration, which with us takes place towards the end of November, and ceases early in the spring. Last winter we had in Selborne high wood about an hundred of these doves ; but in former times the flocks were so vast, not only with us but all the district round, that on mornings and evenings they traversed the air, like rooks, in strings, reaching for a mile together. When they thus * It is the white-rumped pigeon, or rock dove, Columba lima, which is the original stock of our dove-cots, and the natural abodes of this species is caves and rocky precipices on the sea-coast. Although White remarks that the domestic pigeon never settles on trees, such is sometimes the case ; Mr. Eyton has observed this, and we have frequently seen it ; at the same time it is by no means the general habit. t "Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flocks used to withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over." NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 89 rendezvoused here by thousands, if they happened to be suddenly roused from their roost-trees on an evening, 1 ' Their rising all at once was like the sound Of thunder heard remote. " It will by no means be foreign to the present purpose to add, that I had a relation in this neighbourhood who made it a practice, for a time, whenever he could procure the eggs of a ring-dove, to place them under a pair of doves that were sitting in his own pigeon-house; hoping thereby, if he could bring about a coalition, to enlarge his breed, and teach his own doves to beat out into the woods and to support themselves by mast : the plan was plausible, but something always interrupted the success ; for though the birds were usually hatched, and sometimes grew to half their size, yet none ever arrived at maturity. I myself have seen these foundlings in their nest displaying a strange ferocity of nature, so as scarcely to bear to be looked at, and snapping with their bills by way of menace. In short, they always died, perhaps for want of proper sustenance : but the owner thought that by their fierce and wild demeanour they frighted their foster mothers, and so were starved. Yirgil, as a familiar occurrence, by way of simile, describes a dove haunting the cavern of a rock in such engaging numbers, that I cannot refrain from quoting the passage : and John Dryden has rendered it so happily in our language, that without farther excuse I shall add his translation also. "Qualis speluncS, subitb commota Colrimba, Cui domus, et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi, Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis Dat tecto ingentem— mox aere lapsa quieto, Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas. " " As when a dove her rocky hold forsakes, fright her sounding wings sh Rous'd, in a fright her sounding wings she shakes ; The cavern rings with clattering : — out she flies, And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies : At first she flutters : — but at length she springs To smoother flight, and shopts upon her wings." I am, &c. 90 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. LETTEE I. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. SELBORNE, June SOth, 1769. DEAR SIR,— When I was in town last month I partly engaged that I would sometime do myself the honour to write to you on the subject of natural history ; and I am the more ready to fulfil my promise, because I see you are a gentleman of great candour, and one that will make allowances ; especially where the writer professes to be an out- door naturalist, one that takes his observations from the subject itself, and not from the writings of others.* THE FOLLOWING is A LIST OP THE SUMMER BIRDS OF PASSAGE WHICH I HAVE DISCOVERED IN THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD, RANGED SOMEWHAT IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY APPEAB, : 1. Wryneck, 2. Smallest willow- ) wren, J 3. Swallow, 4. Martin, 5. Sand-martin, 6. Black-cap, 7. Nightingale, 8. Cuckoo, 9. Middle willow-wren, 10. White-throat, 11. Red-start, 12. Stone-curlew, 13. Turtle-dove, RAII NOMINA. Jynx, sive Torquilla. Regulus non cristatus, Hirundo domestica, Hirundo rustica, Hirundo riparia, Atricapitta, Luscinia, Cuculus, Regulus non cristatus, Ficedulce affinis. RuticiUa. CEdicnemus. Turtur. USUALLY APPEARS ABOUT ( The middle of March: harsh 1 note. /March 23: chirps till Septem- \ her. April 13. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto : a sweet wild note. Beginning of April. Middle of April. Ditto : a sweet plaintive note, f Ditto ; mean note ; sings on till \ September. Ditto : more agreeable song. f End of March : loud nocturnal 1 whistle. * These letters to the Hon. Daines Bairington, though arranged in the original and subsequent editions together, and as forming a second part, were mostly written contemporaneously, or at least were dated to appear so, with those of the first series addressed to Pennant. They are written in the same unpretending style, answering questions, asking others, and suggesting subjects as before. The matter of the letters is also somewhat similar, and repetitions sometimes occur, but other subjects are at the same time introduced, arising from the different bearing of Mr. Barrington's pursuits. In the first letter lists of the summer and winter migratory birds are given. These lists in all probability might stand nearly the same at the present day, if we add to the first the third willow wren and greater pettychaps. We have scarcely ever known a locality frequented by the black-cap where the latter was not also found. White gives the wheat-ear among his " permanent residents ; " in this he is probably right in regard to a few birds, but surely the large mass that arrive upon the downs will come and go as in other parts. We would make the same obser- vation of his "yellow wagtail," which we believe is everywhere in this country a true migrant. In the winter list the ring-ousel is introduced, but this bird is a summer migrant to the north, and appeared, as White has often observed, in spring and autumn, remaining only a few days at each period during its passage northward or southward. We are not sure svhich of the wild geese is meant by the " Anserferus;" in all probability it is not so frequent or numerous now if it continues to visit the district at all, and this letter is just one of those which Professor Bell or some one resident can best correct and explain. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 91 11 n,.aaQi,,vr, 0>.io i 14. Grasshopper-lark, 15. Swift, RAII NOMINA. USUALLY APPEARS ABOUT / Alauda minima locustce ( Middle April : a small sibilous I wcg< j note, till the end of July. Hirundo apus. About April 27. 17. Land-rail, Ortygometm. ,a T , .,, , 18. Largest willow- \ReguLus non cristatus. wren» l ^ 19. Goatsucker, or fern-owl, 20. Fly-catcher, Stoparola. A loud harsh note, crex, crex. (Cantat voce striduld locustce ; \ end of April, on the tops of ( high beeches. J Beginning of May: chatters by j ^ght ^ith a singular noise. ? May 12 : a very mute bird ; this 4 is the latest summer bird ( of passage. This assemblage of curious and amusing birds belongs to ten several genera of the Linnaean system ; and are all of the ordo of passeres save the Jynx and Cuculus, which are jpt'oe, and the Charadrius ((Edicnemus) and Rallm (Ortygometra), which are grcdlce. These birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the following Linneean genera : Jynx. 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 16, 18, Motacilla. 3, 4, 5, 15, 8, 12, Himndo. Cuculus. Charadrius. 13. Columba. 17. Rallus. 19. Caprimulgus. 14. Alauda. 20. Musdcapa. Most soft-billed birds live on insects, and not on grain and seeds ; and therefore at ttie end of summer they retire : but the following soft-billed birds, though insect-eaters, stay with us the year round : RAII NOHINA. "These frequent houses; and Hadge-spa^w, White-wagtail, Yellow-wagtail, Grey-wagtail, -rrr. ao Wheat-ear, Whin-chat, Stone-chatter, Motacilla alba. Motacilla flava. Motacilla cinerea. m ,,, (Enanthe. (Enanthe secunda. (Enanthe tertia. Golden-crowned wren, Regulus cristatus. { , , /These frequent shallow rivulets [ near the spring heads, where •< they never freeze: eat the aureliaef of Phryganea. The (.smallest bu-ds that walk. _f Some of these are to be seen wintgr through. ( This is the smallest British bird : < haunts the tops of tall trees ; ( stays the winter through. A LIST OP THE WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE ROUND .THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD, RANGED SOMEWHAT IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY APPEAR. RAII NOMINA. l.Bing.ouse,, 2. Eedwing, Turdus iliacus. /This is a new migration, which J S±St V, about the 14th of March. About old Michaelmas. 92 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. RAIT NOMINA. 3. Fieldfare, Turdus pilaris. {'^'J^***'*"* 4. Royston-crow, Comix cinerea. Most frequent on downs. 5. Woodcock, Scolopax. Appears about old Michaelmas. 6. Snipe, Gallmago minor. rSome^smpes constantly breed 7. Jack-snipe, Gallinago minima. 8. Wood-pigeon, «B«. | Seldom agpea^tmi^ot in 9. Wild-swan, Cygnus ferus. On some large waters. 10. Wild-goose, Anser ferus. 11. Wild-duck, Anas torquata minor. \ 12. Pochard, Anas fera fusca. 13. Wigeon, Penelope. VOn our lakes and streams. 14. Teal, breeds with us ) n , 7 in Wolmer Forest, j fr**"*"* ) 15 Cross'-beak rnrrntlirmitfe* /These are only wanderers that 16.5ross-Mu,' Xo2 J appear occasionally, and are 17. Silk-tail, 6'amito boJumicus. | no^servant of any regular These birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the following Linnaean genera : 1, 2, 3, Turdus. 9, 10, li; 12, 13, 14, Anas. 4, Corvus. 15, 16, Loxia. 5, 6, 7, Scolopax. . 17, Ampelis. 8, Columba. Birds that sing in the night are but few. Nightingale, luscinia. { " In shadiest "^JgJ^ Woodlark, Alauda arborea. Suspended in mid air. Less reed-sparrow, { P^rjrundinaceus | AmQDg reeds &nd ^^ I should now proceed to such birds as continue to sing after Midsummer, but, as they are rather numerous, they would exceed the bounds of this paper : besides, as this is now the season for remarking on that subject, I am willing to repeat my observations on some birds concerning the continuation of whose song I seem at present to have some doubt. I am, &c. LETTEE II. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Nov. 2nd, 1769. DEAR SIR, — When I did myself the honour to write to you about the end of last June on the subject of natural history, I sent you a list of the summer birds of passage which I have observed in this neigh- bourhood ; and also a list of the winter-birds of passage : I mentioned besides those soft-billed birds that stay with us the winter through NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 93 in the south of England, and those that are remarkable &r singing in the night.* According to my proposal, I shall now proceed to such birds (singing birds strictly so called) as continue in full song till after Midsummer ; and shall range them somewhat in the order in which they first begin to open as the spring advances. 1. Woodlark, 2. Song-thrush, 3. Wren, 4. Redbreast, 5. Hedge-sparrow, 6. Yellowhammer, 7. Skylark, 8. Swallow, 9. Black -cap, 10. Titlark, 11. Blackbird, 12. Whitethroat, 13. Goldfinch, 14. Greenfinch, RAII NOMINA. Alauda arborea. Turdus simpliciter dictus. Passer troglodytes. Rubecula. Curruca. Emberiza flava. Alauda vulgaris. Hirundo domestica. Atricapilla. Alauda pratorwn. Merula vulgaris. Ficedulce affinis. Carduelis. Chloris. 15. Less reed sparrow, j P^rundinaceus 16. Common linnet, Linaria vulgaris. In January, and continues to sing through all the summer and autumn. ' In February and on to August ; re-assume their song in au- tumn. All the year, hard frost ex- cepted. Ditto. Early in February to July 10th. Early in February, and on through July to August 21. In February, and on to October. From April to September. Beginning of April to July 13. From middle of April to July 16. 'Sometimes in February and March, and so on to July 23 ; re-assumes in autumn. In April, and on to July 23. April, and through to Septem- ber 16. On to July and August 2. May, on to beginning of July. 'Breeds and whistles on till August ; re-assumes its note when they begin to congre- gate in October, and again early before the flocks sepa- rate. * This letter is also devoted to the song of birds, and records various pecu- liarities— The song or call of birds, like the seasonal changes in the plumage, is undoubtedly one of the accessaries to the season of incubation. Some utter notes and call each other at all seasons of the year, using them for the purpose of keeping together, or for an alarm xipon the approach of danger ; but many species have cries peculiar to the love season which are used to summon the mate, or uttered as a cry of distress when the breeding grounds are invaded, or the young ones in danger. These latter calls are lost after this season is finished. The cuckoo loses his well- known note, which gradually becomes more inarticulate as the season advances ; the jarring saw-like note of the greater and cole titmice ceases after a few months, and the curlews in like manner give up their very peculiar breeding whistle ; the crakes and rails cease their call, or it becomes hoarse and indistinct. The song of birds will commence earlier Greater, according as the locality varies. As White remarks the missel-thrush is a very early songster, and in Scotland in a mild winter we have heard it in January. Those birds which breed more than once in the season continue the song longer, but as July approaches there is a very marked difference in the "language of the groves," and as compared with a fine morning in April or May they are silent. We think, however, that some of the birds included in the first list can scarcely be called " singing birds, strictly." The yellow-hammer, and indeed all the buntings have a very monotonous note, remarkable only for its sameness and frequency of repetition, and one or two others have only a short varied call, but which is always repeated the same ; so that although White uses the expression of " singing birds, strictly so called," he meant the general love-note or caU. To the birds that sing as they fly might have been NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. Birds that cease to be in full song, and are usually silent at or before Midsummer : RAII NOMTNA. 17. Middle willow- wren, Regulus non cristatus. 18. Redstart, Ruticilla. 19. Chaffinch, Fringilla. 20. Nightingale, Luscinia. Middle of June : begins in April. Ditto : begins in May. 5 Beginning of June : sings first in February. Middle of June: sings first in April. Birds that sing for a short time, and very early in the spring : 21. Missel-bird, 22. Great titmouse, or' ox-eye, Turdus viscivorus. Fringittago. /'January 2, 1770, in February. Is called in Hampshire and Sussex the storm-cock, be- cause its song is supposed to forebode windy wet weather : it is the largest singing bird we have. February, March, April : re-assumes for a short time in September. Birds that have somewhat of a note or song, and yet are hardly to be called singing birds : 23. Golden-crowned wren, 24. Marsh-titmouse, 25. Small willow-wren, 26. Largest ditto, 27. Grasshopper-lark, 28. Martin, 29. Bullfinch, 30. Bunting, > Regulus cristatus. Parus palustris. Regulus non cristatus. IHtto. ( Alauda minima voce { locustae. Hirundo ogrestis. Pyrrhula. Emberiza alba. 'Its note as minute as its per- son; frequents the tops of high oaks and firs : the small- est British bird. Haunts great woods : two harsh sharp notes. Sings in March, and on to Sep- tember. ( Cantat voce striduld locustce; ( from end of April to August. (Chirps all night, from the mid- •{ die of April to the end of ( July. f All the breeding time ; from ( May to September. (From the end of January to 1 July. All singing birds, and those that have any pretensions to song, not only in Britain, but perhaps the world through, come under the Linnaean prdo of Passeres. The above-mentioned birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the following Linnsean genera : 1, 7, 10, 27, 2, 11, 21, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 25, 26, 6, 30, Alauda. Turdus. Motacilla. Emberiza, 8, 28, Hirundo. 13, 16, 19, Fringilla. 22, 24, Parus. 14, 29, Loxia. added the common bunting and green linnet, both of which have a peculiar breeding flight and song ; the first however is a very locally distributed species. The bird called tit-lark in this list seems from the note of its habits to be the tree- lark or pipit, Anthus arboreus. The true tit-lark or meadow-pipit, Anthus pratensis, has also a descending flight, singing at the same time, and would be a visitant at least to the downs. The common winchat will rise from its perch on the top of some tall plant, and make a short musical excursion upwards. The blackbird's call, from bush to bush, is rather an alarm note, than any part of its usual song. NATURAL HISTORY OF* SELBORNE. 95 Birds that sing as they fly are but few : KAII NOMINA. Skylark, Alauda vulgaris. Rising, suspended, and falling. fin its descent; also sitting on Titlark, Alauda pratorum. •< trees, and walking on the ( ground. Woodlark, Alauda arborea. f Suspended; in hot summer ( nights all night long. Blackbird, Merula. Sometimes from bush to bush. White-throat, Ficedula affinis. -f Uses when singing on the wing ( odd jerks and gesticulations. Swallow, Hirundo domestica. In soft sunny weather. Wren, Passer troglodytes. Sometimes from bush to bush. Birds that breed most early in these parts : Eaven, Corvus. {HMarch * February and Song-thrush, Turdus. In March. Blackbird, , Merula. In March. Rook, Cornix fruffilega. Builds the beginning of March. Woodlark, Alauda arborea. Hatches in April. Ring-dove, Palumbus torquatus. Lays the beginning of April. All birds that continue in full song till after Midsummer appear to me to breed more than once. Most kinds of birds seem to me to be wild and shy somewhat in proportion to their bulk ; I mean in this island, where they are much pursued and annoyed ; but in Ascension Island, and many other desolate places, mariners have found fowls so unacquainted with an human figure, that they would stand still to be taken ; as is the case with boobies, &c. As an example of what is advanced, I remark that the golden-crested wren (the smallest British bird) will stand uncon- cerned till you come within three or four yards of it, while the bustard (Otis), the largest British land fowl, does not care to admit a person within so many furlongs.* I am, &c. * Size has little to do with the familiarity of birds ; some are of a more wild and timorous disposition than others, but quiet and familiarity with objects is one, ignorance of objects which may annoy them, another cause. Birds know by memory the persons and objects that disturb them, and if frequently molested will soon become exceedingly shy. The wood-pigeon, naturally of a very shy disposition, if not disturbed about a garden or shrubbery, allows a very near approach. We have known the common thrush fed upon its nest. Game birds of all kinds are easily familiarised, and show no fear when they do not experience molestation. Sea fowl on islands seldom visited are more abundant during the breeding time, and are more careless of themselves and bold in protection of their young. There, unaccustomed to intrusion, they do not move out of the way of what they do not know to be danger. On the Bass rocks in the Frith of Forth Solan geese are, as it were, quite familiar ; they will attack a dog or strike at the foot held out to them, and specimens we procured some years since were taken off their nests by the bill. See also note to Letter XXXVIII., p. 79. t'6 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. LETTEE III. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Jan. 15th, 1770. DEAR Sin, — It was no small matter of satisfaction to me to find that you were not displeased with my little methodus of birds. If there was any merit in the sketch, it must be owing to its punctuality. For many months I carried a list in my pocket of the birds that were to be remarked, and, as I rode or walked about my business, I noted each day the continuance or omission of each bird's song ; so that I am as sure of the certainty of my facts as a man can be of any transaction whatsoever. I shall now proceed to answer the several queries which you put in your two obliging letters, in the best manner that I am able. Perhaps East wick, and its environs, where you heard so very few birds, is not a woodland country, and therefore not stocked with such songsters. If you will cast your eye on my last letter, you will find that many species continued to warble after the beginning of July. The titlark and yellowhammer breed late, the latter very late ; and therefore it is no wonder that they protract their song : for I lay it down as a maxim in ornithology, that as long as there is any incubation going on there is music. As to the redbreast and wren, it is well known to the most incurious observer that they whistle the year round, hard frost excepted ; especially the latter. It was not in my power to procure you a black-cap, or a less reed- sparrow, or sedge-bird, alive. As the first is undoubtedly, and the last, as far as I can yet see, a summer bird of passage, they would require more nice and curious management in a cage than I should be able to give them : they are both distinguished songsters. The note of the former has such a wild sweetness that it always brings to my mind those lines in a song in " As You Like It." " And tune his merry note Unto the wild bird's throat."— SHAKESPEARE. The latter has a surprising variety of notes resembling the song of several other birds ; but then it has also an hurrying manner, not at all to its advantage : it is notwithstanding a delicate polyglot. It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night ; perhaps only caged birds do so. I once knew a tame redbreast in a cage that always sang as long as candles were in the room ; but in their wild state no one supposes they sing in the night. I should bealmost ready to doubt the fact, that there are to be seen much fewer birds in July than in any former month, notwithstanding so many young are hatched daily. Sure I am that it is far otherwise with respect to the swallow tribe, which increases prodigiously as the summer advances : and I saw, at the time mentioned, many hundreds of young wag-tails on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost covered the meadows. If the matter appears as you say in the other species, NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 97 may it not be owing to the dams being engaged in incubation, while the young are concealed by the leaves 1 Many times have I had the curiosity to open the stomachs of wood- cocks and snipes ; but nothing ever occurred that helped to explain to me what their subsistence might be : all that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay many pellucid small gravels. I am, &c. LETTEE IY. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Feb. I9th, 1770. DEAR SIR, — Your observation that " the cuckoo does not deposit its egg indiscriminately in the nest of the first bird that comes in its way, but probably looks out a nurse in some degree congenerous, with whom to intrust its young," is perfectly new to me ; and struck me so forcibly, that I naturally fell into a train of thought that led me to consider whether the fact was so, and what reason there was for it. When I came to recollect and inquire, I could not find that any cuckoo had ever been seen in these parts, ex- cept in the nest of the. wag- tail, the hedge-sparrow, the titlark, the white-throat, and the redbreast, all soft-billed insectivorous birds. The ex- cellent Mr. Willughby men- tions the nest of the Palumbus (ring-dove), and of the frin- gilla (chaffinch), birds that subsist on acorns and grains, and such hard food : but then he does not mention them as of his own know- ledge; but says afterwards that he saw himself a wagtail CUCKOO. feeding a cuckoo. It appears hardly possible that a soft-billed bird should subsist on the same food with the hard-billed : for the former have thin membranaceous stomachs suited to their soft food ; while the latter, the granivorous tribe, have strong muscular gizzards, which, like mills, grind, by the help of small gravels and pebbles, what is swallowed. This proceeding of the cuckoo, of dropping its eggs as it were by chance, is such a monstrous outrage on maternal affection, one of the first great dictates of nature ; and such a violence on instinct ; that, had it only been related of a bird in the Brazils, or Peru, it would never have merited our belief. But yet, should it farther appear that this simple bird, when divested of that natural arropy^ that seems to raise the kind in general above them- selves, and inspire them with extraordinary degrees of cunning and address, may be still endued with a more enlarged faculty of discerning H 98 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. what species are suitable and congenerous nursing-mothers for its dis- regarded eggs and young, and may deposit them only under their care, this would be adding wonder to wonder, and instancing, in a fresh manner, that the methods of Providence are not subjected to any mode or rule, but astonish us in new lights, and in various and changeable appearances.* What was said by a very ancient and sublime writer concerning the defect of natural affection in the ostrich, may be well applied to the bird we are talking of : " She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers : " Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding, "f Query. Does each female cuckoo lay but one egg in a season, or does she drop several in different nests according as opportunity offers ] I am, &c. LETTEE Y. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, April 12th, 1770. DEAR SIR, — I heard many birds of several species sing last year after Midsummer ; enough to prove that the summer solstice is not the period that puts a stop to the music of the woods. The yellowhammer no doubt persists with more steadiness than any other; but the woodlark, the wren, the redbreast, the swallow, the white-throat, the goldfinch, the common linnet, are all undoubted instances of the truth of what I advanced. If this severe season does not interrupt the regularity of the summer migrations, the blackcap will be here in two or three days. I wish it was in my power to procure you one of those songsters ; but I am no birdcatcher ; and so little used to birds in a cage, that I fear if I had one it would soon die for want of skill in feeding. Was your reed-sparrow, which you kept in a cage, the thick-billed * We do not know exactly the instinctive motive which influences the cuckoo in the deposition of its eggs. Locality in this may have its influence, and the cuckoos frequenting a woodland and cultivated district, may seek other fostermothers from those which visit a more open country. Upon the edges of cxiltivated grounds, bordering on a subalpine district where there is natural copse-wood ; and there is no locality more in favour with the cuckoo ; the nest of the titlark, Anthus pratensis, is that most frequently selected : that of the ring dove, as quoted above, is a most unlikely resort to be chosen : an unerring instinct guides the parent ; the dissimi- larity of the egg would have been at once discovered, and the important fact of the intruder requiring to be the strongest, and to keep the nest for himself would in this case most probably be reversed. We have known the egg of the cuckoo to be deposited in the nest of the chaffinch, to which Mr. White's objection will not stand, for he had overlooked the fact that all the finches, and some others, which are commonly called "hard-billed birds," feed their young upon insects, cater- pillars, &c. ; and during summer are themselves most useful to the gardener to keep in check many of his most troublesome enemies. — See also White's remarks the cuckoj, Lottor VII. to Barrington, p. 103. f Job xxxix, 16, 17. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 99 reed-sparrow of the Zoology, p. 320 ; or was it the less reed-sparrow of Kay, the sedge-bird of Mr. Pennant's last publication, p. 16 ?* As to the matter of long-billed birds growing fatter in moderate frosts, I have no doubt within myself what should be the reason. The thriving at those times appears to me to arise altogether from the gentle check which the cold throws upon insensible perspiration. The case is just the same with blackbirds, &c. ; and farmers and warreners observe, the first, that their hogs fat more kindly at such times, and the latter that their rabbits are never in such good case as in a gentle frost. But when frosts are severe, and of long continuance, the case is soon altered; for then a want of food soon overbalances the repletion occasioned by a checked perspiration. I have observed, moreover, that some human constitutions are more inclined to plumpness in winter than in summer. When birds come to suffer by severe frost, I find that the first that fail and die are the redwing fieldfares, and then the song-thrushes. You wonder, with good reason, that the hedge-sparrows, &c., can be induced at all to sit on the egg of the cuckoo without being scandalised at the vast disproportionate size of the supposititious egg ; t but the brute creation, I suppose, have very little idea of size, colour, or number. For the common hen, I know, when the fury of incubation is on her, will sit on a single shapeless stone instead of a nest full of eggs that have been withdrawn : and, moreover, a hen-turkey, in the same circumstances, would sit on in the empty nest till she perished with hunger. I think the matter might easily be determined whether a cuckoo lays one or two eggs, or more, in a season, by opening a female during the laying-time. If more than one was come down out of the ovary, and advanced to a good size, doubtless then she would that spring lay more than one.J I will endeavour to get a hen, and to examine. Your supposition that there may be some natural obstruction in singing birds while they are mute, and that when this is removed the song recommences, is new and bold : I wish you could discover some good grounds for this suspicion. I was glad you were pleased with my specimen of the caprimulgus, or fern-owl ; you were, I find, acquainted with the bird before. * See Letter XXV. t By a wise provision, and to prevent the very circumstance which Mr. White here notices, we find the egg of the cuckoo scarcely larger than that of the common chaffinch. t The remarks of Mr. White are made in consequence of Mr. Barrington's letters to him, the contents of which were embodied in an essay, published in his Mis- cellanies, in 1781, "On the prevailing notions in regard to the Cuckoo," in which he quotes a letter from Mr. White (Letter XXIV.). Barrington had imbibed some very erroneous notions himself, and combats the idea that the small birds, such as hedge-sparrows, frequently quoted, and attempted to be disputed, and the above letter is evidently written in reply to many of the arguments which were advanced by Barrington. t Mr. Hewitson made an excursion to Norway, for the express purpose of procuring the eggs of some of our winter visitants, which were known to breed in Northern countries, for his beautiful "British Oology," and thus describes the breeding place of the fieldfare. "We were soon delighted by the discovery of several of their nests, and were surprised to find them breeding in society. Their 106 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. Primus," of the woodcock, that " nupta ad nos venit circd cequinoctium vernale ; " meaning in Tyrol, of which he is a native. And afterwards he adds " nidificat in paludibus alpinis : ova ponit 3 — 5." It does not appear from Kramer that woodcocks breed at all in Austria ; but he says, " Avis hcec septentrionalium provindarum cestivo tempore incola est ; ubi plerumque nidificat. Appropinquante hyeme australiores provincial petit ; hinc circa plenilunium mensis Octobris plerumque Austriam transmigrat. Tune rursils circa plenilunium potissimum mensis Martii per Austriam matrimonio juncta ad septentrionales provincias redit" For the whole passage (which I have abridged) see "Elenchus," &c. p. 351. This seems to be a full proof of the migra- tion of woodcocks; though little is proved concerning the place of breeding. P.S. There fell in the county of Rutland, in three weeks of this present very wet weather, seven inches and a half of rain, which is more than has fallen in any three weeks for these thirty years past in that part of the world. A mean quantity in that county for one year is twenty inches and a half. LETTEE IX. TO THE SAME. FYFIELD, near ANDOVER, Feb. 12th, 1T72. DEAR SIR, — You are, I know, no great friend to migration ; and the well-attested accounts from various parts of the kingdom seem to justify you in your suspicions, that at least many of the swallow kind do not leave us in the winter, but lay themselves up like insects and bats, in a torpid state, and slumber away the more uncomfortable months till the return of the sun and fine weather awakens them. But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general ; because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions of these birds he has ocular demonstration, for many weeks together, both spring and fall ; during which periods myriads of the swallow kind traverse the Straits from north to south, and from south to north, according to the season. And these vast migrations consist not only of hirundines but of bee-birds, hoopoes, Oro pendolos, or golden thrushes, &c. &c., and also of many of our soft-billed summer birds of passage ; and moreover of birds which never leave us, such as all the various sorts of hawks and kites. Old Belon, two hundred years ago, gives a curious account of the incredible armies of hawks and kites which he saw in the spring-time traversing the Thracian Bosphorus from Asia to Europe. Besides the above-men- tioned, he remarks that the procession is swelled by whole troops of eagles and vultures. nests were at various heights from the ground, from four to thirty or forty feet, or upwards, mixed with old ones of the preceding year ; they were for the most part placed against the trunk of the spruce fir, and resembled most nearly those of the ring-ousel." NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 107 Now it is no wonder that birds residing in Africa should retreat before the sun as it advances, and retire to milder regions, and especially birds of prey, whose blood being heated with hot animal food, are more impatient of a sultry climate ; but then I cannot help wondering why kites and hawks, and such hardy birds as are known to defy all the severity of England, and even of Sweden and all north Europe, should want to migrate from the south of Europe, and be dissatisfied with the winters of Andalusia. It does not appear to jjae that much stress may be laid on the difficulty and hazard that birds must run in their migrations, by reason of vast oceans, cross winds, &c. ; because, if we reflect, a bird may travel from England to the Equator without launching out and exposing itself to boundless seas, and that by crossing the water at Dover, and again at Gibraltar. And I with the more confidence advance this obvious remark, because my brother has always found that some of his birds, and particularly the swallow kind, are very sparing of their pains in crossing the Mediterranean; for when arrived at Gibraltar they do not ' ' Rang'd in figure wedge their way, And set forth Their airy caravan high over seas Flying, and over lands with mutual wing Easing their flight :" . . . .—MILTON. but scout and hurry along in little detached parties of six or seven in a company ; and sweeping low, just over the surface of the land and water, direct their course to the opposite continent at the narrowest passage they can find. They usually slope across the bay to the south- west, and so pass over opposite to Tangier, which, it seems, is the narrowest space. In former letters we have considered whether it was probable that woodcocks in moonshiny nights cross the German ocean from Scandinavia. As a proof that birds of less speed may pass that sea, considerable as it is, I shall relate the following incident, which, though mentioned to have happened so many years ago, was strictly matter of fact : — As some people were shooting in the parish of Trotton, in the county of Sussex, they killed a duck in that dreadful winter, 1708-9, with a silver collar about its neck,* on which were engraven the arms of the king of Denmark. This anecdote the rector of Trotton at that time has often told to a near relation of mine ; and, to the best of my remembrance, the collar was in the possession of the rector. At present I do not know anybody near the sea-side that will take the trouble to remark at what time of the moon woodcocks first come ; if I lived near the sea myself I would soon tell you more of the matter. One thing I used to observe when I was a sportsman, that there were times in which woodcocks were so sluggish and sleepy that they would drop again when flushed just before the spaniels, nay, just at the muzzle of a gun that had been fired at them ; whether this strange laziness was the effect of a recent fatiguing journey I shall not presume to say. * "I have read a like anecdote of a swan." • 108 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland and Scotland, but also, as I have been always told, Devonshire and Cornwall. In those two last counties we cannot attribute the failure of them to the want of warmth ; the defect in the west is rather a presumptive argument that these birds come over to us from the continent at the narrowest passage, and do not stroll so far westward. Let me hear from your own observation whether skylarks do not dust. I think they do ; and if they do, whether they wash also. The Alauda pratensis of Eay was the p«r dupe that was educating the booby of a cuckoo mentioned in my letter of October last. Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring-ousel for Mr. Tunstal during their autumnal visit; but I will endeavour to get him one when they call on us again in April. I am glad that you and that gentleman saw my Andalusian birds ; I hope they answered your expectation. Eoyston, or grey crows, are winter birds that come much about the same time with the woodcock ; they, like the fieldfare and redwing, have no apparent reason for migration ; for as they fare in the winter like their congeners, so might they in' all appearance in the summer. Was not Tenant, when a boy, mistaken 1 did he not find a missel-thrush's nest, and take it for the nest of a fieldfare ? The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon, (Enas Rail, is the last winter bird of passage which appears with us ; it is not seen till towards the end of November : about twenty years ago they abounded in the district of Selborne ; and strings of them were seen morning and evening that reached a mile or more ; but since the beechen woods have been greatly thinned they are much decreased in number. The ring-dove, Palumbus Rail, stays with us the whole year, and breeds several times through the summer. Before I received your letter of October last I had just remarked in my journal that the trees were unusually green. This uncommon verdure lasted on late into November ; and may be accounted for from a late spring, a cool and moist summer ; but more particularly from vast armies of chafers, or tree-beetles, which, in many places, reduced whole woods to a leafless naked state. These trees shot again at Midsummer; and then retained their foliage till very late in the year. My musical friend, at whose house I am now visiting, has tried all the owls that are his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe set at concert pitch, and finds they all hoot in B flat. He will examine the nightin- gales next spring. I am, &c. &c. LETTER X. - TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Aug. 1st, 1771. DEAR SIR, — From what follows, it will appear that neither owls nor cuckoos, keep to one note. A friend remarks that many (most) of his owls hoot in B flat ; but that one went almost half a note below A. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 109 The pipe he tried their notes by was a common half-crown pitch-pipe, such as masters use for tuning of harpsichords ; it was the common London pitch. A neighbour of mine, who is said to have a nice ear, remarks that the owls ab<5ut this village hoot in three different keys, in G flat, or F sharp, in B flat and A flat. He heard two hooting to each other, the one in A flat, and the other in B flat. Query : Do these different notes proceed from different species, or only from various individuals'? The same person finds upon trial that the note of the cuckoo (of which we have but one species) varies in different individuals ; for, about Selborne wood, he found they were mostly in D : he heard two sing together, the one in D, the other in D sharp, who made a disagreeable concert : he after- wards heard one in D sharp, and about Wolmer Forest some in C. As to nightingales, he says that their notes are so short, and their transitions so rapid, that he cannot well ascertain their key. Perhaps in a cage, and in a room, their notes may be more distinguishable. This person has tried to settle the notes of a swift, and of several other small birds, but cannot bring them to any criterion. As I have often remarked that redwings are some of the first birds that suffer with us in severe weather, it is no wonder at all that they retreat from Scandinavian winters : and much more the or do ofgrallce, who, all to a bird, forsake the northern parts of Europe at the approach of winter. " Orallce tanquam conjuratce unanimiter in fugam se conji- ciunt j ne earum unicam quidem inter nos habitantem invenire possimus ; ut enim cestate in australibus degere nequeunt ob defectum lumbricorum, terramque siccam ; ita nee infrigidis ob eandem causam," says Ekmarck the Swede, in his ingenious little treatise called " Migra- tiones AviUm," which by all means you ought to read while your thoughts run on the subject of migration. See " Amoenitates Academicae," vol. iv., p. 565. Birds may be so circumstanced as to be obliged to migrate in one country, and not in another : but the grallce (which procure their food from marshes and boggy grounds), must in winter forsake the more northerly parts of Europe, or perish for want of food. I am glad you are making inquiries from Linnaeus concerning the woodcock : it is expected of him that he should be able to account for the motions and manner of life of the animals of his own " Fauna." Faunists, as you observe, are too apt to acquiesce in bare descriptions, and a few synonyms : the reason is plain ; because all that may be done at home in a man's study, but the investigation of the life and conversation of animals, is a concern of much more trouble and difficulty, and is not to be attained but by the active and inquisitive, and by those that reside much in the country. Foreign systdmatics are, I observe, much too vague in their specific differences ; which are almost universally constituted by one or two particular marks, the rest of the description running in general terms. But our countryman, the excellent Mr. Eay, is the only described that conveys some precise idea in every term or word, maintaining his superiority over his followers and imitators in spite of the advantage of fresh discoveries and modern information. 110 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. At this distance of years it is not in my power to recollect at what periods woodcocks used to be sluggish or alert when I was a sportsman : but, upon my mentioning this circumstance to a friend, he thinks he has observed them to be remarkably listless against snowy foul weather ; if this should be the case, then the inaptitude for flying arises only from an eagerness for food ; as sheep are observed to be very intent on grazing against stormy wet evenings. I am, &c. &c.- LETTEE XL TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Feb. Bth, 1772. DEAR SIR, — When I ride about in the winter, and see such prodigious flocks of various kinds of birds, I cannot help admiring at these con- gregations, and wishing that it was in my power to account for those appearances almost peculiar to the season. The two great motives which regulate the proceedings of the brute creation are love and hunger ; the former incites animals to perpetuate their kind ; the latter induces them to preserve individuals : whether either of these should seem to be the ruling passion in the matter of congregating is to be considered. As to love, that is out of the question at a time of the year when that soft passion is not indulged : besides, during the amorous season, such a jealousy prevails between the male birds that they can hardly bear to be together in the same hedge or field. Most of the singing and elation of spirits of that time seem to me to be the effect of rivalry and emulation : and it is to this spirit of jealousy that I chiefly attribute the equal dispersion of birds in the spring over the face of the country. Now as to the business of food : as these animals are actuated by instinct to hunt for necessary food, they should not, one would suppose, crowd together in pursuit of sustenance at a time when it is most likely to fail ; yet such associations do take place in hard weather chiefly, and thicken as the severity increases. As some kind of self-interest and self-defence is no doubt the motive for the proceeding, may it not arise from the helplessness of their state in such rigorous seasons ; as men crowd together, when under great calamities, though they know not why ? Perhaps approximation may dispel some degree of cold ; and a crowd may make each individual appear safer from the ravages of birds of prey and other dangers. If I admire when I see how much congenerous birds love to congre- gate, I am the more struck when I see incongruous ones in such strict amity. If we do not much wonder to see a flock of rooks usually attended by a train of daws, yet it is strange that the former should so frequently have a flight of starlings for their satellites. Is it because rooks have a more discerning scent than their attendants, and can lead them to spots more productive of food 1 Anatomists say that rooks, by reason of two large nerves which run down between the eyes into the upper mandible, have a more delicate feeling in their beaks than other NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. Ill round-billed birds, and can grope for their meat when out of sight. Perhaps, then, their associates attend them on the motive of interest, as greyhounds wait on the motions of their finders ; and as lions are said to do on the yelpings of jackalls. Lapwings and starlings some- times associate.* LETTER XII. TO THE SAME. March 9th, 1772. DEAR SIR, — As a gentleman and myself were walking on the fourth of last November round the sea-banks at Newhaven, near the mouth of the Lewes river, in pursuit of natural knowledge, we were surprised to see three house-swallows gliding very swiftly by us. That morning was rather chilly, with the wind at north-west ; but the tenor of the weather for some time before had been delicate, and the noons remarkably warm. From this incident, and from repeated accounts which I meet with, I am more and more induced to believe that many of the swallow kind do not depart from this island, but lay themselves up in holes and caverns ; and do, insect-like and bat-like, come forth at mild times, and then retire again to their latebrce. Nor make I the least doubt but that, if I lived at Newhaven, Seaford, Brighthelmstone, or any of those towns near the chalk cliffs of the Sussex coast, by proper observations, I should see swallows stirring at periods of the winter, when the noons were soft and inviting, and the sun warm and invigorating. And I am the more of this opinion from what I have remarked during some of our late springs, that though some swallows did make their appearance about the usual time, viz., the thirteenth or fourteenth of April, yet meeting with an harsh reception, and blustering cold north-east winds, they immediately withdrew, absconding for several days, till the weather gave them better encouragement. LETTER XIII. TO THE SAME. April IWi, 1772. DEAR SIR, — While I was in Sussex last autumn my residence was at the village near Lewes, from whence I had formerly the pleasure of writing to you. On the first of November I remarked that the old tortoise, formerly mentioned, began first to dig the ground in order to the forming its hybernaculum, which it had fixed on just beside a great tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with its fore-feet, and throws it up over its back with its hind ; but the motion of its legs is ridiculously slow, little exceeding the hour-hand of a clock ; and suitable * In Holland lapwings and starlings associate in vast flocks, particularly after the season of incubation has passed, and the broods have joined together. In the open meadows that border the canals they may be seen together in thousands. 112 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOUNE. to the composure of an animal said to be a whole month in performing one feat of copulation. Nothing can be more assiduous than this creature night and day in scooping the earth, and forcing its great body into the cat ity ; but, as the noons of that season proved unusually warm and sunny, it was continually interrupted, and called forth by the heat in the middle of the day ; and though I continued there till the thirteenth of November, yet the work remained unfinished. Harsher weather, and frosty mornings, would have quickened its operations. No part of its behaviour ever struck me more than the extreme timidity it always expresses with regard to rain ; for though it has a shell that would secure it against the wheel of a loaded cart, yet does it discover as much solicitude about rain as a lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the first sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner. If attended to, it becomes an excellent weather-glass ; for as sure as it walks elate, and as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great earnest- ness iri a morning, so sure will it rain before night. It is totally a diurnal animal, and never pretends to stir after it becomes dark. The tortoise, like other reptiles, has an arbitrary stomach as well as lungs ; and can refrain from eating as well as breathing for a great part of the year. When first awakened it eats nothing ; nor again in the autumn before it retires : through the height of the summer it feeds voraciously, devoiiring all the food that comes in its way. I was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those that do it kind offices : for, as soon as the good old lady comes in sight who has waited on it for more than thirty years, it hobbles towards its benefactress with awkward alacrity ; but remains inattentive to strangers. Thus not only " the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib," * but the most abject reptile and torpid of beings distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched with the feelings of gratitude ! I am, &c. &c, P.S; In about three days after I left Sussex the tortoise retired into the ground under the hepatica. + LETTEE XIV. TO TfiE SAME. SELBORNE, March 26ta, 1773. DEAR SIR, — The more I reflect on the ffropy^j of animals, the more I am astonished at its effects. Nor is the violence of this affection more wonderful than the shortness of its duration. Thus every hen is in her turn the virago of the yard, in proportion to the helplessness of her brood ; and will fly in the face of a dog or a sow in defence of those chickens, which in a few weeks she will drive before her with relentless cruelty. This affection sublimes the passions, quickens the invention, and sharpens the sagacity of the brute creation. Thus an hen, just become * Isaiah i. 3. f See Letter L. to Harrington. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 113 a mother, is no longer that placid bird she used to be, but with feathers standing an end, wings hovering, and clocking note, she runs about like one possessed. Dams will throw themselves in the way of the greatest danger in order to avert it from their progeny. Thus a partridge will tumble along before a sportsman in order to draw away the dogs from her helpless covey. In the time of nidification the most feeble birds will assault the most rapacious. All the hirundines of a village are up in arms at the sight of an hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves that district. A very exact observer has often remarked that a pair of ravens nesting in the rock of Gibraltar would suffer no vulture or eagle to rest near their station, but would drive them from the hill with an amazing fury ; even the blue thrush at the season of breeding would dart out from the clefts of the rocks to chase away the kestril, or the sparrow-hawk. If you stand near the nest of a bird that has young, she will not be induced to betray them by an inadvertent fondness, but will wait about at a distance with meat in her mouth for an hour together. Should I farther corroborate what I have advanced above by some anecdotes which I probably may have mentioned before in conversation, yet you will, I trust, pardon the repetition for the sake of the illustration. The fly catcher of the "Zoology" (the Stoparola of Ray),* builds every year in the vines that grow on the walls of my house. A pair of these little birds had one year inadvertently placed their nest on a naked bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the inconvenience that followed. But an hot sunny season coming on before the brood was half fledged, the reflection of the wall became insupportable, and must inevitably have destroyed the tender young, had not affection suggested an expedient, and prompted the parent-birds to hover over the nest all the hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths gaping fofc'breath, they screened off the heat from their suffering offspring. A farther instance I once saw of notable sagacity in a willow-wren, which had built in a bank in my fields. This bird a friend and myself had observed as she sat in her nest ; but were particularly careful not to disturb her, though we saw she eyed us with some degree of jealousy. Some days after as we passed that way we were desirous of remarking how this brood went on ; but no nest could be found, till I happened to take up a large bundle of long green moss, as it were, carelessly thrown over the nest in order to dodge the eye of any impertinent intruder. A still more remarkable mixture of sagacity and in- stinct occurred to me one day SPOTTED FLYCATCHER. as my people were pulling off the lining of an hotbed, in order * Muscicapa gi'isold,. 114 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. to add some fresh dung. From out of the side of this bed leaped an animal with great agility that made a most grotesque figure ; nor was it without great difficulty that it could be taken ; when it proved to be a large white-bellied field-mouse with three or four young clinging to her teats by their mouths and feet. It was amazing that the desultory and rapid motions of this dam should not oblige her litter to quit their hold, especially when it appeared that they were so young as to be both naked and blind ! To these instances of tender attachment, many more of which might be daily discovered by those that are studious of nature, may be opposed that rage of affection, that monstrous perversion of the o-ropy)), which induces some females of the brute creation to devour their young because their owners have handled them too freely, or removed them from place to place ! Swine, and sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, 1 am not so much amazed; since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose, are capable of any enormity ; but why the parental feelings of brutes, that usually flow in one most uniform tenor, should sometimes be so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler philoso- phers than myself to determine. I am, &c. LETTEE XV. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, July 8th, 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 115 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 church-yard 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 an hen's egg. I have known an owl of this species live a full year without any water. Perhaps the case may be 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 com- mand the smallest degree of sound or noise. I am, &c. [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 * There is perhaps not a more beautiful instance of the evidence of design, than that exhibited in the whole structure of an owl ; and as a part of it the wing, which is constructed for a light, buoyant, and noiseless flight. The feathers are altogether soft and downy. They have the webs with the plumules disunited at the tips, and either remarkably pliable, or separated like the teeth of a saw, allowing a free passage to the air; or they possess a pliability to yield to its pressure, and thus give a light or sailing motion and a noiseless flight. I 2 116 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 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 venemous 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 sun-beams 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 ; t 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 Mppoboscw hirundinis, with narrow subulated wings, abounding in every nest ; and are hatched by the warmth of the bird's own body during incuba- tion, 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 1. HIPPOBOSCA HmroiHNia. *****?* like a crab. It creeps 2. NIEMI. under the tails, and about the groins, of horses, which, at their first coming out of tb,e north, are rendered half frantic by the tickling sensation ; while our own breed little regards them. " The curious Keaumur discovered the large eggs, or rather pupce, 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 pupce 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., pi. ii." * "See Ulloa's Travels." t Or ^irmi, now fully described in the ' ' Jlouographia Anoplurorum Britanniae, ' by Henry Denny ; who has also in readiness for publication materials sufficient for a volume upon the parasites of exotic species, as well as on those which infect many of the foreign mammalia. This volume would be of great interest, .and only requires sufficient encouragement to be brought out. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 117 LETTEB XVI. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Nov. 20^, 1Y73. DEAR SIR,— In obedience to your injunctions I sit down t'o give you some account of the house-martin, or martlet ; and if my moriography of this little domestic and familiar bird should happen to meet with your approbation, I may probably soon extend my inquiries t'o the rest of the British hirundiries — the swallow, the swift, and the bank- martin. A few house-^martins begin to appear about the 16th' of April ; usually some few days later than the swallow. $or some time after they appear the hirundines in general pay no attention to the business of nidifi cation;, 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 long1 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 such1 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 for- bearance enough not to advance hel* Work too fast; but by building only in the morning, arid 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 time5 and then desist, lest the work should become top-heavy, and so be mined by its own weight. By this method in about ten or twelve days is formed an 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. 118 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORKE. 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 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 inveloped 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 ofiice 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 ^Ai/a'a, 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 * Martins return to the same spot, or some corner of a window ; this has been ascertained by direct experiment ; but the nest, the structure of clay, is generally, if not always, rebuilt; and the clay, or sometimes almost sand, is rendered adhesive by the saliva, or a secretion for the purpose. In their natural habitats the nests are placed together frequently in contact, generally on the surface of some overhanging cliff. "We have seen from fifty to one hundred nests thus placed. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 119 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 thia neighbourhood every summer is seen a strong proof to the contrary at an 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 the 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 district 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 120 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 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. T am, &c. LETTER XVII, TO THE SAME. RINGMEB, near LHWES, Dec. Qth, 1773. DEAK 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 an 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 t 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 satis- faction, 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 a sepal-ate genus has been made for it in consequence, which is adopted by some ornithologists. f ^r- Courthope of Danny. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 121 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 V 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 becomeVhornless, or as they call them, poll-sheep ; and1 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 reversed1? 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, &c. &c., 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 consider- * See Letter XXXIX to Pennant, p 80 ; and note. Eighty-four dozen are said to have been taken in a single day ; and Pennant states, that about Eastbourne one thousand eight hundred and forty dozen were taken annually-. 122 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. able 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 Brightelm- stone 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 these 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 pro- gressive succession. It does not appear that any wheat-ears are taken to the westward of Houghton Bridge, which stands on the river A run. 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 whinchats, 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 con- tinues in this garden ; and retired under ground about the twentieth of November, and came out again for one day on the thirtieth : 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, &c. LETTER XVIII. TO THE SAME. SELBOBNE, Jan. Z9tJi, 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 the thirteenth of April, as I have remarked from many NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 123 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 hyberna- culum 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, * Hirundo riparia, or bank-swallow, we have for many years observed to precede the chimney-swallow by from seven to ten days. The breeding places of the chimney swallow mentioned afterwards are all artificial, and of these the rafters of outhouses are the most frequent. We are not acquainted with any natural breeding-place of this species, it is most probably in caverns or cleft rocks. 124 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 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 intro- duced 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 associ- ates 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 exerting 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 are too quick for the eye. The swallow, probably the male bird, is the excuUtor 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 sea-port towns, and making little excursions NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 125 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 chace, 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 (rropy^ 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 imple- ment 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 couch, 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 undis- tinguishing, 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, &c. &c. * Sir Ashton Lever's " Musseum." 126 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. LETTER XIX. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Feb. Uth, 1774. DEAR SIR, — I received your favour of the eighth, 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 JjJneas. 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 remark- able 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 * " Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes Pervolat, et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo, Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas : Et mine porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum Stagna sonat " Let. XIX., p. 173 orig. edit. " As the black swallow near the palace plies : O'er empty courts, and under arches flies ; Now hawks aloft, now skims along the flood, To furnish her loquacious nests with food. " DBYD. VIRG. Mn. xii. line 691. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 127 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 Eutland, 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, &c. LETTEE XX. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Feb. 26th, 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 re- citing the circum- stances attending the life and conver- sation of this little bird, since it is f era naturd, at least in this part of the king- dom, disclaiming all domestic attach- ments, and haunt- ing 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 Woolmer forest, several colonies of these birds ; and yet they are never * The H. esculenta is very small in body, but has a large extent of wing ; it belongs more properly to the group of swifts. There are one or two species smaller even than that mentioned by Brisson. The flea of the sand-martin, mentioned next page, is not the same as the bed- flea, but is the Ceratophyllua bifociatus of Curtis. ESCULENT SWALLOW. 128 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 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 dispatch, 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 never 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 inten- tionally 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 latebrce 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 1 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. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 129 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 libellulce (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 nests. 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 Iheir colour, which is what is usually called a mouse- K 130 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 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. LETTEE XXI. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Sept. 28th, 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 ninth of 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. * The swift collects materials for its nest same as the swallows ; it is, however, a very simple structure, and the opening to it is often so narrow that it is an exertion for the parent bird to get in. White, towards the conclusion of this letter, seems to be aware of only another swift — the white-bellied; but there are many now known, and as proposed in the same paragraph we allude to, the last upon p. 133, the genus Cypselus has been formed, and is universally recognised for them. The description of the swift in this letter is altogether excellent, and alone would have shown Mr. White to have been a most close and accurate observer. The white-bellied swift has been, taken ft. Great Britain. NATUEAL HISTORY OF SELBOENE. 131 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 copulate, 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 thundry 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 pro- portion than those of almost any other bird.,. When they mute, or case K 2 132 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 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 phryganece, ephemerce, and libellulce (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 of 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 nests 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. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 133 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 mo're singular than in their early retreat. They retire, as to the main body of them, by the 10th of 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 occa- sionally 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 1 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 con- gregate 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 hippoboscce 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 WHITE-BELLIED SWIFT. 134 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 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 liippoboscce, 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 the 5th of July, 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 crrop-y^ 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 contem- plated their naked bodies, their unwieldly 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 rj^mia, or state of perfec- tion ; while the progressive growth of men and large quadrupeds is slow and tedious ! I am, &c. John Antony Scopoli, of Carniola, M.D. NATUEAL HISTORY OF SELBOENE. 135 LETTER XXII. TO THE SAME. SELBORUE, Sept. 13th, 1774. DEAR SIR, — By means of a straight cottage chimney I had an oppor- tunity 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 the 4th, the swift on April the 24th, the bank-martin on April the 12th, and the house-martin not till April the 30th. At South Zele, Devonshire, swallows did not arrive till April the 25th, swifts in plenty on May the 1st, and house-martins not till the middle of May. At Blackburn, in Lancashire, swifts were seen April the 28th, swallows April the 29th, house-martins May the 1st. Do these different dates, in such distant districts, prove anything for or against migration ? A farmer, near Waybill, 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 indudas cum 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 Welch 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. * "The same night also I returned from the burial and slept by the wall of my courtyard, being polluted, and my face was uncovered. — " And I knew not that there were sparrows (swallows ?) in the wall, and mine eyes being open, the sparrows muted warm dung into mine eyes, and a whiteness came in mine eyes ; and I went to the physicians, but they helped me not." — TOBIT ii. 10. The Greek word is ffr^au9ia, pi. of rrfmtiitt, dimin. of e-r^Oos ; commonly trans- lated a sparrow, but taken also to mean any small bird. Bochart and the Latin vulgate take them to be Hirundines, which the Arabs held as a genus of sparrows, and called the " Sparrow of Paradise." — " Ghusfoor Aljinnut." 136 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. In the season of nidification the wildest birds are comparatively tame. Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though they are con- tinually 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 dis- qualify 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, &c., 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." LETTEE XXIII. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, June Sth, 1775. DEAR SIR, — On September the 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 atten- tion, 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 137 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 thistle-down 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.* * Every sportsman must have noticed the appearance indicated in the preceding letter. Lister, as above referred to, has some very good observations in his Latin 138 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBOKNE. LET TEE XXIV.* TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Aug. \5tk, 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 knoAvn 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 in 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, letter to Ray ; and at later periods it lias been noticed and commented upon by various observers and entomologists. Blackwall, in a paper in the Transactions of the Linnsean Society, observed, that it was principally young and immature spiders that undertook the excursions, and thinks that they are borne upwards by an ascending current of ratified air acting on their slender lines. He does not agree with those who think that the flight is influenced by electricity. Mr. John Murray, in his ' ' Researches in Natural History, " records several experiments ; and on one occasion the thread was discharged to the ceiling of a room above eight feet high. On another occasion a spider darted its thread perfectly horizontal, and in length fully ten feet, and the angle of vision being particularly favourable, we observed an extraordinary aura, or atmosphere, round the thread, which we cannot doubt was "electric." Mr. Murray afterwards explains various phenomena, and arrives at the conclusion that electricity is much connected with them ; he found that when a conductor was brought near one of the floccular balls they are considerably deflected from the perpendicular, and that when a stick of incited sealing-wax was brought near the thread of suspension it seemed to be repelled. Mr. Murray quotes Selborne, last paragraph of Letter XXIII., in regard to the spider shooting out a thread in a calm atmosphere, and observes, " This phenomenon it has been our fortune frequently to observe," and he arrives at the conclusion that the electric or non-electric state of the atmosphere is intimately connected with the shooting of the thread, and the ascent of the spider. We have often seen hundreds of acres covered with this gossamer web sparkling with the morning dew, and the little creatures must have been exceedingly numerous, many being seen, and we regret never having attempted any computation, but no doubt this autumn will give opportunity to any one resident in the country, and getting out of doors early. Starck says that twenty or thirty are often found upon a single stubble, and that he collected in half-an-hour two thousand, and could easily have got twice as many had he wished it. * This letter is quoted from the original by Barrington, in his "Miscellanies," Essay "On the prevailing Notions with regard to the Cuckoo," p. 251, and we presume as received from its author. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 139 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 com- panion. 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, &c. LETTEE XXV. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Oct. 2nd, 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, &c. 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 gypsy 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 140 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 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 these people on the confines of Tartary, who were endeavouring to penetrate those deserts, and try their fortune in China.* Gypsies are called in French, Bohemiens ; in Italian and modern Greek, Zingani.f I am, &c. LETTEE XXVI. TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Nov. 1st, 1775. "Hie .... tsedse pingues, hie plurimus ignis Semper, et assidua postes fuligine iiigri." J 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 * See Bell's "Travels in China." t Borrow in his "Zincale" observes, "Bearing the same analogy to the Sanscrit tongue as the Indian dialects, we find the Rommany or the speech of Roma, or Zincali as they style themselves, known in England and Spain . as Gypsies or Gitanos. This speech, wherever it is spoken, is in all principal points one and the same, though more or less corrupted by foreign words, picked up in the various countries to which those who use it have penetrated. One remark- able feature must not be passed over without notice, namely, the very considerable number of Sclavonic words, which are to be found imbedded within it, whether it be spoken in Spain or Germany, in England or Italy ; from which circumstance we are led to the conclusion, that these people in their way from the east travelled in one large compact body, and that their route lay through some region where the Sclavonian language or a dialect thereof was spoken. This region, I have no hesitation in asserting to have been Bulgaria, where they probably tarried for a considerable period, as Nomade herdsmen, and where numbers of them are still found at the present day. Besides the many Sclavonian words in the Gypsy tongue, another curious feature attracts the attention of the philologist ; an equal or still greater quantity of terms from the modern Greek ; indeed we have full warrantry for assuming that at one period the Spanish section, if not the rest of the Gypsy nation, understood the Greek language well, and that besides their own Indian dialect they occasionally used it for considerably upwards of a century subsequent to their arrival, as amongst the Gitanos there were individuals to whom it was intelligible so late as the year 1540." J " With heapy fires our cheerful hearth is crowned ; And firs for torches in the woods abound : We fear not more the winds, and wintry cold, Than streams the bank, nor wclvr-s the bleating fold." DKYD. VIRG. Eel., vii. line 70. NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 141 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 dispatch, 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 sea-side, the coarser animal- oils will come very cheap. A pound of common grease may be procured for four-pence, 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 still of 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,