UC-NRLF HOHBHH BIOLOGY NATURAL HISTORY ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE 5i NATURAL HISTORY AN1> ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE (gilbert White WITH NOTES, BY FRANK BUCKLAND. A CHAPTER ON ANTIQUITIES, BY LORD SELBOENE. AND NEW LETTERS. tt'irn ritoTiii;iiArnn AXD EXGHA yiyoa FROM DKAIVIXUS BY i'. 11. IN TWO VOLUMES.— VOL. I. Bonbon : MACMILLAN AND CO. 1876. S* BIOLOGY LIBRARY BIOLOGY LIBRARY PREFACE. MESSRS. MACMILLAN having requested me to edit White's " Selborne," I accepted the task, feeling assured that the hand- some Edition of the works of the founder and pioneer of English Practical Natural History now presented to the public would be the means of attracting many of the present genera- tion— both young and old — to the observation of the living works of the great Creator, and would help to counteract the growth of doubt, infidelity, and atheism, which — though regarded at their real worth by a reasoning public — must become bitter weeds in future, of no assistance to science, and sure promoters of a dangerous materialism. Gilbert White's writings are coloured throughout with that right tone of feeling which recognises the work of a great Creator in everything, both large and small. Gilbert White may, in fact, be said to have planted the acorn which, forty years after his death, grew into a great oak in the form of the Bridgewater Treatises l on the " IJoforr, iSHisbom, an!) ©oobittss of dob, as maitifestta in ilje Creation;." 1 I beg to recommend the readers of White to peruse these Bridgewater Treatises, especially Kirby on the History, Habits and Instinct of Animals ; Dr. Roget on Animal and Vegetable Physiology ; Sir Charles Bell on the Hand, and the Rev. Dr. Buckknd on Geology and Mineralogy. M86123 VIII PREFACE. In White's time the Bridgewater Treatises were represented by the writings of Dr. Derham, author of " Physico-Theology," l the fifth edition of which was published in 1720, the year White was born. I have discovered that White had not only deeply studied Derham and also Ray,2 but in many cases he illustrates Derham's arguments by his own observations. White was a true student of all created things — lynx-eyed, ([iiick to observe accurately, and patient to interpret the mean- ing of facts brought under his notice. The same facts that White saw and recorded are still going on around us at the present time. The birds come and go at the same dates as did their ancestors a century ago. The rabbits, hedgehogs, rats, bats, snakes, mice, &c., still keep up their old, old customs unaltered and unchanged. White is the teacher who has shown four generations how and what to observe — in fact, he taught them the " Art of Observation." For the above reason, there- fore, White's " Selborne " has held its own as a standard book for a hundred years, and will probably be as fresh as ever a hundred years hence. We live in a beautiful and happy world ; the waters teem with life, the earth is populated by creatures innumerable ; some live on the mountains, some on the plains, some in the forest, some in the desert ; to observe the habits of all living things 1 "Physico-Theology ;or, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God— from His Works of Creation ; being the Substance of Sixteen Sermons preached in St. Mary-le-Bow Church, London, at the Honourable Mr. Boyle's Lectures, in the years 1711 and 1712. With Large Notes and many Curious < >bservations." By W. Derham, Canon of Windsor, Rector of Upminster in Essex, and F.R.S. I have four editions of this work, 1720, 1727, 1732, ;ind 1768. This book is well worthy of a modern edition. - " The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation ; in Two Parts," and "Discourses on Physico-Theology, 1713." By John Ray, late Fellow of the Royal Society, 1743. PREFACE. II that came under his notice was White's delight; and rest assured that if we — like White — love animals (commonly called dumb because we cannot understand their language), we shall never experience the feeling of solitude. It has been more or less the custom to look upon White as purely an ornithologist ; but the attentive reader will find that he touches upon almost every branch of Natural History. The plan of this publication allowed me only one hundred and fifty pages for my notes and observations. I therefore determined uot to write a running commentary, but to give anecdotes and observations which have principally come under my own notice, and which bear more or less on the subjects mentioned by White. Students of ornithology have now at their command so many museums, as well as excellent books on birds, that those who are fond of birds have every facility for learning all that is known about them up to the present time. All I beg on behalf of the wild birds is not to shoot them ; leave the gun at home, and take the opera-glasses and watch their habits. Foremost among the works on ornithology is the magnificent work on " THE BIEDS OF GKEAT BRITAIN," by John Gould, F.E.S. The book that I would recommend as the best and least expen- sive handbook for bird-fanciers and those who intend to begin the study of English wild and cage birds, is Bechstein's " Cage and Chamber Birds."1 In my Notes will be found information about birds, not copied 1 Bell and Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. Professor Newton is now bringing out a new edition of Yarrell'a " British Birds," Van Voorst, Paternoster Row. The Rev. F. 0. Morris has published works on British Birds, Nests and Eggs of Birds, &c. Bickers and Bush, Leicester Square. Nor must I neglect to recommend the Rev. J. G. Wood's admirable work, " Illustrated Natural History," Routledge. VOL. I. I PREFACE. from any books, but from the experiences of Mr. Davy, for thirty years a practical bird-catcher and dealer. For the last ten years — from its commencement — I have been editor of the PRACTICAL NATURAL HISTORY and FISHERY columns of Land and Water, and have freely quoted from it in this book. I am always anxious to diffuse, by means of this publi- cation, information on the most important national question of the increase of the food of the people by scientific cultivation of the waters, as well as on those subjects of general natural history which White knew and loved so well. In Land and Water, vols. i. and ii., 1866, Mr. Groom Napier published a valuable series of articles on the " Birds Breeding in Great Britain." By his permission I have quoted this gentleman's descriptions of the Nests and Eggs of many birds mentioned by White. I am also under obligations to Colonel Hardy, RA. ; Mr. Menzies, of Windsor Park ; Mr. A. D. Bartlett, of the Zoological Gardens, for assistance ; and to my friend, Professor Delamotte, for the pains he has taken in the illus- trations for this volume. I propose — with the permission of the authorities of the Science and Art Department, South Kensington — to put together in my " Museum of Economic Fish Culture," the specimens figured in my part of this volume, and to exhibit in a large Aviary as many as possible of the birds mentioned by White. In the spring of the year, the London season begins, and large numbers of our fellow-creatures migrate to London. In the fall of the year, these same individuals migrate again from London ; this is exactly what happens with the birds, and it would, I am sure, give much pleasure to many of the public if the local, daily, and weekly press throughout the country would take the hint I now give them and record, not only the arrivals and the departures of Lords and Ladies, M.P.'s, and the great PREFACE. XI people of this our favoured land, but also the arrivals and depar- tures of the birds, who, in most cases, travel much further than we human beings either do or can. If this were done, a new world of pleasurable observation would be opened to thousands. I trust, moreover, that this book may induce my fellow- countrymen to learn that in this beautiful world there are many other creatures besides themselves, all living and acting with the utmost independence of human aid or advice. They do not consult mankind as to how, when, or where they shall build their nests or make their holes, or how they shall get their daily rations ; they do not ask us leave to come, nor do they ask leave to go. They know their own business, and obey what we, for want of a better word, call " instinct," the mysteries of which remain as yet unsolved by human intelligence. I trust that White's observations may have the effect of show- ing country proprietors — especially the owners of parks, wood- lands, &c. — that they have on their properties a class of tenants to whose existence and good services their attention has possibly never been previously directed. They would do well to stop the destructive hand of the gamekeepers, who are gradually exter- minating all our indigenous fauna, for want of knowledge of the way in which the forces of nature are balanced, and the law of " eat and be eaten " carried out. White's " Selborne " again will show clergymen that they have many parishioners inhabiting the woodlands, hedges, and fields, whose welfare they would do well not to neglect. There is hardly a parish in England or Wales where the clergyman has not opportunities more or less favour- able for writing a local " White's Selborne," taking White's method of observing and recording as a model for his note- book. I feel assured that the education of children, both in town and country, might greatly be forwarded if they were taught in the XII PREFACE. schools, what and how to observe. Especially in the country should they be encouraged to make collections of common objects, animal, vegetable, and mineral. They should also be taught to recognise indigenous British birds and beasts, and to send in notes as to what they have observed of their habits. Such studies tend to sharpen the natural faculties, while they humanize the intellect. The publishers desire in this place to acknowledge the kind- ness of Lord Selborne in adding some valuable Notes to the chapter on the Antiquities of Selborne, and allowing to be made for its illustration drawings of some curiosities found on his estate. To Mr. John Webster, Edgehill, Culter, Aberdeen, they are indebted, for his courtesy in placing at their disposal a few original letters of Gilbert White never before published, and now printed in the following pages. It has only to be added, that the whole of the Engravings have been planned and executed under the able superintendence of the artist, Mr. Philip H. Delamotte. FRANK BUCKLAND. 37, ALBANY STREET, REGENT'S PARK, December 17, 1875. NEW LETTERS. THE INVITATION: TO SAMUEL BARKER. NE percuncteris, fundus meus, optime Quincti, Arvo pascat herum, an baccis opulentet olivse, Pomisne et pratis, an amicta vitibus ulmo : Scribetur tibi forma loquaciter, et situs agri. See, Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round, The vary'd valley, and the mountain-ground Wildly majestic : what is all the pride Of flats, with loads of ornament supply'd ? Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expence, Compar'd with Nature's rude magnificence. Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still, The Muse shall hand thee to the beech-grown hill, To spend in tea the cool, refreshful hour, Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower : Or where the Hermit hangs his straw-clad cell, Emerging gently from the leafy dell : Romantic spot ! from whence in prospect lies Whate'er of landscape charms our feasting eyes ; The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture-plain, The russet fallow, and the golden grain ; The breezy lake that sheds a gleaming light, 'Til all the fading picture fails the sight. XIV NEW LETTERS. Each to his task : all different ways retire ; Cull the dry stick ; call forth the seeds of fire ; Deep fix the nettle's props, a forky row ; Or give with fanning hat one breeze to blow. Whence is this taste, the furnish'd hall forgot, To feast in gardens, or tli* unhandy grot ? Or novelty with some new charms surprises ; Or from our very shifts some joy arises. Hark, while below the village bells ring round, Eclio, sweet Nymph, returns the soften'd sound : But if gusts rise, the rushing forests roar, Like the tide tumbling on the pebbly shore. Adown the vale, in lone sequester'd nook, Where skirting woods imbrown the dimpling brook, The ruin'd Abbey lies : here wont to dwell (a) The lazy monk within his cloister'd cell ; While papal darkness brooded o'er the land ; Ere Reformation made her glorious stand : Still oft at eve belated shepherd-swains See the cowl'd spectre skim the folded plains. To the high Temple would my stranger go, (/3) Whose mountain-brow commands the groves below ? In Jewry first this order found a name, When madding Croisades set the world in flame ; When western climes, urg'd on by Pope and priest, Pour'd forth their millions o'er the delug'd east : Luxurious Knights, ill suited to defy To mortal fight Turcestan chivalry. Nor be the Parsonage by the Muse forgot : The partial bard admires his native spot ; Smit with its beauties lov'd, as yet a child, Unconscious why, its 'scapes grotesque and wild : High on a mound th' exalted gardens stand; Beneath, deep vallies scoop'd by Nature's hand ' (a.) The ruins of a Priory founded by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Win ton. (/3.) The remains of a supposed lodge belonging to the Knights Templars. NEW LETTERS. XV Now climb the steep, drop now your eye below, Where round the verdurous village orchards blow ; There, like a picture, lies my lowly seat A rural, shelter'd, unobserv'd retreat. Me, far above the rest, Selbornian scenes, The pendent forest, and the mountain-greens, Strike with delight : . . . there spreads the distant view That gradual fades, 'til sunk in misty blue : Here Nature hangs her slopy woods to sight, Rills purl between, and dart a wavy light. When deep'ning shades obscure the face of day, To yonder bench leaf-shelter'd let us stray, To hear the drowzy dor come brushing by With buzzing wing ; or the field-cricket cry ; To see the feeding bat glance thro' the wood ; Or catch the distant falling of the flood : While high in air, and poised upon his M'ings Unseen, the soft enamour'd wood-lark sings : (7) 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 thro' the trees. The chilling night-dews fall : . . . . away, retire, What time the glow-worm lights her amorous fire. (S) Selborne: Nov : 3: 1774. DEAR SAM, When I sat down to write to you in verse, my whole design was to shew you at once how easy a thing it might be with a little care for a Nephew to excell his Uncle in the *(•/.) In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and han<; singing in the air. (8.) The light of the glow-worm is a signal to her paramour, a, slender dusky scarab. XVI NEW LETTERS. business of versification : but as you have fully answered that intent by your late excellent lines ; you must for the future ex- cuse my replying in the same way, and make some allowance for the difference of our ages. However, when at any time you find yr muse propitious, I shall always rejoice to see a copy of yr performance ; and shall be ready to commend ; and what is more rare, yet more sincere, even to object and criticize where there is occasion. A little turn for English poetry is no doubt a pretty accom- plishment for a young Gent : and will uot only enable him the better to read and relish our best poets ; but will, like dancing to the body, have an happy influence even on his prose compo- sitions. Our best poets have been our best prose-writers : of this assertion Dryden and Pope are notorious instances. It would be in vain to think of saying much here on the art of versification : instead of the narrow limits of a letter such a subject would require a large volume. However, I may say in few words, that the way to excell is to copy only from our best writers. The great grace of poetry consists in a perpetual variation of y' cadences : if possible no two lines following ought to have their pause at the same foot. Another beauty should not be passed over, and that is the use of throwing the sense and pause into the third line, which adds a dignity and freedom to yr expressions. Dryden introduced this practice, and carryed it to great perfection : but his successor J'ope, by his over exactness, corrected away that noble liberty, and almost reduced every sentence within the narrow bounds of a couplet. Alliteration, or the art of introducing words beginning with the same letter in the same or following line, has also a fine effect when managed with discretion. Dryden and 1'ope practised tli is art with wonderful success. As, for example, where you say " The polish'd beetle," . . the epithet " burnish'd " would be better for the reason above. But then you must avoid affectation in this case, and let the alliteration slide-in as it were without design : and this secret will make your lines appear bold and nervous. There are also in poetry allusions, similes, and a thousand nameless graces, the efficacy of which nothing can make you sensible of but the careful reading of our best poets, and a nice NEW LETTERS. XVII and judicious application of their beauties. I need not add that you should be careful to seem not to take any pains about yr rhimes ; they should fall-in as it were of themselves. Our old poets laboured as much formerly to lug-in two chiming words, as a butcher does to drag an ox to be slaughtered : but Mr: Pope has set such a pattern of ease in that way, that few composers now are faulty in the business of rhiming. When I have the pleasure of meeting you we will talk over these and many other matters too copious for an Epistle. I had like to have forgotten to add that Jack copied your verses, and sent them to yr Uncle John who commended them much : you will be pleased to be commended by one that is the best performer and the best critic in that way that I know. With respects to your father and mother and all the family, I remain Yr affect : Uncle, GIL : WHITE. Nanny White mends apace : she is still at Newton. (To MRS BARKER.) Selborne : Dec : 25 : 78. DEAR SISTER, My Nep : Edmd who is now at Newton, brings a most sad account of his mother, whose state of health is very deplor- able, and her infirmities and sufferings very great. As to our poor brother in Lancashire, I have not heard from him for some time : the last account was but bad. Next week we expect at this place a great navigator, or rather navigatress, who within these 20 months has sailed 20,000 miles. The person alluded to is Miss Shutter, Mrs. Etty's niece, who set out for Madras in March, 1777 ; and, returning to Europe this autumn in the Carnatic India-man, was taken by her own country- men near the coast of France and carried to the Downs, and landed at Deal. This Lady appears in great splendor ; and is, it is supposed, to be married to a Gent : now on the seas in his way from India. Bad fevers and sore throats obtain much in these parts, and many children die. A person at Harkley buryed VOL I. c XVIII NEW LETTERS. three, his whole stock, in one grave last Tuesday. When I was down at Ringmer I found that district was sickly. Mrs. Sn : wrote herself some time since, and did not complain of any par- ticular infirmities. My great parlor turns out a fine warm winter-room, and affords a pleasant equal warmth. In blustering weather the chimney smokes a little 'til the shaft becomes hot. The chief fault that I find is the strong echo, which, when many people are talking, makes confusion to my poor dull ears. Your money is disposed of among poor neighbours. I have no doubt but that yr son will turn out a valuable young man ; and will he far from being injured by a public education. " Omnes omnia bona dicere, et laudare fortunas tuas, qui filium haberes tali ingenio prffiditum." With respects and the good wishes of the season I remain Your affect : brother, GIL: WHITE. DEAR NIECE ANNE, After I had experienced the advantage of two agreeable young house-keepers, I was much at a loss when they left me ; and have nobody to make whipp'd syllabubs, and grace the upper end of my table. Molly and her father came again, and stayed near a month, during which we made much use of my great room : but they also have left me some time. Whether they earryed-off any Ladies Traces I cannot recollect : but it is easy to distinguish them at this season : for soon after they are out of bloom they throw-out radical leaves, which abide all the winter. The plant is rare ; but happens to abound in the Long Lithe, and will be enumerated in the list of more rare plants about Selhorne. I wish we could say we had y" Pamasia ; I have sowed seeds in our bogs several times, but to no purpose. Please to let me know how many inches of rain fell in the late wet fit, which lasted about 5 weeks. The springs from being very low mounted-up to a vast rate ; and our lavants at Faring- don began to appear last week. My Barr is this evening at 30 - 3 - 1034, the air thick, and warm, and still. Hepaticas, and winter-aconites blossom ; and Helleborus fatidus in the NEW LETTERS. XIX Hiyh-wood, another rare plant. The clouds are all gone ; and we may expect frost. We have here this winter a weekly concert consisting of a first and second fiddle, two repianos, a bassoon, an haut-boy, a violin- cello, and a German-flute ; to the great annoyance of the neigh- bouring pigs, which complain that their slumbers are interrupted, and their teeth set on edge. (To Miss ANNE BARKER.) Selborne: Feb: 5th : 1785. DEAR NIECE, I was just thinking to write to some- RAIN AT SELBORNE body in your family, when your agreeable IN 1734. letter came in. inc : h : As the late frost was attended with some Jan : - 3 unusual circumstances, your father, I trust, Feb : — 0 will not be displeased to hear the particulars. Mar : - 3 The first week in Dec1 was very wet, with Apr : - 3 the Baromr very low. On the 7th with the May - 1 Bar : at 28 - 5 - 10 : there came on a vast June - 3 snow, which continued all that day and the July - 2 next, and most part of the following night ; Aug : - 3 so that by the morning of the 9th the works Septr — 2 of men were quite overwhelmed, the lanes Octr — 0 filled so as to be rendered impassable, arid NoV — 4 the ground covered 12 or 14 inches where Dec — 3 18 77 82 92 52 65 40 88 51 39 70 6 80 there was no drifting. In the evening of the 9th the air began to be so very sharp that Total we thought it would be curious to attend to the motions of a Thermr. We therefore hung out two, one made by Martin and one by Dolland, which soon be«an to shew us what we were to expect. For by 10 o'clock they fell to 21:— and at llh: to 4, when we went to bed. On the 10th in the morning Dolland's glass was down to half a degree below zero ; and Martin's, which absurdly was graduated only to 4 above zero, was quite into the ball : so that when the XX NEW LETTERS. weather became most interesting, it was quite useless. On the 10th at eleven at night, tho' the air was perfectly still, Dolland's glass went down to 1 degree below zero ! This strange severity had made my Bro : and me very desirous to know what degree of cold there might be in such an exalted situation as Newton : We had therefore on the morning of the 10th written to Mrs. Yalden, and entreated her to hang-out her Therm1 made by Adams ; and to pay some attention to it morning, and evening, expecting wonderful doings in so elevated a region. But behold on the 10th, at 1.1 at Night it was down only to 19 ! and the next morning at 22, when mine was at 10 ! We were so dis- turbed at this unexpected reverse of comparative local cold, that we sent one of my glasses up, thinking Mr. Y :'s must, some how be constructed wrong. But when the instruments came to be confronted, they went exactly together. So that for one night at least, the cold at N : was 20 degrees less than at S : and the whole frost thro' ten or twelve. And indeed, when we came to observe consequences, we could readily suppose it. Tor all my laurustines, bays, Ilexis, and what is much worse my fine sloping laurel-hedge, are all scorched-up, and dead ! while at Newton the same trees have not lost a leaf ! We had steady frost on to the 25th when the thermr in the morning was down to 10 with us, and at Newton only to 21 ! Strong frost continued till the 31st when some tendency to thaw was observed: and by Jan: 3rd: 1785 the thaw was confirmed, and some rain fell. There was a circumstance that I must not omit, because it was new to my brother and me ; which was that on Friday, Decr 1 Oth, being bright sun-shine, the air was full of icy spicula?, floating in all directions, like atoms in a sun-beam let into a dark room. We thought at first that they might have been particles of the rime falling from my tall hedges : but were soon convinced to the contrary by making our observations in open places, where no rime could reach us. Were they the watry particles of the air frozen as they floated ; or were they the evaporations from the snow frozen as they mounted ? We were much obliged to the Therm" for ye early intimations that they gave us ; and hurryed our apples, pears, onions, potatoes, &c., into the cellar, and warm closets : while those, that had not these warnings, lost all their NEW LETTERS. XXI stores, and had their very bread and cheese frozen. For my own part, having a house full of relations, I enjoyed the rigorous season much ; and found full employ in shoveling a path round my outlet, and up to Newton ; and in observing the Thermrs, &c : and was only sorry for the poor and aged, who suffered much. I must not omit to tell you, that during those two Siberian days my parlor-cat was so electric, when stroked, that had the Stroker been properly insulated, he might have given the shock to a whole circle of people. Bro : Tho : and family left us Jan : 5th. The morning before he went away his house at S : Lambeth was assaulted by three villains, one of whom his Gardener shot thro' the body with slugs from the parapet just as they were entering the drawing-room. Mrs. and Miss Etty are well ; and Charles just gone to attend his ship in the river, which sails in March. Mr. Kichd Chase is released from his 3 years and \ captivity in India, and is returned to Madras. Magd : Coll : has just pur- chased the little life-hold estate on the Plestor, in reversion after two lives, intending hereafter to make it glebe to the vicarage. Tell yr Mother I thank her for her gift, which will be very ac- ceptable to the poor : and y Father, that I should be glad to see his account of rain, frost, &c. I advise yr Father and Bror to read Sr. John Cullun's History of Hawsted, the parish where he is Rector. Mrs. J. White joins in respects. Yr loving Uncle, GIL : WHITE. Mr. Yalden, poor man, is in a bad state of health, and is gone to town for advice. Ch : Etty's new ship is named the Duke of Mont rose, Cap : Elphinstone : all the officers are Scotch except Ch : I have met with Will : Bercarius, which name signifies sJiepJterd: hence the modern name of Barker. Men are cutting the beeches at the top of the hill ; but not those on the hanger this year. We shall lose the beautiful fringe that graces the outline of our prospect that way : but shall gain 60 feet of Horizon. Jupiter wests so fast that at sun-set he is not much above these trees. Snow covers the ground. XXII NEW LETTERS. Selborne, Jan : 1st : 1791. (To THOMAS BARKER, ESQ.) DEAR SIR, As the year 1790 is just at an end, I send BAIN IN 1790. you the rain of that period, which, I trust, has been regularly measured. Nov. and Dec. as you see, were very wet, with many storms, that in various places had occasioned much damage. The fall of rain from Nov. 19 to the 22, inclusive, was prodigious ! The thunder storm on Dec. 23 in the morning before day was very aweful : but, I thank God, it did not do us any the least harm. Two millers, in a wind-mill on the Sussex downs near Good-wood, were struck dead by lightning that morning; and part of the gibbet on Hind-head on which two murderers were suspended, was beaten down. I am not sure that I was awaked soon enough to hear the whole storm : between the flashes that I saw and the thunder, I counted 3227 from 10 to 14 seconds. In consequence of my Nat. Hist. I continue to receive various le'tters from various parts ; and in particular from a Mr. Marsham of Stratton near Norwich, an aged Gent: who has published in the E. S. respecting the growth of trees. Do you know any thing about this person ? He is an agreeable corre- spondent. He is such an admirer of oaks, that he has been twice to see the great oak in the Holt. Dr. Chander, and family, who came at first only with an in- tent to stay with us a few months ; have now taken the vicarage house for some time. The Dr. is much busied in writing the life of his founder, William Wainflete : he lives a very studious, and domestic life, keeps no horse, and visits few people. We have just received the agreeable news that Mrs. Clement was safely delivered, last Wednesday, of a boy, her 8th child, which Jan : 199 Feb: 49 Mur : 45 Ap: 364 May 438 June 13 July 324 Aug. 230 Sep. 66 Oct. 210 Nov. 695 Dec. 594 tout cfj, t>t*t. ffi*. A*0U NEW LETTERS. XXII! are all living. Mr. Churton, who is keeping his Xmas with us as usual, desires his best respects, and many thanks for the hospitable reception and intelligent information which he met with last summer at Lyndon. He is a good antiquary, and much employed in writing the life of Doctor Will. Smith, the founder of Brazenose Coll. of which he is now the senior fellow. Yr leg, we hope, is recovered from its accident. Mrs. ,1. White joins in affectionate compliments, and the good wishes of the season. I conclude Yr most humble servant, G. WHITK. CONTENTS. I'AOE vii XKW LKTTKRS XATCRAI. HISTORY OK SKI.BOKXK NATURALISTS' CALKXDAR xm 1 293 VOL I. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FAOI FRONTISPIECE Hi THE YEW-TREE IN THE CHURCHYARD, SEI.BORNE xxiv WELL-HEAD 3 KMSHOT CHURCH 4 PLESTOR, THE f) GILBERT WHITE'S HOUSE, NOW THE RESIDENCE OF PROFKSSOR BELL . 9 ROCKY LANE LEADING TO ALTOS 11 COTTAGES IN THE VILLAGE ] 2 OLD COACH ROAD LEADIN3 INTO THE VILLAGE 15 LYSS CHURCH 17 HEADLEY CHURCH IN GILBERT WHITE'S TIME 18 PATH BT LONG LYTHE, A FAVOURITE WALK OP GILBERT WHITE'S . 22 OLD MILL 24 KINGSLEY CHURCH 27 SWALLOW, THE 29 HOOPOE 35 EGO OF HOOPOE 36 THE LYTHE 39 YELLOW WAGTAIL 42 WHEATEAB 43 QUAIL, EGG OF 46 BULLFINCH 48 NUTHATCH 50 EGG OF NUTHATCH 5] EGG OF GOLDEN-CROWNED WREN . 51 XXVIII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. GULDEN CROWNED WREN 52 OREATHAM CHURCH 56 GILBERT WHITE'S HOUSE f>9 WILLOW WREN OF RING OUSEL 110 EGG OF CROSSBILL . . . .« 113 EGG OF CHAFFINCH 117 NIGHTINGALE 122 EGG OF NIGHTINGALE 124 PIED FLYCATCHER 138 EGG OF SPOTTED FLYCATCHER 139 HOUSE-MARTIN 147 EGG OF HOUSE-MARTIN 149 EGG OF PHEASANT 168 LONG-TAILED TITMOUSE . 169 EGG OF LONG-TAILED TITMOUSE 170 EGG OF REDBREAST 170 WHITETHROAT 171 EGG OF WHITETHROAT . . 172 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XXIX PA(iK KGG OF BLACKCAP 172 REDSTART 173 WRYNECK 17") KGG OF WRYNECK 176 SWIFT 178 EGO OF SWIFT 183 E(JG OF MAGPIE 18") EGG OF THRUSH 186 EGG OP GOATSUCKER 204 EGG OF WOODCHAT 216 EGG OF GREENFINCH ' 223 EGG OF OWL 231 EGG OF RAVEN 233 EGG OF LAPWING OR PLOVER 248 EGG OF SPARROWHAWK 253 EGG OF WOOD-PIGEON 255 HAWFINCH 267 EGG OF STONE-CURLEW 274 MAP . . . . 292 ENGRAVED BY W. J. PALMEU. JKWITT AND Co. P. ROBERTS. W. M. QUIOK. J. KiRciiNEi;. F. ANDERSON. PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE CARBON PROCESS. TDK KLYI-ATrHKU Tujncrp. :jl • TIIK SWIFT ,, !>-2 TIIK WIIITKTIIROAT „ 101 THK WILLOW WREN ,, 102 TIIK WHF.ATEAl: ,, 113 THK SWALLOW ,, 133 THK nrrcHF.R mini ,, 143 THK TRKF, I'IPIT ,, H4 THE BUI.I.FIXfH ,, 145 THK HOrSK MAUTIX „ 162 THE VKI.LOW WAKTAII „ ItiS J'HF BLACKCAP ,. 172 THE LOKf!-TAlLKI> TIT ,, 1/ti TUB WI'.YNF.CK ,, 176 THK HAWFINCH 268 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE LETTER I. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. I 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 51°, and near midway between the towns of Alton and Petersfield. Being very large and exten- sive, it abuts on twelve parishes, two of which are in Sussex, viz., Trotton and Eogate. If you begin from the south and proceed westward the adjacent parishes are Emshot, Newton Valence, Faringdon, Harteley-Mauduit, Great Wardleham, Kingsley, Hedleigh, Bramshot, Trotton, Eogate, Lysse, and Greatham. The soils of this district are almost as various and diversified as the views and aspects. The high part to 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 VOL I. B THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, woodlands, heath, and water. 1'1'e prospect is bounded to the south-east and east by the \asi range of mountains called the Sussex downs, by Guild- down near Guildford, and by the downs round Dorking, and Eyegate in Surrey, to the north-east, which altogether, with the country beyond Alton and Farnham, form a noble and exten- sive 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 run- ning 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 appearance removed from chalk ; but seems so far from being calcareous, that it endures extreme heat. Yet that the freestone still preserves somewhat 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 the labour of years to render it mellow ; while the gardens to the north-east, and small inclosures 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, called Well-head, little influenced by drought or wet seasons, inas- much as it produced on the 14th September, 1781, after a severe hot summer and a preceding dry spring and winter, nine gal- lons of water in a minute, at a time when many of the wells failed, and all the ponds in the vales were dry. This spring breaks out of some high grounds joining to Nore Hill, a noble chalk promontory, remarkable for sending forth two streams into two different seas. The one to the south I.] OF SELBORNE. becomes a branch of the Arun, running to Arundel, and so falling into the British Channel : the other to the north. The Selborue stream makes one branch of the Wey ; and, meeting the Blackdown stream at Hedleigh, and the Alton and Farn- ham stream at Tilford Bridge, swells into a considerable river, navigable at Godalming ; from whence it passes to Guildford, WKU. HKAI). 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. 4 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. To the north-west, north, and east of the village is a range of ,fair inclosures, 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 into the freestone, and have their poles and wood for charcoal growing just at hand. This 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 its 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. EMHHOT CIIVKl H OF SELBORNE. LETTER II. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. IN the court of Norton farmhouse, a manor-farm to the north- west of the village, on the white malm, stood within these twenty years a broad-leaved elm, or wych hazel, Ulmus folio la- tissimo scabro, of Eay, which, though it had lost a considerable leading bough, equal to a moderate tree, in the great storm in the year 1703, yet, when felled, contained eight loads of timber; and being too bulky for 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. In the centre of the village, and near the church, is a square piece of 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 iu 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 appears from what is known con- cerning the antiquities of the village. 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 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. like firsr 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. *=- '- THE Pl.ESTOK. 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 Eaven 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 III.] OF SELBORNE. their grasp, that the most daring lads were awed, and acknow- ledged 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 those birds usually sit. The saw was applied to the butt, the wedges were inserted into the opening, the woods echoed to the heavy blows of the beetle 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. LETTER III. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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 (hinge) passing for a head and mouth. It is in reality a bivalve of the Linnyean genus of Mytilus, and the species of Crista Galli; called by Lister, Rastellum; by Rum- phius, 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 disappointed 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 8 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. one into the other, the alternate flutings or grooves, and the curved form of my specimen are much easier expressed by the pencil than by words. Cornua Ammonis 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 Well-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 of 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 con- siderable depths, well-diggers often find large scallops orpectines, 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. LETTER IV. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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 hearthstones 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 IV.] OF SELBORNE. tliirty or forty years. When chiselled 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 free- (JH.BKRT WHITE'S HOUSK, NOW THK HKSIPKNCK OF PKOKLSSOII BKI.L. stone, cutting in all directions; yet has something of a grnin parallel with the horizon, and therefore should not be surbcdde.d — that is, set edgewise, contrary to its position in the quarry — but laid in the same position that it occupies there. On the ground abroad this fire-stone will not succeed for pavements, because, probably, some degree of saltness prevailing within it, VOL. I. c 10 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. the rain tears the slabs to pieces.1 Though this stone is too hard to be acted on by vinegar, yet both the white part and even the blue rag ferment strongly in mineral acids. Though the white stone will not bear wet, yet in every quarry at in- tervals 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 ot 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 M'alls, 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 tenpenny nails." 1 " Firestone is full of salts, and has no sulphur : it must be close grained, and have no interstices. Nothing supports fire like salts ; saltstone perishes when exposed to wet and frost." — PLOT'S Staff, p. 152. v.] OF SELBORNE LETTER V. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. AMONG the singularities of this place the two rocky hollow lanes, the one to Alton, and the other to the forest, deserve I V\ ROOKY LANE LEADING TO ALTON. 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 NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 along them ; but COTTAGES IN THK VIU.AGB. delight the naturalist with their various botany, and particularly with the curious filices with which they abound. The manor of Selborne, were 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, l>ecause they more affect open fields than inclosures ; after harvest some few landrails are seen. The parish of Selborue, by taking in so much of the forest, OF SELBORNE. 13 is a vast district. Those who tread the bounds are employed part of three days in the business, and are of opinion that tin- 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., but a very intelligent gentleman 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. I only know that Inch. Hund. From May 1, 1779, to the end of the year there fell . . 28 37 ! From Jan. 1,1780, to Jan. 1, 1781 ........ 27 32 From Jan. 1, 1781, to Jan. 1, 1782 . ....... 30 From Jan. 1, 1782, to Jan. 1, 1783 ........ 50 From Jan. 1, 1783, to Jan. 1, 1784 ........ 33 From Jan. 1, 1784 to Jan. 1, 1785 ........ 38 From Jan. 1, 1785 to Jan. 1, 1786 ........ 31 From Jan. 1, 1786, to Jan. 1, 1787 ........ 39 71 26 ! 71 80 SB 57 The village of Selborne, and the 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. We abound with poor ; many of whom are sober and indus- trious, and live comfortably in good stone or brick cottages, which are glazed, and have chambers above stairs : mud build- ings 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 H THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. chiefly manufactured at Alton, a neighbouring town, by some of the people called Quakers. The inhabitants enjoy a good share of health and longevity, and the parish swarms with children. LETTER VI. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. SHOULD I omit to describe with some exactness the Forest of Wolmer, of which three-fifths perhaps lie in this parish, rny 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, Rogate, 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 some- what diversified with hills and dales, without having one stand- ing tree in the whole extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which formerly abounded with subter- raneous trees ; though Dr. Plot says positively l 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 district whose timbers con- sisted 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. Old people, however, 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 1 See his History of Staffordshire. VI.] OF SELBORNE. 15 they were concealed than on the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem to be a fanciful notion, but consistent with true philo- sophy. 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. 1 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 OLD COACH KOAD, LEADING INTO THE VILLAGE. 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 un- reasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a day. THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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, or black game. When I was a little boy I recol- lect 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 grey hen was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The sportsman cried out, " A hen pheasant ' " but a gentleman present, who had often seen black game in the north of England, assured me that it was a grey heii. 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 peram- bulation taken in 1635), grandfather, father and self, enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer Forest in succession for more than a 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 sove- reign ! But he farther adds that, by means of the Waltham blacks, or, to use his own expression, as soon as they began blacking, they were reduced to about fifty head, and so con- tinued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumber- land. About the year 1737, his highness sent down a hunts- man, and six yeomen-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 OF SELBORNE. 17 which showed extraordinary diversion : but, in the following winter, when the hinds were also carried off, such line chases were exhibited as served the country people for matter of talk and wonder for years afterwards. I saw myself one of the yeo- men-prickers single out a stag from the herd, and must confess it was the most curious feat of activity I ever beheld. 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 com- panions, 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. LVSS CHURCH. VOL. I. H CABLE Y CHURCH IN GILBERT WHITES TIME. LETTER VII. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. THOUGH large herds of deer do much harm to the neighbour- hood, 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 begin- ning of this century, all this country was wild about deer-steal- ing. 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 LETT. VII.] NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 19 and sanguinary Act called the Black Act (9 Geo. I. c. 22), which comprehends more felonies than any law that ever was framed before. And therefore. Dr. Hoadley, the Bishop of Winchester, when urged to re-stock Waltham- chase, 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 little while ago that they used to recount, over their ale, 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, mis- taking 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 inconvenient to the huntsmen, on account of their buiTows, 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 irregulari- ties 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 their 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. For this privilege the owner of that estate used to pay to the king annually seven bushels of oats. In the Holt Forest, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept up till lately, no sheep are admitted. The reason, I presume, being 20 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. that sheep are such 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, gorse 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 browse 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 look- ing 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 gentleman, who lives beyond Andover, coming to my house, when he got on the downs between that town and Win- chester, 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.1 1 This description reminds the scholar of the stubble-burning described in Virgil's " Georgics," i. 84, Mitford. There is no better fertilizer for the eoil than the ashes of weeds and other vegetable growths, and this the poet knew. " Ssepe etiam steriles incendere profuit agros, Atque levem stipulam crepitantibus urere tfuiiimis : Sive inde occultas vires et pabula terra- Pinguia concipiiint." " Long practice has a sure improvement found, With kindled fires to burn the barren ground ; When the light stubble, to the flames resigned, Is driven along, and crackles to the wind." — DRYDEX. TIM.] OF SELBORNE. 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 brushwood 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 I mention, because I look upon it to be of very remote antiquity. LETTER VIII. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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 espitosa ; the sort which, rising into tall hassocks, is called by the foresters, torrets ; a corruption, I suppose, of turrets ; it affords such a safe and pleasing shelter to wild ducks, teals, and snipes, 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. By a perambulation of Wolmer Forest and the Holt, made in 1635, and in the eleventh year of Charles the First (which now lies before me), it appears that the limits of the former are much circumscribed. 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 Wardleham 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 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. Shortheath, 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 per- ambulation, a rough estimate of the value of the timbers, which were considerable, 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. PATH BY LONG Within the present limits of the forest are three considerable lakes, Hogmer, Cranmer, and Wolmer ; all of which are stocked with carp, 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 VIII.] OF SELBORNE. 23 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 feed- ing. 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 cir- cumstance escape him. He says, in his " Summer," " A various group the herds and flocks compose : on the grassy bank Some ruminating lay ; 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 cir- cumference, 2,646 yards, or very near a mile and a 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. 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, and wigeons, of various denominations; where they preen and solace and rest themselves, till towards sun- set, 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 24 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT, of cattle, can render this meer so remarkable as the great quantity of coins that were found in its bed about forty years ago.1 1 The circumstances under which these coins were discovered are thus related in the author's " Antiquities of Selborne : " — " In the very dry summers of 1740 and 41, the bed of this lake became as dry and dusty a* the surrounding heath ; and some of the forest cottagers, remembering stories of coins found by their fathers and grandfathers, began to search also, and with great success ; they found great heaps of coin, one lying on the other, as shot there out of a bag, many of them in good preservation. They consisted solely of Roman copper coin in hundreds, and some medals of the Lower Empire. The neighbouring gentry and clergy chose what they liked, and some dozens fell to the author, chiefly of Marcus Aurelius and the Empress Faustina. Those of Faustina were in high relief, exhibiting agreeable features, and the medals of a paler colour than the coins." ,.,, THE OLD MILL II.] OF SELBORNE. LETTER IX. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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,1 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, Ruperta, who was a natural daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughs ; a Mr. Mordaunt, of the Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pem- broke ; Henry Bilson Legge and lady ; and now Lord Stawel, 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, 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 inclosures, yet no two soils can be more different: 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 Woluier is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste. i " In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar. 36 Ed. 3, it is called Aisholt." In " Tit. Wolmer and Aisholt Hantisc," we are told " the Lord King had one chapel in his park at Kingesle." Dominus Rex habet unam capeUam in haid sua de Kingesle." " Haia, sepes, sepimentum, parcus; a (Jail, haie and haye." — SPELMAN'S Glossary, p. 27-2. VOL. I. E 26 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. The former, being all in the parish of Binsted, is about two miles in extent from north to south, and nearly as much, from east to west ; and 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 Kings- ley, 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 lines 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 or buffalo : but the country rose upon them and destroyed them.1 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 Stawel. 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. These trees, which were very sound and in high perfection, were winter-cut, viz., in February and March, before the bark would 1 German boars and sows were also turned out in the New Forest by Charles the First, which bred and increased ; and their stock is supposed to exist still. — MITKORD. IX.] OF SELBORNE. 27 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. KIMGSLEV CUURCll. 28 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER X. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. IT has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbour whose studies have led him 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 rusluce) 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 seemed, at their first appearance, dead ; but. on being carried toward 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. Another intelligent person has informed me that, while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great frag- ment 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 disappointment 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 eleventh, and young martins (Hirundines urbicaf) 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 eighteenth. Are not these late hatch- ings more in favour of hiding than migration ? Kay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so late as x.] OF SELBORNE. 29 September the twenty-ninth ; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth 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 ; once I even saw numbers of house-martins on the seventh of November. The martins, redwings, and fieldfares THE SWALLOW. were flying in sight together ; an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds ! [It is not easy to discover whether White really believed in the hibernation of swallows or not ; he clings to the idea, and returns to it, although his own arguments seem to refute the notion almost as completely as those of any recent author. Writing twenty years later than the date of this letter, he tells us, in his Observations on Nature, March 23, 1788, that a gen- tleman who was this week on a visit at Waverly, took the oppor- tunity of examining some of the holes in the sand-bank with which 30 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. that district abounds. As these are undoubtedly bored by bank martins, and there they avowedly breed, he was in hopes that they might have slept there also, and that he might have sur- prised them just as they were waking from their winter slumbers. " When we had dug for some time," he says, " we found the holes were horizontal and serpentine, as I had observed before ; and that the nests were deposited at the inner end, and had been occupied by broods in former summers, but no torpid birds were to be found. The same search was made many years ago with as little success." March 2, 1793, Mr. White adds, " a single sand-martin was seen hovering and playing round the sandpit at Short-heath, where they abound in summer. April 9, 1793, a sober herd assures me that this day he saw several on West Hanger common, between Hadleigh and Frensham, several sand-martins playing in and out and hanging before some nestholes where the birds nestle. " This incident confirms my suspicions, that this species of hirundo is to be seen the first of any, and gives reason to sup- pose that they do not leave their wild haunts at all, but are secreted amidst the clefts and caverns of these abrupt cliffs. The late severe weather considered, it is not very probable that these birds should have migrated so early from a tropical region, through all these cutting winds and pinching frosts ; but it is easy to suppose that they may, like bats and flies, have been awakened by the influence of the sun, amidst their secret latebrcc where they have spent the uncomfortable foodless months in a torpid state, and in the profoundest slumbers. " There is a large pond at West Hanger which induces these sand-martins to frequent the district ; for I have ever remarked that they haunt near great waters, either rivers or lakes." A year later, he says, " During the severe winds that often prevail late in the spring, it is not easy to say how the hirundines subsist : for they withdraw themselves, and are hardly ever seen, nor do any insects appear for their support. That they can re- tire to rest and sleep away these uncomfortable periods as bats do, is a matter rather suspected than proved ; or do they not rather spend their time in deep and sheltered vales near X.] OF SELBORNE. 3! waters where insects are to be found ? Certain it is that hardly any individuals have, at such times, been seen for days together. " September 13, 1791, the congregating flocks of hirundines on the church and tower are both beautiful and amusing. When they fly off together from the roof on any alarm, they quite swarm iu the air. But they soon settle again in heaps, and pulling their feathers and lifting up their wings to admit the sun, they seem to enjoy the warm situation. Thus they spend the heat of the day, preparing for their migration, and, as it were, consulting when and where they are to go. The flight about the church seems to consist chiefly of house-martins, about 400 in number ; but there are other places of rendezvous about the village frequented at the same time. It is remarkable that, though most of them sit on the battlements and roof, yet many of them hang or cling for some time by their claws against the surface of the walls in a manner not practised by them at other times of their remaining with us. The swallows seem to delight more in holding their assemblies on trees. "November 3, 1789, the swallows were seen this morning, at Newton Vicarage house, hovering aud settling on the roofs and outbuildings. None have been observed at Selborue since October 11. It is very remarkable that after the hirundines have disap- peared for some weeks, a few are occasionally seen again ; some- times in the first week of November, and that only for one day. Do they not withdraw and slumber in some hiding-place during the interval ? for we cannot suppose they had migrated to warmer climes, and returned again for one day. Is it not more probable that they are awakened from sleep, and like the bats are come forth to collect a little food ? These swallows looked like young ones."] A little yellow bird (the Motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods. The stoparola of Ray is called, in your Zoology, the fly-catcher. 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 32 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. touching the ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together. I perceive there are more than one species of the Motacillu which visits us. Mr. Derham supposes, in Eay'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 blackcap (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 tkat time, and to hear his piping and humming notes. I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which I mentioned to you in town. The person that brought me the last says they are plentiful in harvest, at which tiuie I will take care to get more ; and will endeavour to put it out of doubt whether it be a nondescript species or not. I suspect much there may be two species of water-rats. Hay says, and Linnreus 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 ampliibius of Linnaeus, which, he says, swims and dives in ditches, " natat in fossis et urinatur." I should be glad to procure " one with the feet feathering out like a palm," " plantis palmatis." Linnneus seems to be in a puzzle about his Mus ampliibius, and to doubt whether it differs from his Mus terrestris, which if it be, as he allows, the " mus agrestis capite grandi brachyurus," a field- mouse, with " a large head and a short tail," is widely different from the water-rat, both in size, make, and mauner of life. As to the /a/to, 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 X.] OF SELBORNE. 33 to you as it is strange to me. " Though mutilated, such as you would say it had formerly been, seeing that the remains are what they are," " qualem dices . . . antehac fuisse, tales cum sinl reliquiae ! " 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 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. A iigust 4, 1767. [In severe weather, fieldfares, redwings, skylarks, and tit- larks resort to watered meadows for food; the latter wades up to its belly in pursuit of the pupfe of insects, and runs along upon the floating grass and weeds. Many gnats are on the snow near the water; these support the birds in part. Birds are much influenced in their choice of food by colour, for though white currants are a much sweeter fruit than red, yet they seldom touch the former till they have devoured every bunch of the latter. Redstarts, fly-catchers, and blackcaps arrive early in April. If these little delicate beings are birds of passage, how could they, feeble as they seem, bear up against such storms of snow and rain, and make their way through such meteorous turbu- lences as one should suppose would embarrass and retard the most hardy and resolute of the winged nation ? Yet they keep their appointed times and seasons ; and in spite of frosts and winds return to their stations periodically, as if they had met with nothing to obstruct them. The withdrawing and reappear- ance of the short-winged summer birds is a very puzzling circumstance in natural history ! When the boys bring me wasps' nests, my bantam fowls fare deliciously, and when the combs are pulled to pieces, devour the VOL. I. F THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. young wasps in their maggot state with the highest glee and delight. Any insect-eating bird would do the same. Birds of prey occasionally feed on insects : thus have I seen a tame kite picking up the female ants full of eggs with much satisfaction.] — OBSERVATIONS ON NATURE. LETTER XI. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. IT will not be without impatience that I shall wait for your thoughts with regard to ihefalco ; 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.1 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 grosbeaks (Loxia coccotkraustcs) 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. [Mr. B. shot a cock grosbeak which he had observed to haunt his garden for more than a fortnight. I began to accuse this bird of making sad havoc among the buds of the cherries, goose- berries, and wall-fruit of all the neighbouring orchards. Upon opening its crop or craw, however, no buds were to be seen, but a mass of kernels of the stones of fruits. Mr. B. observed that 1 The irides are brown in all the British falcons. XI.] OF SELBORNE. 35 this bird frequented the spot where plum-trees grow ; and that he had seen it with somewhat hard in its mouth, which it broke with difficulty ; these were the stones of damsons. The Latin ornithologists call this bird coccothraustes, i.e., berry-breaker, because with its large horny beak it cracks and breaks the shells of stone-fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort are rarely seen in England, and only in winter.] — OBSERVA- TIONS ON NATURE. A cross-bill (Loxia curvirostra) was killed last year in this neighbourhood. THK HOOPOE. Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the village, yield nothing but the bull's head,1 or miller's thumb (Gobius fluviatilis capitatus), the trout (Trutta fluviatilis), the eel (anguilla), the lampern (Lampetra parva et fluviatilis), and the stickleback (Pisciculus aculeatiis]. 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 teams of ducks bred in the moors 1 Salmo fario. Linn. 36 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. where the snipes breed ; and multitudes of widgeons and teals frequent our lakes in the forest in hard weather. Having some acquaintance 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 HOOPOE S EGG. 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 twenty-first of August ; it was a straggler. Eed-starts, fly-catchers, white-throats, and gold-crested wrens, reguli non cristati, still appear ; but I have seen no blackcaps lately. I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church college quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house- martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the twentieth of November. At present I know only two species of bats, the common Vespertilio murinus, and the Vespertilio auritus. 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 flies, which were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, III.] OF SELBORNE. 37 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 on a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more despatch than I was aware of; but in a most ridicu- lous 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 for the sake of drinking, but on account of the 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. SELBORNE, Sept. 9, 1767. LETTER XII. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. IT gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the falco turned out an uncommon one. I must confess I should have been better pleased to have heard that I had sent you a bird that you had never seen before ; but that I find would be a difficult task. I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters, a young one arid a female with young, both of which I have preserved in brandy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no doubt but that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller, and more slender, than the Mus domes- ticus inedius of Ray ; and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour : their belly is white ; a straight line along their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. They never enter into houses; are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves, abound in harvest ; and build their nests amidst the straws of 38 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. [LETT. XII. the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest, com- posed of the blades of grass or wheat. One of these nests 1 procured this autumn, most artificially platted, and composed of the blades of wheat ; perfectly round, and about the size of a cricket-ball ; with the aperture so in- geniously closed, that there was no discovering to what part it belonged. It was so compact and well filled, that it would roll across the table without being discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that were naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come at her litter respectively, so as to administer a teat to each ? Perhaps she opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them again when the business is over : but she could not possibly be contained herself in the ball with her young, which, moreover, would be daily increasing in bulk. This wonderful procreant cradle, and elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a wheatfield, suspended in the head of a thistle. A gentleman curious in birds wrote me word that his -servant had shot one last January, in that severe weather, which he be- lieved would puzzle me. I called to see it this summer, not knowing what to expect : but the moment I took it in hand, I pronounced it the male Garrulus Bohemicus, or German silk-tail, from the five peculiar crimson tags or points which it carries at the ends of five of the short remiyes. It cannot, I suppose, with any propriety be called an English bird : and yet I see, by Ray's " Philosophical Letters," that great flocks of them appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685, feeding on haws. The mention of haws puts me in mind that there is a total failure of that wild fruit, so conducive to the support of many of the winged 'nation. For the same severe weather, late in the spring, which cut off all the produce of the more tender and curious trees, destroyed also that of the more hardy and common. Some birds, haunting with the missel-thrushes, and feeding on the berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the description of the Merula torquata, or ring-ouzel, were lately seen in this neighbourhood. I employed some people to procure me a speci- men, but without success. 40 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. Query. — Might not Canary-birds be naturalized to this climate, provided their eggs were put, in the spring, into the nests of some of their congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, &c. ? Before winter perhaps they might be hardened, and able to shift for themselves. About ten years ago I used to spend some weeks yearly at Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant villages lying on the Thames, near Hampton Court. In the autumn, I could not help being much amused with those myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But what struck me most was, that, from the time they began to congregate, forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted every night in the osier-beds of the aits of that river. Now this resorting towards that element, at that season of the year, seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks, in his " Calendar of Flora," as familiarly of the swallow's going under water in the beginning of September, as lie would of his poultry going to roost a little before sunset. An observing gentleman in London writes me word that he saw a house-martin, on the twenty-third of last October, flying in and out of its nest in the Borough : and I myself, on the twenty-ninth of last October (as I was travelling through Oxford), saw four or five swallows hovering round and settling on the roof of the county hospital. Now, is it likely that these poor little birds (which perhaps had not been hatched but a few weeks) should, at that late season of the year, and from so midland a county, attempt a voyage to Goree or Senegal, almost as far as the equator? I acquiesce entirely in your opinion — that, though most of the swallow kind may migrate, yet that some do stay behind, and hide with us during the winter. As to the short-winged soft-billed birds which come trooping in such numbers in the spring, I am at a loss even what to think about them. I watched them narrowly this year, and saw them abound till about Michaelmas, when they appeared no longer. Subsist they cannot openly among us and yet elude the eyes of the inquisitive : and, as to their hiding, no man pretends to have XIII.] OF SELBORNE. found any of them in a torpid state in winter. But with regard to their migration, what difficulties attend that supposition : that such feeble bad fliers (who the summer long never flit but from hedge to hedge) should be able to traverse vast seas and continents, in order to enjoy milder seasons amidst the regions of Africa ! November 4, 1767. LETTER XIII. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. As in one of your former letters you expressed the more satis- faction from my correspondence on account of my living in the most southerly county ; so now I may return the compliment, and expect to have my curiosity gratified by your living much more to the north. For many years past I have observed that towards Christmas vast flocks of chaffinches have appeared in the fields; many more, I used to think, than could be hatched in any one neigh- bourhood. But, when I came to observe them more narrowly, I was amazed to find that they seemed to me to be almost all hens. I communicated my suspicions to some intelligent neighbours, who, after taking pains about the matter, declared that they also thought them mostly all females ; at least fifty to one. This extra- ordinary occurrence brought to my mind the remark of Linnsus, that, " before winter all their hen chaffinches migrate through Holland into Italy." Now I want to know, from some curious person in the north, whether there are any large flocks of these finches with them in the winter, and of which sex they mostly consist ? For, from such intelligence, one might be able to judge whether our female flocks migrate from the other end of the island, or whether they come over to us from the Continent. We have, in the winter, vast flocks of the common linnets ; more, I think, than can be bred in any one district. These, I observe, when the spring advances, assemble on some tree in the VOL. I. G 42 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. sunshine, and join all in a gentle sort of chirping, as if they were about to break up their winter quarters and betake themselves to their proper summer homes. It is well known, at least, that this is the signal of departure with the swallows and the field- lares, which congregate with a gentle twittering before they take their respective departure. You may depend on it that the bunting (Einberiza miliaria) does not leave this country in the winter. In January, 1767, THE YELLOW WAGTAIL. I saw several dozen of them, in the midst of a severe frost, among the bushes on the downs near Andover : in our wood- land inclosed district it is a rare bird. Wagtails, both white and yellow, are with us all the winter. Quails crowd to our southern coast, and are often killed in numbers by people that go on purpose. Mr. Stillingfleet, in his Tracts, says that " if the wheatear XII!.] OF SELBORNE. 43 ((Knantlic) does not quit England, it certainly shifts places ; for about harvest they are not to be found, where there was before great plenty of them." This well accounts for the vast quan- tities that are caught about that time on the South downs near Lewes, where they are esteemed a delicacy. There have been shepherds, I have been credibly informed, that have made many pounds in a season by catching them in traps. And though such multitudes are taken, I never saw (and I am well acquainted THE WHEATKAK. with those parts) above two or three at a time : for they are never gregarious. They may perhaps migrate in general ; and, for that purpose, draw towards the coast of Sussex in autumn : but that they do not all withdraw I am sure : because 1 see a few stragglers in many counties, at all times of the year, espe- cially about warrens and stone-quarries. I have no acquaintance, at present, among the gentlemen of the navy: but have written to a friend, who was a sea-chaplain in the late war, desiring him to look into his minutes, with 41 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. respect to birds that settled on their rigging during their voyage up or down the Channel. What Hasselquist says on that subject is remarkable : there were little short-winged birds frequently coming on board his ship all the way from our Channel quite up to the Levant, especially before squally weather. What you suggest with regard to Spain is highly probable. The winters of Andalusia are so mild, that, in all likelihood, the soft-billed birds that leave us at that season, may find insects sufficient to support them there. Some young men, possessed of fortune, health, and leisure, should make an autumnal voyage into that kingdom ; and should spend a year there, investigating the natural history of that vast country. Mr. Willughby passed through that kingdom on such an errand ; but he seems to have skirted along in a superficial manner and an ill-humour, being much disgusted at the rude dissolute manners of the people. I have no friend left now at Sunbury to apply to about the swallows roosting on the aits of the Thames : nor can I hear any more about those birds which I suspected were Mcruhc torquatcc. As to the small mice, I have further to remark, that though they hang their nests for breeding up amidst the straws of the standing corn, above the ground ; yet I find that, in the winter, they burrow deep in the earth, and make warm beds of grass : but their grand rendezvous seems to be in corn-ricks, into which they are carried at harvest. A neighbour housed an oat-rick lately, under the thatch of which were assembled near an hundred, most of which were taken ; and some I saw. 1 measured them, and found that from nose to tail, they were just two inches and •A quarter, and their tails just two inches long. Two of them, in a scale, weighed down just one copper halfpenny, which is about the third of an ounce avoirdupois : so that I suppose they are the smallest quadrupeds in this island. A full grown Mus me- dius domcstiais weighs, I find, one ounce lumping weight, which is more than six times as much as the mouse above ; and mea- sures from nose to rump four inches and a quarter, and the same in its tail. We have had a very severe frost and deep snow this month. My thermometer was one day fourteen degrees and a XIV.] OF SELBORNE. 45 half below the freezing point, within doors. The tender ever- greens were injured pretty much. It was very providential that the air was still, and the ground well covered with snow, else vegetation in general must have suffered prodigiously. There is reason to believe that some days were more severe than any since the year 1739-40. SELBORNE, Jan. 22, 1768. LETTER XIV. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. IF some curious gentleman would procure the head of a fallow deer, and have it dissected, he would find it furnished with two spiracula, or breathing-places, besides the nostrils ; probably analogous to the puncta lachrymalia in the human head. When deer are thirsty they plunge their noses, like some horses, very deep under water while in the act of drinking, and continue them in that situation for a considerable time : but to obviate any iuconvenieiicy, they can open two vents, one at the inner corner of each eye, having a communication with the nose. Here seems to be an extraordinary provision of nature worthy our attention ; and which has not, that I know of, been noticed by any naturalist. For it looks as if these creatures would not be suffocated though both their mouths and nostrils were stopped. This curious formation of the head may be of singular service to beasts of chase, by affording them free respiration : and no doubt these additional nostrils are thrown open when they are hard run.1 Mr. Ray observed that at Malta the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses as were hard worked : for they being 1 In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent me the following curious and pertinent reply : — " I was much surprised to find in the antelope some- thing analogous to what you mention as so remarkable in deer. This animal also has a long slit beneath each eye, which can be opened and shut at pleasure. On holding an orange to one, the creature made as much use of those orifices as of his nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and seeming to smell it through them." — WHITE. 46 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. naturally strait or small, did not admit air sufficient to serve them when they travelled, or laboured, in that hot cliimite. And we know that grooms, and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils necessary, and a perfection in hunters and run- ning horses. Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had some notion that stags have four spiracula : — " TfTpaSvpOl pllffS, 7Tld(j,evo<; avaatvetv rat a^as KOTO. TO, WTO." " Alcmseon does not advance what is true, when he avers that goats breathe through their ears." — HISTORY OF ANIMALS, Book i. ch. xi. SELBORNE, March 12, 1768. THK EGG UK THK »Jl All. XV.] OF SELBORNE. LETTER XV. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. SOME intelligent country-people have a notion that we have in these parts a species of the genus mustelinum, besides the weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat; a little reddish beast, not much bigger thau a field mouse, but much longer, which they call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended on ; but further inquiry may be made. A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milk-white rooks in one nest. A booby of a carter, finding them before they were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed them, to the regret of the owner, who would have been glad to have pre- served such a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised to find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws were milk-white. [Rooks are continually fighting and pulling each other's nests to pieces : these proceedings are inconsistent with living in such close community. And yet if a pair offer to build on a single tree, the nest is plundered and demolished at once. Some rooks roost on their nest trees. The twigs which the rooks drop in building supply the poor with brushwood to light their fires. Some unhappy pairs are not permitted to finish any nest till the rest have completed their building. As soon as they get a few sticks together, a party comes and demolishes the whole. As soon as rooks have finished their nests, and before they lay, the cocks begin to feed the hens, who receive their bounty with a fondling tremulous voice and fluttering wings, and all the little blandishments that are expressed by the young while in a helpless state. This gallant deport- ment of the males is continued through the whole season of incubation. These birds do not copulate on trees, nor in their nests, but on the ground in the open fields.]1 1 After the first brood of rooks are sufficiently fledged, they all resort to some distant place in search of food, but return regularly every evening, in THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down above my house this winter: were not these the Emberiza nivalis, the snow-flake of the Brit. Zool. ? No doubt they were. A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had been caught in the fields after it was come to its full colours. THE BULLFINCH. In about a year it began to look dingy ; and blackening ever)- succeeding year, it became coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was hempseed. Such influence has food on the colour of animals ! The pied and mottled colours of domesticated vast flights, to their nest trees, where, after flying round with much noise and clamour, till they are all assembled together, they take up their abode for the night. — MARKWICK. XT.] OF SELBORNE. 48 animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual food. I had remarked for years that the root of the cuckoo-pint (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of the arum is remarkably warm and pungent. Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by that fierce weather in January. In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a little bird that raised my curiosity ; it was of that yellow-green colour that belongs to the salicaria kind, and I think was soft- billed. It was no pans ; and was too long and too big for the golden-crowned wren, appearing most like the largest willow- wren. It hung sometimes with its back downwards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim. I wonder that the stone curlew, Charadrius oedicnemm, should be mentioned by writers as a rare bird : it abounds in all the campaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn. Already they begin clamouring in the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety be called, as they are by Mr. Ray, dwellers about streams or ponds, circa aquas versantes ; for with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheep walks, far removed from water ; what they may do in the night I cannot say. Worms are their usual food, but they also eat toads and frogs. I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. Lin- neeus, perhaps, would call the species Mus minimus. VOL. I. 50 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER XVI. TU THOMAS PENNAKT, ESQ. THE history of the stone-curlew, CJiaradrius oedicnemus, is as follows. It lays its eggs, usually two, never more than three, on the bare ground, without any nest, in the field ; so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c., and are THE Nl'THAT< II withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their best security ; for their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our gray-spotted flints, that the most exact observer, unless he catches the eye of the young bird, XVI.] OF SELBORNE. 51 may be eluded. The eggs are short and round ; of a dirty white, spotted with dark bloody blotches. Though I might not be able, just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could show you them almost any day ; and any evening you may hear them round the village, for they make a clamour which may be heard a mile. Oedicnemus is a most apt and expressive name for them, since their legs seem swollen like those of a gouty man. After harvest I have shot them before the pointers in turnip-fields. I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow- wrens ; two I know perfectly : but have not been able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constantly, than those two that I am acquainted with ; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note ; the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half, while the latter weighs but two ; so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer bird of passage o M:THATI:H s E Be l^tooTOKOi, as is known to be the case with the viper. That of frogs is notorious to everybody : because we see them stick- ing upon each other's 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 yet been settled. 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, with the maggots which turn to flesh flies, till he grew to a XVII.] OF SELBORNE. 55 monstrous size. The reptile used to come forth every evening from a hole under the garden steps ; and was taken up on the table to be fed after supper. 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 Eay's " Wisdom of God in the Creation," 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 emi- grants, no larger than my little-finger nail. Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the method and situation in which the male 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, or in a tadpole state, it has a fish-like tail, and no legs : as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as iiseless, and the animal betakes itself to the land.1 Merrit, 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 aynatica of Bay (the water-newt, or eft) will frequently bite at the angler's bait, and is often caught on his hook. I used to take it for granted that the Salamandra nquatica was hatched, lived, and died, in the water. But John Ellis, Esq., F.E.S. (the coralline Ellis), assorts, in a letter to the Eoyal Society, dated June 5th, 17C6, 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 of misunderstanding his meaning, I shall give it iu his own 1 The tail of the tadpole does not drop off ; it is absorbed. THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 approaches 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 HREATHAM CHURCH. 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 more than once at what Mr. Ellis advances. Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one venomous reptile of the serpent kind in these kingdoms, and that is the viper. As you propose the good of mankind to be XVII.] OF SELBORNE. 57 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 exami- nation that it is perfectly innocuous. A neighbouring 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 none of them were advanced so far towards a state of matu- rity as to contain any rudiments of young. Though they are oviparous, yet they are viviparous also, hatching their young withiu 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 following, as I have often experienced. Several intelligent 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. Harrington, that no such thing ever happens. The serpent kind eat, I be- lieve, 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 the various species, or rather varieties, of our Lacerti, of which Ray enumerates five. I have not had opportunity of ascertaining these ; but remember well to have seen, formerly, several beautiful green Lacerti on the sunny sandbanks near Farnham, in Surrey; and Eay admits there are such in Ireland. SELBORNE, June 18, 1768. VOL. I. 58 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER XVIII. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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 Oasterosteus pungitius : he found the Gaster- osteus 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 bullheads ; but I could procure no minnows. This basket will be in Fleet Street by eight this evening ; so I hope Mazel J will have them fresh and fair to-morrow morning. I gave some directions in a letter to what particulars the engraver should be attentive. 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 lishes (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 irre- gular 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 sur- rounded with six feelers, three on each side ; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller ; the fin behind its anus small ; 1 Mr. Peter Mazel was the engraver of Pennant's plates. XVIII ] OF SELBORNE. 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 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 - r.iLBBRT WHITE'S HOUSE FROM THK GARDEN — AS IT APPEARED IN ins 'inn:. 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 was 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 in- validate the woman's story of the manner in which she came by her skill. She says of herself: "that labouring under a 60 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 circum- stance at all invalidates the assertion that they are larvae ; for the larvae of insects are full of eggs, which they exclude the in- stant 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. SELBOBNE, July 27, 1768. XIX.] OF SELBORNE. LETTEE XIX. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. I HAVE now, past dispute, made out three distinct species of the willow-wrens (Mota.cillce trochili) which constantly and in- variably use distinct notes ; but, at the same time, I am obliged to confess that I know nothing of your willow-lark.1 In my letter of April the 18th, I had told you peremptorily that I • THE WILLOW-WREN. 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 trockilus ;2 only that it is a size larger than the other two, and the yellow-green of the whole upper part of the body is more 1 Brit. Zool., edit. 1776, octavo, p. 381. 1 Hedge-warbler, (see Letter XXVI.) : Sylvia loquax, black legs ; Sylvia trochilus, yellowish belly ; Sylvia sibilatrix, white belly. 62 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 con- siderably 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 crutatus of Ray ; which he says " cantat voce stridula locustse." Yet this great ornithologist never suspected that there were three species. SELBOBNE, Aug. 17, 1768. WILLOW-WRESTS EGO. LETTER XX. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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 men- tion as only to be seen in the northern counties. The first that was brought me (on the 14th of May) was the sandpiper (Tringa hypo- leiunts} : it was a cock bird, 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 XX.] OF SELBORNE. 63 since, that, on recollection, he has seen some of the same birds round his ponds in former summers. The next bird that I procured (on the 21st of May) was a male red-back 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 birds drawn his attention to the bush where it was : its craw was filled with legs and wings of beetles. THE BUTCHER BIKD. The next rare birds (which were procured for me last week) were some ring-ousels (Turdus torquatus). 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 neighbour- ing farmer also at the same time observed the same ; but, as no specimens were procured, little notice was taken. I mentioned 64 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. this circumstance to you in my letter of November the 4th, 1767. 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 last spring, about Lady-day, as it were, on their return to the north. 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 un- noticed in the southern counties. The ousel is larger than a SANDPIPER'S fan. BUTCHER BIRDS EGO. blackbird, and feeds on haws; but last autumn (when there were no haws) it fed on yew-berries ; in the spring it feeds on ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March and April. I must not omit to tell you (as you have been lately on the study of reptiles) that my people, every now and then of late, draw up with a bucket of water from my well, which is 63 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 examination of a buck's head. As far as your discoveries reach at present, they seem much to corroborate my suspicions ; and I hope Mr. Hunt may find reason to give his decision in my favour ; and then, I think, we may advance this extraordinary XXI.] OF SELBORNE. 65 provision of nature as a new instance of the wisdom of God in the creation. As yet I have not quite done with my history of the oedicne- mus, 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. SELBOKXE, Oct. 8, 1768. LETTER XXI. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. WITH regard to the oedicnemus, or stone-curlew, I intend to write very soon to my friend near Chichester, in whose neighbour- hood these birds seem most to abound ; and shall urge him to take particular 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 ob- tained 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. It is very extraordinary, as you observe, that a bird so common with us should never straggle to you. After a lapse of twenty years, Mr. White adds : [On the 27th of February, 1 788, stone-curlews were heard to pipe ; and on March 1st, after it was dark, some were passing over the village, as might be perceived from their quick short note, which they use in their nocturnal excursions by way of watchword, that they may not stray and lose their companions. Thus, we see, that retire whithersoever they may in the winter, they return again early in the spring, and are, as it now appears, the first summer birds that come back. Perhaps the mildness VOL. I. K fifi . THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. of the season may have quickened the emigration of the curlews this year. They spend the day in high elevated fields and sheep-walks ; but seem to descend in the night to streams and meadows, perhaps for water, which their upland haunts do not afford them.] — OBSERVATIONS ON NATURE. 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 Stouehenge. 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 prodigious 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 ine in suspecting that they are foreign birds XXI.] OF SELBORNE. 67 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 icthyology. 1 1' 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 with their productions : but as 1 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. SELBORNE, Nov. -28, 1768. BRAMSHOTT CHURCH. THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER XXII. m THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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 kingdom. We have many livings of two or three hundred pounds a year whose houses of worship make little better appearance than dove-cots. When I first saw North- amptonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, and the fens of Lincolnshire, I was amazed at the number of spires which presented themselves from 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 ser- pents, and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed, of mankind " (James iii. 7). It is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has actually been procured for you in Devonshire; because it corro- borates my discovery, which I made many years ago, of the same sort, on a sunny sandbank near Farnharn 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 neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but are driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the frosts, are still more reasonable ; and it will be worth your pains XXI!.] OF SELBORNE to endeavour to trace from whence they come, and to inquire why they make so very short a stay. In the account you gave me of your error with regard to the two species of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertain- ment in your description of the heronry at Cressi Hall which THE WISHING MTONK. is a curiosity 1 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 get a sight of. Pray tell me in your next whose seat Cressi Hall is, and near what town it lies.1 I have often 1 Cressi Hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. 70 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. thought that those vast fens have not 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 whose manners I have studied more than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker) : 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 a half-hour watched it as it sat with its under mandible quivering, and par- ticularly 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 a hermitage on the side of a steep hill, where we drink tea sometimes, one of these churn- owls came and settled on the cross of that little straw edifice Hnd began to chatter, and continued his note for many minutes; and we were all struck with wonder to find that the organs of the 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. After a lapse of twenty years the author adds the following to his " History of the Fern-owl or Goat-sucker :" — [The country people have a notion that the fern-owl, or churn-owl, or eve-jarr, which they also call a puckeridge, is very injurious to weanling calves, by inflicting, as it strikes at them, the fatal distemper known to cow-leeches by the name of puck- eridge. Thus does this harmless ill-fated bird fall under a double imputation which it by no means deserves — in Italy, of XXII.] OF SELBORNE. 71 sucking the teats of goats, whence it is called caprimulyus ; and with us of communicating a deadly disorder to cattle. But the truth of the matter is, the malady above mentioned is occasioned by the (Estrus lovis, a dipterous insect, which lays its eggs along the chines of kine, where the maggots, when hatched, eat their way through the hide of the beast into the flesh, and grow to a very large size. I have just talked with a man, who say she has more than once stripped calves who have died of the puck- eridge ; that the ail or complaint lay along the chine, where the flesh was much swelled, and filled with purulent matter. I myself once saw a large rough maggot of this sort squeezed out of the back of a cow. In Essex these maggots are called worn ills. The least observation and attention would convince men that these birds neither injure the goatherd nor the grazier, but are perfectly harmless, and subsist alone, being night birds, on night insects, such as scarabcei and phalccnce ; and through the month of July mostly on the Scarabceus solslitialis, which in many districts abounds at that season. Those that we have opened have always had their craws stuffed with large night moths and their eggs, and pieces of chafers : nor does it any- wise appear how they can, weak and unarmed as they seem, inflict any harm upon kine, unless they possess the powers of animal magnetism, and can affect them by fluttering over them. A fern-owl this evening (August 27) showed off in a very unusual and entertaining manner, by hawking round and round the circumference of my great spreading 'oak for twenty times following, keeping mostly close to the grass, but occasionally glancing up amidst the boughs of the tree. This amusing bird was then in pursuit of a brood of some particular phalcena belonging to the oak, of which there are several sorts; and exhibited on the occasion a command of wing superior, I think, to that of the swallow itself. When a person approaches the haunt of fern-owls in an evening, they continue flying round the head of the obtruder ; and by striking their wings together above their backs, in the manner that the pigeons called smiters are known to do, make a smart snap : perhaps at that time they are jealous for their 72 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. young; and their noise and gesture are intended by way of menace. Fern-owls seem to have an attachment to oaks, no doubt on account of food ; for the next evening we saw one again several times among the boughs of the same tree ; but it did not skim round its stem over the grass, as on the evening before. In May these birds find the Scardbceus melolontha on the oak ; and the Scaralccus solstitialis at midsummer; but they can only be watched and observed for two hours in the twenty-four ; and then in a dubious twilight an hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise. On this day (July 14, 1789) a woman brought me two eggs of a fern-fowl or eve-jarr, which she found on the verge of the Hanger, to the left of the hermitage, under a beechen shrub. This person, who lives just at the foot of the Hanger, seems well acquainted with these nocturnal swallows, and says she has often found their eggs near that place, and that they lay only two at a time on the bare ground. The eggs were oblong, dusky, and streaked somewhat in the manner of the plumage of the parent bird, and were equal in size at each end. The dam was sitting on the eggs when found, which contained the rudi- ments of young, and would have been hatched perhaps in :i week. From hence we may see the time of their breeding, which corresponds pretty well with that of the swift, as does also the period of their arrival. Each species is usually seen about the beginning of May. Each breeds but once in a sum- mer ; and each lays only two eggs. July 4, 1790. The woman who brought me two fern-owls' eggs last year on July 14, on this day produced me two more, one of which had been laid this morning, as appears plainly, because there was only one in the nest the evening before. They were found, as last July, on the verge of the down above the hermitage under a beechen shrub, on the naked ground. Last year those eggs were full of young, and just ready to be hatched. These circumstances point out the exact time when these curious nocturnal migratory birds lay their eggs, and hatch their young. Fern-owls, like snipes, stone-curlews, and some other XXIII.] OF SELBORNE. 73 birds, make no nest. Birds that build on the ground do not make much of their nests.] — OBSERVATIONS ON NATURE. It would not be at all strange if the bat, which you have pro- cured, should prove a new one, since five species have been found in a neighbouring kingdom. The great sort that I mentioned is certainly a nondescript : I saw but one this summer, and that I had no opportunity of taking. Your account of the Indian grass was entertaining. I am no angler myself; but inquiring of those that are what they sup- posed 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 arid then perhaps be able to furnish you with a little information. The vast rains ceased with us much about the same time as with you, and since then 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. SELBORNE, Jan. 2, 1769. LETTER XXIII. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 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 any- thing 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 VOL. I. L THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. for a week together at Spalding, without ever being told that such a curiosity was just at hand. Pray tell me 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 or wood, or only of a few trees. It gave me satisfaction to find we accorded so well about the c-aprimulgus : 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 morn- ing : 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 who assert that the swal- low kind disappear gradually, as they come, for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once : only some few stragglers stay behind a long while, and never, there is 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 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 this owing to the vast massy buildings of that place, to the many waters round it, or to what else ? XX11I.] OF SELBORNE. 75 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 their 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 ima- gination, 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. SELBOBNE, February 28, 1769. —^•*-l~l_ m ^" , — •_ ^:^^^^^r^ I'HAXCEL DWinWAY, EAST WOKLDHAH CHURCH 76 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER XXIV. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. THE Scardbceus fullo I know very well, having seen it in collec- tions ; 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 sea coast. On the 13th 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 three 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, 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 distin- guishable, 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 remarkable that they only stay a few days in their spring visit, but rest nearly 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 of the southern counties. 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 i For this Salicaria, or sedge-warbler, see Letter XXVI. August 30, 1769. XXIV.] OF SELBORNE. 77 description of that species which you shot at Eevesby, in Lin- colnshire. 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 01. It WM.I, KI.I.IS S KAI:M. 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 locustella, hinted at by Dr. Derhain in " Ray's Letters." lie 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 ? 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. THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 violent piece of machinery : it is a diffi- culty worthy of the interposition of a god ! " Incredulus odi." " I feel disgusted and disbelieving." THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING WALK. -" eqnidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis Ingenium."1 — VIRG. Georg. i. 415, 416. WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam, What time the May-fly 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 cuckoo's tale ; To hear the clamorous curlew 2 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 snch nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head I 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, 'Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, And all the fading landscape sinks in night ; To hear the drowsy dorr come brushing by With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricket 3 cry : 1 " I think their instinct is divinely bestowed." * Charadrius oedicnemus. 3 Gryllus campestris XXV.] OF SELBORNE. 79 To see the feeding bat glance through the wooil ; 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 pois'd upon his wings, Unseen, the soft enamourW 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 glowworm lights her amorous flre ! 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. SELBORNE, May 29, 1769. LETTER XXV. TO THE HONOURABLE VAINES BARRINOTON. WHEN I was in town last month I partly engaged that I would some time do myself the honour to write to you on the subject of natural history : and I am the more ready to fulfil my pro- mise, 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 of the summer birds of passage which I have discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear : — 80 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. Wryneck, Smallest wil- ( low-wren, ( Swallow, Martin, Sand-martin, Blackcap, Nightingale, Cuckoo, Middle wil- low-wren, White-throat, Red-start, Stone-curlew, Turtle-dove, Grasshopper- lark, Swift, Less reed- sparrow, ( Land-rail, Largest wil- { low-wren, 1 Goat-sucker, or Fern-owl, RAH XOMIXA. APPEARS ABOUT The middle of March : harsh note. J | March 23 : chirps till September. April 13. Ditto. Ditto. April 13, a sweet wild note. Beginning of April. Middle of April. ! Ditto : a sweet plaintive note. Ditto : mean note ; sings on till September. Ditto : more agreeable song. I End of March : loud nocturnal \ whistle. ( Junx, sive tor- { \ quilla: j Regulus non cris- \ talus : \ Hirundo domestica: Hirv.ndo rustica : Hirundo riparia: Atricapilla: Luscinia : Cuculus : Regulus non cris- tatus : Ficedula affinis : Ruticilla : Oedicnemus : Turtur : Alauda minima locuske voce: Hirundo apus: Passer arundina- ceus minor : Ortygometra : Regulus non cris- tatus : Caprimulgus : 20. Fly-catcher, Stoparola: Middle of April : a small sibilous note, till the end of July. April 27. A sweet polyglot, but hurrying : it has the notes of many birds. A loud harsh note, " crex, crex." " Cantat voce stridula locustas ;" end of April ; on the tops of high beeches. Beginning of May : chatters by night with a singular noise. May 12. A very mute bird. This is the latest summer bird of passage This assemblage of curious and amusing birds belongs to ten several genera of the Linntean system ; and are all of the ordo of passeres, save the jynx and cuculus, which are piece, and the cha- /•adriiis (oedicnemus) and rallus (ortygometra) which are grallcc. These birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the following Linnaean genera : — 1. 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 1 1, 16, 18. 3, 4, 5, 15. 8. 12. Jynx : Motacilla : Hirundo : Cuculus : Charc.drius : 13. Columba. 17. Rallus. 19. Caprimulgus. 14. Alauda. 20. Muscicapa. Most soft-billed birds live on insects, and not on grain and seeds; and therefore at the end of summer they retire : but the XXV.] OF SELBORNE. following soft-billed birds, though insect-eaters, stay with us the year round : — Redbreast, Wren, RAII NOMINA. Rubecwla : Passer troglodytes : Hedge-sparrow, Curruca : White-wagtail, Yellow-wagtail, Grey-wagtail, Wheat-ear, Whin-chat, Stone-chatter, Golden - crowned wren, Motacilln alba : Motacilla flava : Motacilla dneren : Oenanthe : Oenanthe secunda. Oenanthe tertia. [• Regulus cristatus : ' These frequent houses, and haunt outbuildings in the winter : eat spiders. Haunts sinks for crumbs and other sweepings. These frequent shallow rivulets near the spring heads, where they never freeze : eat the aure- lits of Phryganea. The smallest birds that walk. Some of these are to be seen with us the winter through. ' This is the smallest British bird : haunts the tops of tall trees : stays the winter through. A List of the Winter Birds of Passage round this neighbour- hood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear : — 1. Ring-ousel, Merula torquata : 2. Redwing, Turdus iliacus : 3. Fieldfare, Turdus pilaris : 4. Royston-crow, Cornix cinerea: 5. Woodcock, Scolopax : 6. Snipe, Gallinago minor: i 7. Jack-snipe, Gallinago minima. 8. Wood-pigeon, Oenas : 9. Wild-swan, Cygnus ferus : 10. Wild-goose, Anser ferns. 11. Wild-duck, ( Anas torquata \ minor : 12. Pochard, Anas fern fusca : 13. Widgeon, Penelope : 14. Teal, breeds } with us in W o 1 m e r V Querqutdula : Forest, } 15. Cross-beak, Coccothraustes : 16. Cross-bill, Loxia : 17. Silk-tail, ( Garrulus bohemi- ' \ ens: VOL. I. This is a new migration, whicli I have lately discovered about Michaelmas week, and again about the 14th of March. About old Michaelmas. Though a percher by day, roosts on the ground. Most frequent on downs. Appears about old Michaelmas. Some snipes constantly breed with us. ( Seldom appears till late : not in such plenty as formerly. On some large waters. On our lakes and streams. These are only wanderers that ap- pear occasionally, and are not observant of any regular migra- tion. M 82 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. These birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the following Linnsean genera : — 1, 2, 3, Turdus: 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. 4, Corvus: Anas. 5, 6, 7, Seolopax: 15, 16, Loxia. 8, Columba: 17, Ampelis. Birds that sing in the night are but few : — Nightingale, Luscinia: j " ^J^1691 C°Vert hi-> 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 - spar- row, 6. Yellow - ham- mer, 7. Skylark, 8. Swallow, 9. Blackcap, 10. Titlark, 11. Blackbird, 12. White-throat, 13. Goldfinch, 14. Greenfinch, 15. Less reed-spar- 16. Common lin- net, RAII NOMINA. Alauda arborea: ( Turdus simpliciter ( dictus : Passer troglodytes : Hubecula : Gurruca : [ Emberiza flava : A lauda vulgaris : Hirundo domestica: Atricapilla: Alauda pratorum : Merula vulyaris : Ficedula affinis : Carduelis : Chloris : ) Passer nrundina- i ceus minor : Linaria vulgaris : In January, and continues to sing through all the summer and autumn. i In February and on to August, | reassume their song in autumn. All the year, hard frost excepted. Ditto. Early in February to July the 10th. j Early in February, and on through [ July to August the 21st. In February, and on to October. From April to September. $ Beginning of April to July the \ 13th. j From middle of April to July the [ 16th. Sometimes in February and March, and so on to July the 23rd ; re- assumes in autumn. In April, and on to July the 23rd. ( April, and through to September [ the 16th. On to July and August the 2nd. [ May, on to beginning of July. , Breeds and whistleson till August; \ reassumes its note when thty < begin to congregate in October, / and again early before the flock ' separate. 88 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. Birds that cease to be in full song, and are usually silent at or before midsummer : — RAII NOMINA. 17. Middle wil- j Regulus non cris- low-wren, \ talus : Ruticilla : 18. Redstart, 19. Chaffinch, 20. Nightingale, Frinyilla : Luscinia : Middle of June : begins in April. Ditto : begins in May. ( 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 : — January the 2nd, 1770, in Febru- ary. Is called in Hampshire and Sussex the storm-cock, be- cause its song is supposed to forebode windy, wet weather : is the largest singing bird we have. In February, March, April : re- 21. Missel-bird, Turdus viscivorus : 22. Great Tit-") mouse, or V Fringillago : Ox-eye, ) 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 : — Its note as minute as its person ; 23. Golden-crown- " ed wren, lls cristatus : 24. Marsh - tit- mouse, j Parus palustris : frequents the tops of high oaks and firs : the smallest British bird. Haunts great woods : two harsh, sharp notes. 25. Small willow- 1 Regulus rion cris- j Sings in March, and on to Sep- wren, ( tatus: ( tember. 26. Largest ditto, Ditto. \ " ^ icnXdr, "Qpas Syowra, (cni (taXois 'F.viavroiis "Em yaarfpa Xeuicd, K eVi VOITCI ^te'Xmya. " He comes ! He conies ! who loves to bear Soft sunny hours and seasons fair ;-- The swallow hither comes to rest His sable wing and snowy breast." And alluding to this custom, Avienus (who may be considered only as a very bad translator of an excellent poem, the "Periegesis" of Dionysius) thus says, v. 705, — " Nam cum vere novo, tellus se dura relaxat, Culminibusque cavis, blandum strepit ales hirund Gens devota choros agitat ! " " When in early spring the iron soil relaxes, comes the swallow chirping pleasantly from the hollow eaves, and the pious people begin to dance." From a passage in the " Birds " of Aristophanes, we learn that among the Greeks the crane, pointed out the time of sowing ; the arrival of the kite, the 134 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. times, and then retire again to their latdrtc. Nor make I the least doubt but that, if I lived at Newhaven, Seaford, Bright- helmstone, or any of those towns near the chalk-cliffs of the Sussex coast, I should by proper observations, 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, namely, the 13th or 14th of April, yet meeting with a harsh reception, and blustering cold north-east winds, they immediately withdrew, absconding for several days, till the weather gave them better encouragement. March 9, 1772. LETTER L. TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. BY my journal for last autumn it appears that the house- martins bred very late, and staid very late in these parts ; for on the 1st of October I saw young martins in their nest nearly fledged ; and, again, on the 21st 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 the 3rd of November ; when twenty, or per- haps thirty, house-martins were playing all day long by the side time of sheep-shearing; and the swallow, the time to put on summer-clothes. According to the Greek calendar of Flora, kept by Theophrastus at Athens, the Ornithian winds blow, and the swallow conies between the 28th of February and the 12th of March ; the kite and nightingale appear between the llth and 26th of March : the cuckoo appears at the same time the young figs come out, thence his name. — STILLINGFLEET'S Tract} on Natural History. L.] OF SELBORNE. 135 of the hanging wood, and over my fields. Did these small weak birds, some of which were nestlings 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 sand- bank, lake, or pool, 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 con- tinent southward, if they do at 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 dis- regard 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. SELBORSE, March 15, 1773. 136 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER LT. TO THE HO^rOURAI:LE DAINES BARRIXOTON. 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 1st 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 to the composure of an animal said to be a whole month in performing one feat of copu- lation. Nothing can be more assiduous than this creature night and day in scooping the earth, and forcing its great body into the cavity ; 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 13th 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 earnestness in 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 re- frain from eating as well as breathing for a great part of the year. When first awakened it eats nothing ; nor again in the III.] OF SELBORNE. 137 autumn before it retires : through the height of the summer it feeds voraciously, devouring 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 its owner, and the ass his master's crib,"1 but the most abject reptile and torpid of beings distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched with the feelings of gratitude ! P.S. — In about three days after I left Sussex the tortoise retired into the ground under the hepatica. April 12, 1772. LETTER TO THE IIUMH'HABLE DAINES BAKKIXGTON. THE more I reflect on the crropyr) 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 a hen, just become a mother, is no longer that placid bird she used to be, but with feathers standing on end, wings hovering, and clucking 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 Mill tumble alonjg before a sportsman in order to draw away the dogs from her helpless covey. In the time of nidification the most feeble 1 Isaiah i. 3. VOL. i. T 138 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT birds will assault the most rapacious. All the hirundines of a village are up in arms at the sight of a 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 cliffs of the rocks to chase away the kestrel or the PIED rLVCATCIIKK. sparrow-hawk. If you stand near the nest of a bird that ha.s 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 further 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 flycatcher of the Zoology (the Stoparola of Eay) builds every year in the vines that grow on the walls of my house. Lll.l OF SELBORNE. 139 A pair of these little birds had one year inadvertently placed their uest on a naked bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the inconvenience that followed. But a hot sunny sea- son coming on before the brood was half-fledged, the reflection of the wall became insupportable, and must inevitably have de- stroyed the tender young, had not affection suggested an expe- dient, and prompted the parent birds to hover over the nest all the hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths gaping for breath, they screened off the heat from their suffering off- spring. 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 ns with some degree of jealousy. Some days after, as we passed SI'OTTKI) Kl.YCATCILKIt S KC.ti. Hint 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 nvcr the nest, in order to dodge the eye of any impertinent intruder. A still more remarkable mixture of sagacity and instinct occurred to me one day as my people were pulling off the lining of a hotbed in order 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 tield-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 ! HO THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 perver- sion of the a-ropyt], 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, I am not so much amazed ; since reason per- verted, 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 extra- vagantly diverted, I leave to abler philosophers than myself to determine. SBLBORNE, March 26, 1773. LETTER LIII. TO THE HONOURABLE DAIXES BARRIXGTO\. SOME young men went down lately to a pond on the verge of Wolmer Forest to hunt flappers, or young wild-clucks, 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 rrmch pleased with the discovery : this I look upon as a groat 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 Llll.] OF SELBORNE. 14) and small inelosures 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, often dropping down in the grass or corn. I have minuted these birds with my watch for an hour together, and have found that they return to their nest, the one or the other of them, about once in five minutes ; reflecting at the same time on the adroitness that every animal is possessed of as far as regards the well-being of itself and offspring. But a piece of address which they show when they return loaded should not, I think, be passed over in silence. As they take their prey with their claws, so they carry it in their claws to their nest : but as the feet are necessary in their ascent under the tiles, they constantly perch first on the roof of the chancel, and shift the mouse from their claws to their bill, that the 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 will answer the inten- tion 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 com- mon people's imaginary species of screech-owl, which they superstitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The plumage of the reiniges 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 the congeries of the bones of mice, and perhaps of birds and bats, that had been 112 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT heaping together for ages, being cast up in pellets otit of the crops of many generations of inhabitants. Fur owls cast up the bones, fur, and feathers of what they devour, after the manner of hawks. He believes, he told me, that there were bushels of this kind of substance. When brown owls hoot their throats swell as big as a hen's e-gg. I have known an owl of this species live a full year without any water. Perhaps the case may be the same with all birds of prey. When owls fly they stretch out their legs behind them as a balance to their large heavy heads : for, as most nocturnal birds have large eyes and ears they must have large heads to contain them. Large eyes I presume are necessary to collect every ray of light, and large concave ears to command the smallest degree of sound or noise.1 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 mar- vellous agility; and clear our outlets from the annoyances of gnats and other troublesome insects. Some districts in the South Seas, near Guiaquil,2 are desolated, it seems, by the in- finite swarms of venomous mosquitoes, which fill the air, and render those coasts insupportable. It would be worth inquiring whether any species of hirundines is found in those regions. Whoever contemplates the myriads of insects that sport in the sunbeams of a summer evening in this country, will soon be convinced to what a degree our atmosphere would be choked with them were it not for the friendly interposition of the swallows. Many species of birds have their peculiar lice ; but the hi r un- it ines alone seem to be annoyed with dipterous insects, which infest every species, and are so large, in proportion to them- selves, that they must be extremely irksome and injurious to them. These are the Hippolosca; hirundines, with narrow 1 It will be proper to premise here that tiie Letters LIII., LV., LVII., and LX., have been published already in the " Philosophical Transactions," Imt nicer observation has furnished several corrections and additions. « See Ulloa's " Travels " J -M THE BUTCHER BIRD. UV.] OF SELBORNE. subulated wings, abounding in every nest ; and are hatched by the warmth of the bird's own body during incubation, and crawl about under its feathers. A species of them is familiar to horsemen in the south of England under the name of forest-fly ; and to some of side-fly from its running sideways like a crab. It creeps under the tails, and about the groins, of horses, which at their first coming out of the north, are rendered half frantic by the tickling sen- sation ; while our own breed little regards them. The curious Reaumur discovered the large eggs, or rather pu.pcK, 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 pupa: of these insects : but for other particulars, too long for this place, we refer the reader to "L'Histoire d'Insects" of that admirable entomologist — torn. iv. pi. 11. SELBORNE, July 8, 1773. LETTER LIV. TO THOMAS PENNANT, A'A'Q. As you desire me to send you such observations as 7nay occur 1 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 osprey was shot about a year ago at I'rinsliam pond, a great lake, about six miles from hence, while it was sitting on the handle of a plough and devouring a fish : it used to pre- cipitate itself into the water, and so take its prey by surprise. A great ash-coloured butcher-bird was shot last winter iu Tinted Park, and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne : they are rarce aves in this county. HI THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. Crows go iii pairs the whole year round. Cornish choughs abound, and breed on Beachy 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 ; and is usually the latest winter-bird of passage. IWore 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 ? The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird 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 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 as they stand on the ground. Adanson's testimony seems to me to be a very poor evi- dence 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 men- tioned 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 in their nest till the 23rd of October. The swift appears about ten or twelve days later than the house-swallow : viz. about the 24th or the 2(5th of April. Whin-chats and stone-chatters stay with us the whole year. Some wheat-ears continue with us the winter through. Wagtails of all sorts remain with us all the winter. \ fVVfc •« THE TREE PIPIT. BU LLFI I L1V.1 OF SELBORNE. 145 Bullfinches when fed on hempseed often become wholly black. We have vast flocks of female chaffinches 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 sound (perhaps I should have rather said a humming), I suspect we mean the same thing. However, while they are playing about on the wing they cer- tainly 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 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 a while, but died. I saw young teals taken alive in the ponds of Wolmer Forest in the beginning of July last, along with flappers, or young wild ducks. All the swallow kind sip their water as they sweep over the .face of pools or rivers : like Virgil's bees, they drink flying— " flumina summa libant." In this method of drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar. The sedge-bird 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. SELBORNE, Nov. 9, 1773. VOL. I. 146 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER LV. TO THE HONOURABLE DAIXEX KAllllIXGTOX. Ix obedience to your injunctions I sit down to give you some account of the house-martin, or martlet;1 and, if my niono- grapliy of this little domestic and familiar bird should happen to meet with your approbation, I may probably soon extend my inquiries to the rest of the British liirunctines — 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. For some time after they appear, the hirundines in general pay no atten- tion to the business of nidification, but play and sport about, either to recruit from the fatigue of their journej', if they do migrate at all, or else that their blood may recover its true tone and texture after it has been so long benumbed by the severities of winter. About the middle of May, if the weather be fine, the martin begins to think in earnest of providing a mansion for its family. The crust or shell of this nest seems to be formed of such dirt or loam as comes most readily to hand, and is tem- pered 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 \mder, it re- quires its iitmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the superstructure. On this occa- sion the bird not only clings with its claws, but partly supports itself by strongly inclining its tail against the wall, making that a fulcrum ; and thus steadied, it works and plasters the materials into the face of the brick or stone. But then, that this work may not, while it is soft and green, pull itself down by its own weight, the provident architect has prudence and forbearance enough not to advance her work too fast ; but by building only 1 Hirundo urbica, Linna'iis. IT.] OF SELBORNE. 147 in the morning, and by dedicating the rest of the day to food and amusement, gives it sufficient time to dry and harden. About half an inch seems to be a sufficient layer for a day. Thus careful workmen when they build mud-walls (informed at first perhaps by this little bird) raise but a moderate layer at a Tin: mirsr-M A time, and then desist ; lest the work should become top-heavy, and so be ruined by its own weight. By this method in about ten or twelve days is formed an hemispheric nest with a small aper- ture 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 148 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. as the shell is finished, to seize on it as its own, to eject the owner, and to line it after its own manner. After so much labour is bestowed in erecting a mansion, as Nature seldom works in vain, martins will breed on for several years together in the same nest, where it happens to be well sheltered and secure from the injuries of weather. The shell or crust of the nest is a sort of rustic-work full of knobs and protuberances on the outside : nor is the inside of those that I have examined smoothed with any exactness at all ; but is rendered soft and warm, and fit for incubation, by a lining of small straws, grasses, and feathers ; and sometimes by a bed of moss interwoven with wool. In this nest they tread, or engender, frequently during the time of building ; and the hen lays from three to five white eggs. At first when the young are hatched, and are in a naked and helpless condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, carry out what comes away from their young. Were it not for this affectionate cleanliness the nestlings would soon be burnt up, and destroyed in so deep and hollow a nest, by their own caustic excrement. In the quadruped creation the same neat precaution is made use of; particularly among dogs and cats, where the dams lick away what proceeds from their young. But in birds there seems to be a particular provision, that the dung of nestlings is enveloped in a tough kind of jelly, and therefore is the easier conveyed off without soiling or daubing. Yet, as Nature is cleanly in all her ways, the young perform this office for themselves in a little time by thrusting their tails out at the aperture of their nest. As the young of small birds presently arrive at their ijXt/a'a, or full growth, they soon become impatient of confinement, and sit all day with their heads out of 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 slight, 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 darns immediately turn their thoughts to the business of a second brood, while the first flight, shaken off IV.] OF SELBORNE. 149 and rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny morn- ings 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 all together ; 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 o HOL'SE-MAkTl.N S E(;ii. ready-finished house get the start in hatching of those that build new by ten days or a fortnight. These industrious artificers are at their labours in the long days before four in the morning : when they fix their materials they plaster them on with their chins, moving their heads with a quick vibratory motion. They dip and wash as they fly sometimes in very hot weather, but not so frequently as swallows. It has been observed that martins usually build to a north-east or north-west aspect, that the heat of the sun may not crack and destroy their nests ; but instances are also remembered where they bred for many years in vast abundance in a hot stifled inn-yard, against a wall facing to the south. Birds in general are wise in their choice of situation ; but in this neighbourhood every summer is seen a strong proof to the contrary at a house without eaves in an exposed district, where some martins build year by year in the corners of the windows. But as the comers of these windows (which face to the south- 150 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 " to patch the ruins of a fallen race " — " generis lapsi sarcire ruinas." Thus is instinct a most wonderful but 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 arid 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 atinoshhere. Martins are by far the least agile of the four species ; their wings and tails are short, and there- fore 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 the 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 LVI.] OF SELBORNE. 151 district where they are bred, they must undergo vast devasta- tions somehow, and somewhere ; for the birds that return yearly bear no manner of proportion to the birds that retire. House-martins are distinguished from their congeners by having their legs covered with soft, downy feathers down to their toes. They are no songsters ; but twitter in a pretty inward soft manner in their nests. During the time of breed- ing they are often greatly molested with fleas. SELBORNE, Nov. 20, 17~:i. LETTER LVI. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTOX. your last favour just as I was setting out for this place ; and am pleased to find that my monograph met with your approbation. My remarks are the result of many years observation ; and are, I trust, true in the whole : though I do not pretend to say that they are perfectly void of mistake, or that a more nice observer might not make many additions, since subjects of this kind are inexhaustible. If you think my letter worthy the notice of your respectable society, you are at liberty to lay it before them ; and they will consider it, I hope, as it was intended, as a humble attempt to promote a more minute inquiry into natural history; into the life and conversation of animals. Perhaps hereafter I may be induced to take the house-swallow under consideration ; and from that proceed to the rest of the British kirundincs. Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upwards of thirty years, I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year; and think I see new beauties every time I traverse it. This range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far as Eastbourne, is about sixty miles in length, and is called the South Downs, properly speaking, 152 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. only round Lewes. As you pass along, it commands a noble view of the wild, or weald, on one hand, and the broad downs and sea on the other. Mr. Eay used to visit a family at Danny, j ust at the foot of these hills ; he was so ravished with the prospect from Plumpton-plain near Lewes, that he mentions those landscapes in his " Wisdom of God in the Works of the Creation " with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks them equal to anything he had seen in the finest parts of Europe. For my own part, I think there is something peculiarly sweet and pleasing in the shapely figured aspect of chalk-hills in preference to those of stone, which are nigged, 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 pro- tuberances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative dilatation and expan- sion. Or was there ever a time when these immense masses of calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some adventitious moisture; were raised and leavened into such shapes by some plastic power ; and so made to swell and heave their broad backs into the sky so much above the. less animated clay of the wild below ? By what I can guess of the admeasurements of the hills that have been taken round my house, I should suppose that these hills surmount the wild at an average of about the rate of five hundred feet. One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep ; from the west- ward until you get to the river Adur all the flocks have horns, and smooth white faces, and white legs ; and a hornless sheep is rarely to be seen : but as soon as you pass that river eastward, and mount Beeding Hill, all the flocks at once become hornless, or, as they call them, poll-sheep ; and have moreover black faces with a white tuft of wool on their foreheads, and speckled and spotted legs : so that you would think that the flocks of Laban were pasturing on one side of the stream, and the varie- gated breed of his son-in-law Jacob were cantoned along on the LVI.] OF SELBORNE. 153 other. And this diversity holds good respectively on each side from the valley of Brambler and Beeding to the eastward, and westward all the whole length of the downs. If you talk with the shepherds on this subject, they tell you that the case has been so from time immemorial ; and smile at your simplicity if you ask them whether the situation of these two different breeds might not be reversed ? However, an intelligent friend of mine near Chichester is determined to try the experiment, and has this autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced a parcel of black-faced hornless rams among his horned western ewes. The black- faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the finest wool. [The sheep on the downs in the winter of 1769 were very ragged, and their coats much torn ; the shepherds say they tear their fleeces with their own mouths and horns, and they are always in that way in mild wet winters, being teased and tickled with a kind of lice. After ewes and lambs are shorn, there is great confusion and bleating, neither the dams nor the young being able to distin- guish one another as before. This embarrassment seems not so much to arise from the loss of the fleece, which may occasion an alteration in their appearance, as from the defect of that notus odor, discriminating each individual personally; which also is confounded by the strong scent of the pitch and tar wherewith they are newly marked; for the brute creation recognize each other more from the smell than the sight ; and in matters of identity and diversity appeal much more to their noses than their eyes. After sheep have been washed there, is the same confusion, from the reason given above.] — OBSERVA- TIONS ON NATURE. 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, VOL. I. X 154 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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, blackcaps, which 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 inquisi- tive, 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 wheatear, though they abound so in the autumn as to be a considerable perquisite to the shepherds that take them ; and though many are to be seen to my know- ledge 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 Brighton 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- bourne, which is the eastern extremity of those downs, they abound much more. One thing is very remarkable — that though in the height of the season so many hundreds of dozens are taken, yet they never are seen to flock ; and it is a rare thing to see more than three or four at a time : so that there must be a perpetual flitting and constant progressive succession. It does not appear that any wheatears are taken to the westward of Houghton bridge, which stands on the river Arun. I did not fail to look particularly after my new migration of ring-ousels ; and to take notice whether they continued on the downs to this season of the year ; as I had formerly remarked them in the month of October all the way from Chichester to Lewes wherever there were any shrubs and coverts : but not one LVI1.] OF SELBORNE. 155 bird of this sort came within my observation. I only saw a few larks and whinchats, some rooks, and several kites and buzzards. About summer a flight of crossbills comes to the pine-groves about this house, but never makes any long stay. The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, still continues in this garden ; and retired under ground about the 20th of November, and came out again for one day on the 30th : it lies now buried in a wet swampy border under a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped at present in mud and mire ! Here is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants of which seem to get their livelihood very easily ; for they spend the greatest part of the day on their nest-trees when the weather is mild. These rooks retire every evening all the winter from this rookery, where they only call by the way, as they are going to roost in deep woods : at the dawn of day they always revisit their nest-trees, and are preceded a few minutes by a flight of daws, that act, as it were, as their harbingers. RINGMER, near LEWES, Dec. 9, 1773. LETTER LVII. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. THE house-swallow,1 or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the first comer of all the British liirundines ; and appears in general on or about the 13th of April, as I have remarked from many years' observation. Not but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier : and, in particular, when I was a boy I ob- served 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. 1 Chimney-swallow, Hirundo rustica, Linnaeus. 156 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 in the two dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they imme- diately withdraw for a time. A circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than migration ; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to its hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two only 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 :— • Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo." " The twitter- ing swallow hangs its nest from the beams." 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 gate- ways, 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 per- petual 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 LYII.] OF SELBORNE. 157 long in ascending and descending with security through so nar- row 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 sub- mits to this inconvenient situation so low in the shaft, in order to secure her broods from rapacious birds, and particularly from owls, which frequently fall down chimneys, perhaps in attempting to get at these nestlings. The swallow lays from four to six white eggs, dotted with red specks ; and brings out her first brood about the last week in June, or the first week in July. The progressive method by which the young are introduced into life is very amusing : first, they emerge from the shaft with difficulty enough, and often fall down into the rooms below ; for a day or so they are fed on the chimney-top, and then are conducted to the dead leafless bough of some tree, where sitting in a row they are attended with great assiduity, and may then be called perchers. In a day or two more they become flyers, but are still unable to take their own food ; therefore they play about near the place where the dams are hawking for flies ; and when a mouthful is collected, at a certain signal given the dam and the nestling advance, rising towards each other, and meeting at an angle ; the young one all the while uttering such a little quick note of gratitude and complacency, that a person must have paid very little regard to the wonders of nature that has not often remarked this feat. The dam betakes herself immediately to the business of a second brood as soon as she is disengaged from her first ; which at once associates with the first broods of house-martins ; and with them congregates, clustering on sunny roofs, towers, and trees. This hirundo brings out her second brood towards the middle and end of August. All the summer long the swallow is 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 sud- den turns and quick evolutions. Avenues, and long walks un- der hedges, and pasture-fields, and mown meadows where cattle graze, are her delight, especially if there are trees interspersed ; 1H THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. because in such spots insects most abound. When a fly is taken, a smart snap from her bill is heard, resembling the noise at the shutting of a watch-case ; but the motion of the mandibles is too quick for the eye. The swallow, probably the male bird, is the excubitor to house- martins, and other little birds, announcing the approach of birds of prey. For as soon as a hawk appears, with a shrill alarming note he calls all the swallows and martins about him ; who pur- sue 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 will also 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 also 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 : it 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 over the salt water Horse- men on wide downs are often closely attended by a little party of swallows for miles together, which plays before and behind them, sweeping around, and collecting all the skulking 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 " Now suddenly he skims the glassy pool, Now quaintly dips, and with an arrow's speed Whisks by. I love to lie awake, and hear His morning song twittered to dawning day." LVI1.] OF SELBORNE. 159 they forsake houses and chimneys to a bird, and roost in trees ; and usually withdraw about the beginning of October; though some few stragglers may appear at times till the first week in November. [September 13, 1791. The congregating flocks of hirundines on the church and tower are very beautiful and amusing ! When they fly off together from the roof, on any alarm, they quite swarm in the air. But they soon settle in heaps, and preening their feathers, and lifting up their wings to admit the sun, seem highly to enjoy the warm situation. Thus they spend the heat of the day, preparing for their emigration, and, as it were, consulting when and where they are to go. The flight about the church seems to consist chiefly of house-martins, about 400 in number : but there are other places of rendezvous about the village fre- quented at the same time.1 It is remarkable, that though most of them sit on the battle- ments and roof, yet many hang or cling for some time by their claws against the surface of the walls, in a manner not prac- tised by them at any other time of their remaining with us. The swallows seem to delight more in holding their assem- blies on trees. November 3, 1789. Two swallows were seen this morning at Newton vicarage-house hovering and settling on the roofs and out-buildings. None have been observed at Selborue since October 11. It is very remarkable, that after the hirundines have disappeared for some weeks, a few are occasionally seen again : sometimes in the first week in November, and that only for one day. Do they not withdraw and slumber in some hiding 1 Of their migration the proofs are such as will scarcely admit of a doubt. Sir Charles Wager and Captain Wright saw vast flocks of them at sea. when on their passage from one country to another. Our author, Mr. White. saw what he deemed the actual migration of these birds which he has described at page 74, and again in the above extract ; and I once observed a large flock of house-martins myself on the roof of the church here at Catsfield, which acted exactly in ibe manner here described by Mr. White, sometimes preening their feathers and spreading their wings to the sun, and then flying off all together, but soon returning to their former situation. The greatest part of these birds seemed to be young ones. — MARKWICK. 160 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. place during the interval ? for we cannot suppose they had migrated to warmer climes, and so returned again for one day. Is it not more probable that they are awakened from sleep, and like the bats are come forth to collect a little food ? Bats appear at all seasons through the autumn and spring months, when the thermometer is at 50°, because then phalcence and moths are stirring. These swallows looked like young ones.] — OBSERVATIONS ON XATURE. 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 undoubt- edly the most nimble of all the species ; and when the male pursues the female in amorous chase, they then go beyond their usual speed, and exert a rapidity almost too quick for the eye to follow. After this circumstantial detail of the life and discerning a-TopyT) of the swallow, I shall add, for your further amusement, an anecdote or two not much in favour of their sagacity. A certain swallow built for two years together on the handles of a pair of garden shears that were stuck up against the boards in an out-house, and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever that implement was wanted : and, what is stranger still, another bird of the same species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity worthy the most elegant private museum in Great Britain. The owner, struck with the oddity of the sight, furnished the bringer with a large shell, or conch, desiring him to fix it just where the owl hung : the person did as he was ordered, and the following year a pair, probably the same pair, built their nest in the conch, and laid their eggs. The owl and the conch make a strange grotesque appearance, and are not the least curious specimens in that wonderful col- lection of art and nature. LVI1I.] OF SELBORNE. 161 Thus is instinct in animals, taken the least out of its way, an undistinguishing, limited faculty ; and blind to every circum- stance that does not immediately respect self-preservation, or lead at once to the propagation or support of their species. SELBORNE, Sept. 9, 1767. LETTER LVIII. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES HARRINGTON. I RECEIVED your favour of the 8th, and am pleased to find that you read my little history of the swallow with your usual candour: nor was I the less pleased to find that you made objections where you saw reason. As to the quotations, it is difficult to say precisely which species of kirundo 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, which 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 tignvm in that place signifies a rafter rather than a beam, as it seems to me to do, then 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 VOL. I. Y 162 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 ./Eneas. The verb sonat also seems to imply a bird that is somewhat loquacious.1 " Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis redes Pervolat, et pennis alta atria lustrat kirundo, Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas : Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc huniida uircuni Stagna souat." — (VlRG. &n. xii. 473—477.) We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so as to raise the springs to a pitch beyond anything since 1764; which was a remarkable year for floods and high waters. The land-springs, which we call levants, break out much on the downs of Sussex, Hampshire, and Wiltshire. The country people say when the levants 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, the corn-vales must be drowned ; and so it has proved for these ten or eleven years past. For land- springs have never obtained more in 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 com- binations, tend to inflame and mislead ; since we must not ex- pect 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 vicissi- tudes from fierce frost to pouring rains, looks poorly ; and the turnips rot veiy fast. SELBORNE, Feb. 14, 1774. 1 " As when the black swallow flies through the great palace of some wealthy lord, sweeping with its wings through the lofty halls, picking up tiny scraps of food for its chirping nestlings, at one time twittering in the empty porches, and at another round the watery ponds." THE HOUSE MAHTIN. LIX.] OF SELBORNE. 163 LETTER LIX. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. THE sand-martin, or bank-martin (Hirundo riparia, Linnaeus), is by much the least of any of the British hirundines ; and, as far as we have ever seen, the smallest known hirundo : though Brissori 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 recit- ing the circumstances attending the life and conversation of this little bird, since it \sfera natura, at least in this part of the kingdom, disclaiming all domestic attachments, and haunting wild heaths and commons where there are large lakes ; while the other species, especially the swallow and house-martin, are remarkably gentle and domesticated, and never seem to think themselves safe but under the protection of man. Here are in this parish, in the sand-pits and banks of the lakes of Wolmer Forest, several colonies of these birds ; and yet they are never seen in the village ; nor do they at all frequent the cottages that are scattered about in that wild district. The only instance I ever remember where this species haunts any build- ing is at the town of Bishop's Walthain, 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 inclosure, and faces upon a large and beautiful lake. 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 archi- tectonic skill Providence has endowed birds of the same genus, I two sequestered individuals. The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of com- placency, rubbing herself gently against his legs : while the horse would look down with satisfaction, and move with the greatest caution and circumspection, lest he should trample on his diminutive companion. Thus by mutual good offices, each seemed to console the vacant hours of the other : so that Milton, when he puts the following sentiment in the mouth of Adam, seems to be somewhat mistaken : — " Much less can bird with beast, or fish with fowl, So well converse, nor with the ox the ape." SELBORNE, Aug. 15, 1775. LXVII.] OF SELBORNE. 193 LETTER LXVII. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINOTON. 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 langxiage 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 in the open air 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 in the midst of one of our hop- gardens, on the cold ground, with nothing over her but a piece of blanket extended on a few hazel-rods bent hoop-fashion, and stuck into the earth at each end, in circumstances too trying for a cow in the same condition : yet within this garden there VOL. i. c c 194 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 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 Pekin, met a gang of these people on the confines of Tartary, who were endeavouring to penetrate those deserts and try their fortune in China.1 Gypsies are called in French, Bohemians; in Italian and modern Greek, Zingari. SELBORNE, Oct. 2, 1775. LETTER LXVIII. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. " Hie • - tsed.-e pingues, hie plurimus ignis Semper, et assiduS postea fuligine nigri." (Vmo. Eel. vii. 49,50.) " Here are fat torches, here abundant fire, Here constant smoke has black'd each side the door." I SHALL make no apolcgy 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 conglomeratus, or common soft rush, which is to be found in most moist pastures, by the sides of streams, and under 1 See Bell's " Travels in China." LXVIII.] OF SELBORNE. 195 hedges. These rushes are in best condition in the height of summer ; hut 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 the water, and kept there ; for otherwise they will dry and shrink, and the peel \vill not run. At first a person would find it no easy matter to divest a rush of its peel or rind, so as to leave one regular, narrow, even rib from top to bottom that may support the pith : but this, like other feats, soon becomes familiar even to children ; and we have seen an old woman, stone-blind, performing this business with great despatch, and seldom failing to strip them with the nicest regularity. When these junci are thus far pre- pared, 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 scum- mings 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 fourpence ; and about six pounds of grease will dip a pound of rushes; and one pound of rushes may be bought for one shilling ; so that a pound of rushes, medicated and ready for use, will cost three shillings. If men that keep bees will mix a little wax with the grease, it will give it a consistency, and render it more cleanly, and make the rushes burn .longer ; mutton-suet would have the same effect. A good rush, which measured in length two feet four inches and a half, being minuted, burnt only three minutes short of an hour: and a rush 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, " darkness visible ; " !96 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. but then the wicks of those have two ribs of the rind, or peel, to support the pith, while the wick of the dipped rush has but one. The two ribs are intended to impede the progress of the flame and make the candle last. In a pound of dry rushes, avoirdupois, which I caused to be weighed and numbered, we found upwards of one thousand six hundred individuals. Now suppose each of these burns, one with another, only half an hour, then a poor man will purchase eight hundred hours of light, a time exceeding thirty-three entire days, for three shillings. According to this account each rush, before dipping, costs -^ of a farthing, and T'T afterwards. Thus a poor family will enjoy 5i hours of comfortable light for a farthing. An experienced old housekeeper assures me that one pound and a half of rushes completely supplies his family the year round, since working people burn no candle in the long days, because they rise and go to bed by daylight. Little farmers use rushes much, in the short days, both morning and evening, in the dairy and kitchen ; but the very poor, who are always the worst economists, and therefore must continue very poor, buy a halfpenny candle every evening, which, in their blowing open rooms, does not burn much more than two hours. Thus have they only two hours light for their money instead of eleven. While on the subject of rural economy, it may not be im- proper to mention a pretty implement of housewifely that I have seen nowhere else ; that is, little neat besoms which our foresters make from the stalk of the Polytricum commune, or great golden niaid.en-hair, which they call silk-wood, and find plenty in the bogs. When this moss is well combed and dressed, and divested of its outer skin, it becomes of a beauti- ful bright chestnut colour ; and, being soft and pliant, is very proper for the dusting of beds, curtains, carpets, hangings, &c. If these besoms were known to the brushmakers in town, it is probable they might come much more into use for the purpose above mentioned.1 SELBORNE, Nov. 1, 1776. 1 A besom of this sort is to be seen in Sir Ashton Lever's Museum. LXIX.] OF SELBORNE. 197 LETTER LXIX. TO THE HONOURABLE DAIXES BARRINOTON. WE had in this village more than twenty years ago an idiot- boy, whom I well remember, who, from a child, showed a strong propensity to bees ; they were his food, his amusement, his sole object. And as people of this cast have seldom more than one point in view, so this lad exerted all his few faculties on this one pursuit. In the winter he dosed away his time, within his father's house, by the fireside, in a kind of torpid state, seldom departing from the chimney-corner ; but in the summer he was all alert, and in quest of his game in the fields, and on sunny banks. Honey-bees, humble-bees, and wasps, were his prey wherever he found them : he had no apprehen- sions from their stings, but would seize them imdis manibus, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would fill his bosom between his shirt and his skin with a number of these captives ; and sometimes would confine them in bottles. He was a very Merops apiastcr, or bee-bird ; and very injurious to men that kept bees : for he would slide into their bee- gardens, and, sitting down before the stools, would rap with his finger on the hives, aud so take the bees as they came out. He has been known to overturn hives for the sake of honey, of which he was passionately fond. "Where metheglin was making lie would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of what he called bee-wine. As he ran about he used to make a humming noise with his lips, resembling the buzzing of bees. This lad was lean and sallow, and of a cadaverous complexion ; and, except in his favourite pursuit, in which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of understanding. Had his capacity been better, and directed to the same object, he had perhaps abated much of our wonder at the feats of a 198 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. more modern exhibiter of bees ; and we may justly say of him now, — - Thou, Had thy presiding star propitious shone, Shouldst Wildman be When a tall youth he was removed from hence to a distant village, where he died, as I understand, before he arrived at manhood. SKLBORNE, Dec. 12, 1775. LETTER LXX. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINOWN. IT is the hardest thing in the world to shake off superstitious prejudices : they are sucked in, as it were, with our mother's milk ; and, growing up with us at a time when they take the fastest hold and make the most lasting impressions, become so interwoven into our very constitutions, that the strongest good sense is required to disengage ourselves from them. No wonder, therefore, that the lower people retain them their whole lives through, since their minds are not invigorated by a liberal education, and therefore not enabled to make any efforts adequate to the occasion. Sucli a preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on tlie superstitions of this district, lest we should be suspected of exaggeration in a recital of practices too gross for this en- lightened age. But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to remember, that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of witchcraft ; and, by trying experiments, drowned them in a horse-pond. LXX.] OF SELBORNE. In a farm-yard near the middle of this village stands, at this day, a row of pollard-ashes, which, by the seams and long cicatrices down their sides, manifestly show that, in former times, they have been cleft asunder. These trees, when young and flexible, were severed and held open by wedges, while ruptured children, stripped naked, were pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion that, by such a process, the poor babes would be cured of their infirmity. As soon as the opera- tion was over, the tree, in the suffering part, was plastered with loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and soldered together, as usually fell out where the feat was per- formed with any adroitness at all, the party was cured ; but where the cleft continued to gape, the operation, it was sup- posed, would prove ineffectual. Having occasion to enlarge my garden not long since, I cut down two or three such trees, one of which did not grow together. We have several persons now living in the village, who, in their childhood, were supposed to be healed by this superstitious ceremony, derived down perhaps from our Saxon ancestors, who practised it before their conversion to Christianity. At the south corner of the Plestor, or area, near the church, there stood, about twenty years ago, a very old grotesque hollow pollard-ash, which for ages had been looked on with no small veneration as a shrew-ash. Now a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part affected ; for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this accident, to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus :* — Into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several 1 For a similar practice, White refers us to Plot's " Staffordshire." 200 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. quaint incantations long since forgotten. As the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration are no longer understood, all succession is at an end, and no such tree is known to subsist in the manor, or hundred. As to that on the Plestor, for " The late vicar stubb'd and burnt it," when he was way -warden, regardless of the remonstrances of the bystanders, who interceded in vain for its preservation, urging its power and efficacy, and alleging that it had been "guarded through many years by the piety of our ancestors ;" "Keligione patrum multos servata per annos." SKLBORNB, Jan. 8, 1776. LETTER LXXI. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. IN heavy fogs, on elevated situations especially, trees are perfect alembics : and no one that has not attended to such matters can imagine how much water one tree will distil in a night's time, by condensing the vapour which trickles down the twigs and boughs, so as to make the ground below quite in a float. In Newton-lane, in October, 1775, on a misty day, a particular oak in leaf dropped so fast that the cart-way stood in puddles and the ruts ran with water, though the ground in general was dusty. In some of our smaller islands in the West Indies, if I mis- take not, there are no springs or rivers ; but the people are supplied with that necessary element, water, merely by the dripping of some large tall trees, which, standing in the bosom of a mountain, keep their heads constantly enveloped with fogs and clouds, from which they dispense their kindly, never-ceasing LXXI.] OF SELBORNE. 201 moisture ; and so render those districts habitable by condensa- tion alone. Trees in leaf have such a vast proportion more of surface than those that are naked, that, in theory, their condensations should greatly exceed those that are stripped of their leaves ; but, as the former imbibe also a great quantity of moisture, it is difficult to say which drip most : but this I know, that deciduous trees that are entwined with much ivy seem to distil the greatest quantity. Ivy leaves are smooth, and thick, and cold, and therefore condense very fast ; and besides, evergreens imbibe very little. These facts may furnish the intelligent with hints concerning what sorts of trees they should plant round small ponds that they would wish to be perennial ; and show them how advan- tageous some trees are in preference to others. Trees perspire profusely, condense largely, and check eva- poration so much, that woods are always moist : no wonder therefore that they contribute much to pools and streams. That trees are great promoters of lakes and rivers appears from a well known fact in North America ; for, since the woods and forests have been grubbed and cleared, all bodies of water are much diminished ; so that some streams, that were very considerable a century ago, will not now drive a common mill.1 Besides, most woodlands, forests, and chases, with us abound with pools and morasses ; no doubt for the reason given above. To a thinking mind few phenomena are more strange than the state of little ponds on the summits of chalk-hills, many of which are never dry in the most trying droughts of summer. On chalk-hills I say, because in many rocky and gravelly soils springs usually break out pretty high on the sides of elevated grounds and mountains ; but no person acquainted with chalky districts will allow that they ever saw springs in such a soil, but only in valleys and bottoms, since the waters of so pervious a stratum as chalk all lie on one dead level, as well-diggers have assured me again and again. Now we have many such little round ponds in this district ; and one in particular on our sheep-down, three hundred feet above my house ; which, though never above three feet deep in Vide Kalni's Travels in North America. VOL. I. 1) I) 202 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. the middle, and not more than thirty feet in diameter, and con- taining perhaps not more than two or three hundred hogsheads of water, yet never is it known to fail, though it affords drink for three hundred or four hundred sheep, and for at least twenty head of large cattle beside. . This pond, it is true, is overhung with two moderate-sized beeches, that doubtless at times afford it much supply : but then we have others as small, that, without the aid of trees, and in spite of evaporation from sun and wind, and perpetual consumption by cattle, yet constantly maintain a moderate share of water, without overflowing in the wettest seasons, as they would do if supplied by springs. By my journal of May 1775, it appears that " the small and even con- siderable ponds in the vales are now dried up, while the small ponds on the very tops of hills are but little affected." Can this difference be accounted for from evaporation alone, which certainly is more prevalent in bottoms ? or rather, have not those elevated pools some unnoticed recruits, which in the night time counterbalance the waste of the day, without which the cattle alone must soon exhaust them ? And here it will be necessary to enter more minutely into the cause. Dr. Hales, in his Vege- table Statics, advances, from experiment, that " the moister the earth is the more dew falls on it in a night : and more than a double quantity of dew falls on a surface of water than there does on an equal surface of moist earth." Hence we see that water, by its coolness, is enabled to assimilate to itself a large quantity of moisture nightly by condensation ; and that the air, when loaded with fogs and vapours, and even with copious dews, can alone advance a considerable and never-failing resource. Persons that are much abroad, and travel early and late, such as shepherds, fishermen, &c., can tell what prodigious fogs prevail in the night on elevated downs, even in the hottest parts of summer ; and how much the surfaces of things are drenched by those swimming vapours, though, to the senses, all the while, little moisture seems to fall. SELBORNE, Feb. 7, 1776. LXXII.] OF SELBORNE. 203 LETTER LXXII. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRIXGTON. MONSIEUR HEKISSANT, a French anatomist, seems persuaded that he lias discovered the reason why cuckoos do not hatch their own eggs ; the impediment, he supposes, arises from the internal structure of their parts, which incapacitates them for incubation. According to this gentleman, the crop or craw of a cuckoo does not lie before the sternum at the bottom of the neck, as in the poultry, yallinee, and pigeons, columbce, &c., but immediately behind it, on and over the bowels, so as to make a large pro- tuberance in the belly.1 Induced by this assertion, we procured a cuckoo ; and, cutting open the breast-bone, and exposing the intestines to sight, found the crop lying as mentioned above. This stomach was large and round, and stuffed hard like a pincushion with food, which, upon nice examination, we found to consist of various insects ; such as small scarabs, spiders, and dragon-flies ; the last of which we have seen cuckoos catching on the wing as they were just emerging out of the aurelia state. Among this farrago also were to be seen maggots, and many seeds, which belonged either to gooseberries, currants, cranberries, or some such fruit ; so that these birds apparently subsist on insects and fruits : nor was there the least appearance of bones, feathers, or fur to support the idle notion of their being birds ot prey. The sternum in this bird seemed to us to be remarkably short, between which and the anus lay the crop, or craw, and immediately behind that the bowels against the back- bone. It must be allowed, as this anatomist observes, that the crop placed just upon the bowels must, especially when full, be in a very uneasy situation during the business of incubation ; yet 1 Histoire de 1' Academic Royale, 1752. 201 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. tlie test will l>e to examine whether birds that are actually known to sit for certain are not formed in a similar manner. This inquiry I proposed to myself to make 'with a fern-owl, or goat-sucker, as soon as opportunity ottered : because, if their formation proves the same, the reason for incapacity in the cuckoo will be allowed to have been taken up somewhat hastily. Not long after a fern-owl was procured, which, from its habit and shape, we suspected might resemble the cuckoo in its internal construction. Nor were our suspicions ill-grounded ; for upon dissection, the crop, or craw, also lay behind the sternum, immediately on the viscera, between them and the skin of the belly. It was bulky, and stuffed hard with large jihalcciuK, moths of several sorts, and their eggs, which no doubt had been forced out of those insects by the action of swallowing. Now as it appears that this bird, which is so well known to practise incubation, is formed in a similar manner with cuckoos, Monsieur Herissant's conjecture, that cuckoos are incapable of incubation from the disposition of their intestines, seems to fall to the ground : and we are still at a loss for the cause of that strange and singular peculiarity in the instance of the Cuculus cfinorus. We found the case to be the same with the ring-tail hawk, in respect to formation ; and, as far as 1 can recollect, with the swift; and probably it is so with many more sorts of birds that are not granivorous. SKLBOKXE, April 3, 1776. COAT-SITKKR'S £<;<;. LXXIII.] OF SELBORNE. 2C5 LETTER LXXIII. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARR1XGTON. ON August the 4th, 1775, we surprised a large viper, which seemed very heavy and bloated, as it lay in the grass basking in the snn. When we came to cut it up, we found that the abdomen was crowded with young, fifteen in number ; the shortest of which measured full seven inches, and were about the size of full-grown earthworms. This little fry issued into the world with the true viper spirit about them, showing great alertness as soon as disengaged from the belly of the dam : they twisted and wriggled about, and set themselves up, and gaped very wide when touched with a stick, showing manifest tokens of menace and defiance, though as yet they had no manner of fangs that we could find, even with the help of our glasses. To a thinking mind nothing is more wonderful than that early instinct which impresses young animals with the notion of the situation of their natural weapons, and of using them properly in their own defence, even before those weapons subsist or are formed. Thus a young cock will spar at his adversary before his spurs are grown ; and a calf or a lamb will push with their heads before their horns are sprouted. In the same manner did these young adders attempt to bite before their fangs were in being. The dam, however, was furnished with very formidable ones, which we lifted up (for they fold down when not used), and cut them off with the point of our scissors. There was little room to suppose that this brood had ever been in the open air before ; and that they were taken in for refuge, at the mouth of the dam, when she perceived that danger was approaching ; because then probably we should have found them somewhere in the neck, and not in the abdomen. SELBORNE, April 29, 1776. THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER LXXIV. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINQTOX. CASTRATION has a strange effect ; it emasculates both man, beast, and bird, and brings them to a near resemblance of the other sex. Thus eunuchs have smooth unmuscular arms, thighs, and legs ; and broad hips, and beardless chins, and squeaking voices. Gelt stags and bucks have hornless heads, like hinds and does. Thus wethers have small horns, like ewes; and oxen large bent horns, and hoarse voices when they low, like cows : for bulls have short straight horns ; and though they mutter and grumble in a deep tremendous tone, yet they low in a shrill high key. Capons have small combs and gills, and look pallid about the head, like pullets ; they also walk without any parade, and hover over chickens like hens.1 Barrow-hogs have also small tusks like sows. Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour puts a stop to the growth of those parts or appendages that are looked upon as its insignia. But the ingenious Mr. Lisle, in his book on husbandry, carries it much farther ; for he says that the loss of those insignia alone has sometimes a strange effect on the ability itself ; he had a boar so fierce and venereous, that to prevent mischief, orders were given for his tusks to be broken off. No sooner had the beast suffered this injury than his powers forsook him, and he neglected those females to whom before he was passionately attached, and from whom no fences could restrain him. 1 Reaumur, Mr. Rennie tells us, trained capons to nurse the chickens he hatched by artificial heat. They clucked like hens and proved good IU1] OF SELBORNE. 207 LETTER LXXV. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. * THE natural term of a hog's life is little known, and the reason is plain — because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep that turbulent animal to the full extent of its time : however, my neighbour, a man of substance, who had no occasion to study every little advantage to a nicety, kept a half-bred Bantam sow, who was as thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on the ground, till she was advanced to her seventeenth year, at which period she showed some tokens of age by the decay of her teeth and the decline of her fertility. For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters in the year of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a litter; but as there were near double the number of pigs to that of teats, many died. From long experience in the world this female was grown very sagacious and artful ; — when she found occasion to converse with a boar she used to open all the intervening gates, and march, by herself, up to a distant farm where one was kept ; and when her purpose was served would return by the same means. At the age of about fifteen her litters began to be reduced to four or five; and such a litter she exhibited when in her fatting-pen. She proved, when fat, good bacon, juicy, and tender; the rind, or sward, was remarkably thin. At a moderate computation she was allowed to have been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs: a pro- digious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped ! She was killed in spring 1775. 208 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER LXXVI. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRIXGTON. • admonint ubera tigres." " By tigers suckled." WE have remarked in a former letter how much incongruous animals, in a lonely state, may be attached to each other from a spirit of sociality; in this it may not be amiss to recount a different motive which has been known to create as strange a fondness. My friend had a little helpless leveret brought to him, which the servants fed with milk in a spoon, and about the same time his cat kittened and the young were despatched and buried. The hare was soon lost, and supposed to be gone the way of most fondlings, to be killed by some dog or cat. However, in about a fortnight, as the master was sitting in his garden in the dusk of the evening, he observed his cat, with tail erect, trotting towards him, and calling with little short inward notes of complacency, such as they use towards their kittens, and something gamboling after, which proved to be the leveret that the cat had supported with her milk, and continued to support with great affection. Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and predaceous one ! Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the ferocious genus of Felcs, the Murium leo, as Linnrcus calls it, should be affected with any tenderness towards an animal which is its natural prey, is not so easy to determine. This strange affection probably was occasioned by that dusi- ilerium, those tender maternal feelings, which the loss of her kittens had awakened in her breast ; and by the complacency and ease she derived to herself from the procuring her teats to be drawn, which were too much distended with milk, till, from LXXVL] OF SELBORNE. 209 habit, she became as much delighted with this fondling as if it had been her real offspring. This incident is no bad solution of that strange circumstance which grave historians as well as the poets assert, of exposed children being sometimes nurtured by female wild beasts that probably had lost their young. For it is not one whit more marvellous that Romulus and Remus, in their infant state, should be nursed by a she-wolf, than that a poor little suck- ing leveret should be fostered and cherished by a bloody grimalkin. viridi fcetatn Mavortis in antro Procubuisse lupam : geminos huic ubera circuin Ludere pendentes pueros, et himbere inatrem Impavid6s ; illam tereti cervice reflexam Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua." (ViRG. ;£n. viii. 630-634.) Or, as Christopher Pitt renders the Eoman poet : — " Here in a verdant cave's embowering shade, The fostering wolf and martial twins were laid ; The indulgent mother, half reclined along, Look'd fondly back, and formed them with her tongue." [Again a boy has taken three little squirrels in their nest, or drey, as it is called in these parts. These small creatures he put under the care of a cat who had lately lost her kittens, and finds that she nurses and stickles them with the same assiduity and affection as if they were her own offspring. So many people went to see the little squirrels suckled by a cat, that the foster-mother became jealous of her charge, and in pain for their safety ; and therefore hid them over the ceiling, where one died. This circumstance shows her affection for these fondlings, and that she supposes the squirrels to be her own young. Thus hens, when they have hatched ducklings, are equally attached to them as if they were their own chickens-.] — OBSERVATIONS ox NATURE. SELBORNE, May 9, 1776. VOL. I. E E 210 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. LETTER LXXVII. TO THE HONOURABLE DA1NES BARRINGTON. LANDS that are subject to frequent inundations are always poor ; and probably the reason may be because the worms are drowned. The most insignificant insects and reptiles are of much more consequence, and have much more influence in the economy of Nature, than the incurious are aware of; and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention ; and from their numbers and fecundity. Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For, to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them ; by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and the fibres of plants ; by drawing straws and stalks of leaves and twigs into it ; and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth called worm-casts, which, being their excrement, is a fine manure for grain and grass. Worms probably provide new soil for hills, and slopes, where the rain washes the earth away; and they affect slopes, probably to avoid being flooded. Gardeners and farmers express their detestation of worms; the former because they render their walks unsightly, and make them much work : and the latte r because, as they think, worms eat their green corn. But these men would find that the earth without worms would soon become cold, hard-bound, and void of fermentation ; and con- sequently sterile : and besides, in favour of worms, it should be hinted that green corn, plants, and flowers are not so much injured by them as by many species of coleoptcra (scarabs) and tipulcc (long-legs) in their larva, or grub-state; and by unnoticed myriads of small shell-less snails, called slugs, which silently LXXVMI.] OF SELBORNE. 211 and imperceptibly make amazing havoc in the field and garden. Farmer Young, of Norton farm, says that this spring (1777) about four acres of his wheat in one field was entirely destroyed by slugs, which swarmed on the blades of corn, and devoured it as it sprang. These hints we think proper to throw out in order to set the inquisitive and discerning to work. A good monography of worms would afford much entertain- ment and information at the same time, and would open a large and new field in natural history. Worms work most in the spring ; but by no means lie torpid in the dead months ; they are out every mild night in the winter, as any person may satisfy himself. They are hermaphrodites, and are, conse- quently, very prolific. SELBORNE, May 20, 1777. LETTEE LXXVIII. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. You cannot but remember that the 26th and 27th of last March were very hot days ; so sultry that everybody complained, and were restless under those sensations to which they had not been reconciled by gradual approaches. This sudden summer-like heat was attended by many summer coincidences ; for on those two days the thermometer rose to sixty-six in the shade ; many species of insects revived and came forth ; some bees swarmed in this neighbourhood ; the old tortoise, near Lewes in Sussex, awakened and came forth out of its dormitory ; and, what is most to my present purpose, many house-swallows appeared, and were very alert in many places, and particularly at Cobham, in Surrey. But as that short warm period was succeeded as well as pre- ceded by harsh severe weather, with frequent frosts and ice, and cutting winds, the insects withdrew, the tortoise returned again 212 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. into the ground, and the swallows were seen no more until the 10th of April, when the rigour of the spring abating, a softer season began to prevail. Again, it appears by my journals for many years past, that house-martins retire, to a bird, about the beginning of October ; so that a person very observant of such matters would conclude that they had taken their last farewell : but then, it may be seen in my diaries also that considerable flocks have discovered themselves again in the first week of November, and often on the fourth day of that month only for oue day ; and that not as if they were in actual migration, but playing about at their leisure and feeding calmly, as if no enterprise of moment at all agitated their spirits. And this was the case in the beginning of this very month ; for, on the 4th of November, more than twenty house-martins, which, in appearance, had all departed about the 7th of October, were seen again, for that one morning only, sporting between my fields and the Hanger, and feasting on insects which swarmed in that sheltered district. The preceding day was wet and blustering, but the 4th was dark and mild, and soft, the wind at south-west, and the ther- mometer at 58J°; a pitch not common at that season of the year. Moreover, it may not be amiss to add in this place, that whenever the thermometer is above 50° the bat comes flitting out in every autumnal and winter month. From all these circumstances laid together, it is obvious that torpid insects, reptiles, and quadrupeds, are awakened from their profoundest slumbers by a little untimely warmth; and therefore that nothing so much promotes this death-like stupor as a defect of heat. And farther, it is reasonable to suppose that two whole species, or at least many individuals of those two species, of British hirundines, do never leave this island at all, but partake of the same benumbed state: for we cannot suppose that, after a month's absence, house-martins can return from southern regions to appear for one morning in November, or that house-swallows should leave the districts of Africa to enjoy in March the transient summer of a couple of days. SELBORXE, Nov. 22, 1777. LXXIX.] OF SELBORNE. 213 LETTER LXXIX. TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. THERE was in this village several years ago a miserable pauper who, from his birth, was afflicted with a leprosy, as far as we are* aware, of a singular kind ; since it affected only the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. This scaly eruption usually broke out twice in the year, at the spring and fall ; and, by peeling away, left the skin so thin and tender that neither his hands nor feet were able to perform their functions ; so that the poor object was half his time on crutches, incapable of employ, and languishing in a tiresome state of indolence and inactivity. His habit was lean, lank, and cadaverous. In this sad plight he dragged on a miserable existence, a burden to himself and his parish, which was obliged to support him till he was relieved by death at more than thirty years of age. The good women, who love to account for every defect in children by the doctrine of longing, said that his mother felt a violent propensity for oysters, which she was unable to gratify ; and that the black rough scurf on his hands and feet were the shells of that fish. I knew his parents, neither of whom were lepers ; his father in particular lived to be far advanced in years. In all ages, the leprosy has made dreadful havoc among mankind. The Israelites seem to have been greatly afflicted with it from the most remote times ; as appears from the peculiar and repeated injunctions given them in the Levitical law.1 Nor was the rancour of this foul disorder much abated in the last period of their commonwealth, as may be seen in many passages of the New Testament. Some centuries ago this horrible distemper prevailed nil Europe over; and our forefathers were by no means exempt, as appears by the large provisions made for objects labouring 1 See Leviticus xiii. and xiv. 211 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. under this calamity. There was a hospital for female lepers in the diocese of Lincoln, a noble one near Durham, three in London and Southwark, and perhaps many more in or near our great towns and cities. Moreover, some crowned heads, and other wealthy and charitable personages, bequeathed large legacies to such poor people as languished under this hopeless infirmity. It must therefore, in these days, be, to a humane and think- ing person, a matter of equal wonder and satisfaction, when he contemplates how nearly this pest is eradicated, and observes that a leper now is a rare sight. He will, moreover, when engaged in such a train of thought, naturally inquire for the reason. This happy change perhaps may have originated and been continued from the much smaller quantity of salted meat and fish now eaten in these kingdoms ; from the use of linen next the skin ; from the plenty of better bread ; and from the profusion of fruits, roots, legumes, and greens, so common now in every family. Three or four centuries ago, before there were any inclosures, sown-grasses, field-turnips, or field-carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and were not killed for winter use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to shift as they could through the dead months ; so that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring. Hence the mar- vellous account of the vast stores of salted flesh found in the larder of the eldest Spencer, viz. six hundred bacons, eighty carcases of beef, and six hundred muttons, in the days of Edward the Second, even so late in the spring as the 3rd of May. It was from magazines like these that the turbulent barons supported in idleness their riotous swarms of retainers ready for any disorder or mischief. But agriculture is now arrived at such a pitch of perfection, that our best and fattest meats are killed in the winter; and no man need eat salted flesh, unless he prefers it. One cause of this distemper might be, no doubt, the quantity of wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty n.t all seasons as well as in Lent ; which our poor now would hardly be persuaded to touch. The use of linen changes, shirts or shifts, in the room of sordid and filthy woollen, long worn next the skin, is a matter mix.] OF SELBORNE. 215 of neatness comparatively modern ; but must prove a great means of preventing cutaneous ails. At this very time woollen .instead of linen prevails among the poorer Welsh, who are subject to foul eruptions. The plenty of good wheaten bread that now is found among all ranks of people in the south, instead of that miserable sort which used in old days to be made of barley or beans, may contribute not a little to the sweetening their blood and cor- recting their juices ; for the inhabitants of mountainous districts, to this day, are still liable to the itch and other cutaneous disorders, from poverty of diet. As to the produce of a garden, every middle-aged person of observation may perceive, within his own memory, both in town and country, how vastly the consumption of vegetables is increased. Green-stalls in cities now support multitudes in a comfortable state, whilst gardeners get fortunes. Every decent labourer has his garden, which is half his support, as well as his delight ; and common farmers provide plenty of beans, peas, and greens, for their hinds to eat with their bacon ; and those few that do not are despised for their sordid parsimony, and looked upon as regardless of the welfare of their dependants. Potatoes have prevailed in this little district, by means of premiums, within these twenty years only ; and are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarce have ventured to taste them in the last reign. Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of cabbage, because they call the month of February sprout-cale ; l but, long after their days, the cultivation of gardens was little attended to. The religious, being men of leisure, and keeping up a constant correspondence with Italy, were the first people among us that had gardens and fruit-trees in any perfection, within the walls of their abbeys, priories, and monasteries, where the lamp of knowledge continued to burn, however dimly. In them men of business were formed for the state : the art of writing was cultivated by the monks ; they were the only 1 March was the stormy month with our Saxon ancestors ; May. Tliro- milchi, the cows being then milked three times a-day ; June, dig and weed month ; September, barley month. — MITFORD. 216 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT proficients in mechanics, gardening, and architecture.1 The barons neglected every pursuit that did not lead to war or tend to the pleasure of the chase. It was not till gentlemen took up the study of horticulture themselves that the knowledge of gardening made such hasty advances. Lord Cobham, Lord Ila, and Mr. Waller of Beacons- field, were some of the first people of rank that promoted the elegant science of ornamenting without despising the superin- tendence of the kitchen quarters and fruit walls. A remark made by the excellent Mr. Eay in his Tour of Europe at once surprises us, and corroborates what has been advanced above ; for we find him observing, so late as his days, that " the Italians use several herbs for sallets, which are not yet or have not been but lately used in England, viz. selleri (celery), which is nothing else but the sweet smallage ; the young shoots whereof, with a little of the head of the root cut off, they eat raw with oil and pepper." And farther he adds, " curled endive blanched is much used beyond seas ; and, for a raw sallet, seemed to excel lettuce itself." Now this journey was undertaken no longer ago than in the year 1663. SELBORNE, Jan. 8, 1778. 1 Dalryinple's " Annals of Scotland." WOODCHATJI E(i