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'V

THE

NATURAL HISTORY

OF

SELBORNE,

^C. t(C.

THE

NATURAL HISTORY

OF

SELBORNE,

BY THE LATE

Rev. GILBERT WHITE, A.M.

FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD.
TO WHICH ARE ADDED,

THE NATURALIST'S CALENDAR,

MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS,
AND POE.AIS.

A NEW EDITION, TFITH ENGRAVINGS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. L

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR C. AND J. RIVINGTON ; J. AND A. ARCH; LONG-
MAN, HURST, REES, OKMK, BROWN AND GREEN; HARDING,
TRIPHOOK AND LEPARD ; BALDWIN, CRADOCK AND JOY;
J. HATCHARD AND SON; S. BAGSTER; G. B. WHITTAKER;
JAMES DUNCAN ; W. MASON; SAUNDERS AND HODGSON ; AND
HURST, ROBINSON AND CO.

1825.

QH

o.

LIBR4^

\S

m? }.

T. C. 11 ANSA II I),

iJ)atfV=noBtfi-voVu ^Dvceo.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The favourable reception with which
the works on Natural History of my
late respected relation, the Rev. Gilbert
White, ofSelborne, have been honoured,
by the persons best qualified to judge
of their merit, has induced me to wish
to present them to the public in a
collected and commodious form, free
from the incumbrance of any extrane-
ous matter. His largest work, entitled
The Natural Hi.stori/ of Selbonie, has
probably been supposed by many to be
formed upon a more local and confined
plan than it really is. In fact, the
greater part of tlie observations are ap-
plicable to all that portion of the island
in which he resided, and were, indeed,
made in various places. Almost the
only matter absolutely local is the ac-
count of the antiquities of the village
of Selborne ; and this seemed to stand
so much apart, that, however well cal-

\ I A i)V i: in isF. M i: NT.

culatcd to oratify tlic lovers of topo-
graphical studies, it was thought that
its entire ouiissiou would be no loss to
the work, considered as a publication
in Natural History. Its place is occu-
])ie(l by the Nafurnlist's Calendar <nid
Miscellaneous Observations, which ap-
peared in a separate volume since the
Author's decease, extracted from his
papers by Dii. Aikin. Thatgentleman
has likewise niadc some farther selec-
tions from the papers, which are now
all in my possession ; and has under-
taken the revision and arrangement of
tlu^ ^\ hole. A very valuable addition
to the Calendar and Observations has
been obtained fiom the kindness of
AViLLiAM Makkmick, Es(p F.L.S.
well known as an accurate observer of
nature ; whose parallel calendar, kept
in tlie county of Sussex, is given upon
the opposite columns.

The Editor Hatters himself, that the
publication in its present form will
prove an acceptable addition to the li-
brary of the naturalist; and will, in

ADV EiniSEMENT. Vll

particular, be useful in inspiring youiig
persons, and those who pass their time
in retirement, with a taste for the very
pleasing branch of knowledge on which
it treats.

The following few biographical re-
cords of the author, it is presumed, will
not be unacceptable to the reader.

Gilbert White was the eldest son
of John White, of Selborne, Esq. and
of Anne the daughter of I'homas Holt,
rector of Slreatham in Surrey. He was
born atSelborneon July 18, J 720; and
received his school-education at Basing-
stoke, under the Rev. Thomas Warton,
vicar of that place, and father of those
two distinguished literary characters,
Dr. Joseph Warton, masterof Winches-
ter school, and Mr. Thomas Warton,
poetry-professor at Oxford. He was
admitted at Oriel College, Oxford, in
December 1739, and took his degree
of bachelor of arts in June 1743. In
]\Iarch 1744 he was elected fellow of
his college. He became master of arts

Mil ADVEKTISKMKNT.

in October 1746, and was admitted one
of the senior proctors of the university
in A])ril 1752. Being of an nnanihi-
tioiis temper, and strongly attached to
the ciiarms of rural scenery, he early
fixed his residence in his native village,
where he spent the greater part of his
life in literary occupations, and espe-
cially in the study of nature. This he
followed with patient assiduity, and a
mind ever open to the lessons of piety
and benevolence which such a study is
so well calculated to atlbrd. Thouoh

O

several occasions offered of settling
upon a college living, he could never
persuade himself to quit the beloved
spot, which was, indeed, a peculiarly
hiip])y situation for an observer. lie
was much esteemed by a select society
of intelligent and w^orthy friends, to
whom he paid occasional visits. Thus
his days passed, tran(piil and serene,
with scarcely any other vicissitudes than
those of" the seasons, till they closed at
a mature age on .Jime26, 1793.

FUcI Si red, I xy

1802. •'• '' •

J

^ 1

^D^-—

5V^^^..%^i

THE

NATURAL HISTORY

07

S E L B O H X E.

LETTER T

TO THOMAS PXN'XAXT, ESQUIRE.

J flE pariiih of Selborse lies in the
extreme eastern coTDer of the county
of Hamp^hire^ bordeiing on the connty
of SmMeXf and not far from the connty of
Surrey ; is about fifty miles south-west
oi L/mdon, in latitude 51, and near mid-
way between the towns (AAli4m and Pe-
ienefield. Being very large and extensive,
it abuts on twelve parishes, two of which
are in Sus*ejr, viz, TroiUm and BogaU,
VOL. J. 2,

2 NATIKAL HISTORY

If you begin from the south and proceed
westward the adjacent parishes are Em-
shot^ Nexcton^ Valence^ Far'iugdnn, Harle-
ley^ Maiiduit, Great Wardlcliam^ Kings-
ley, Hadlcigh, Brams/iof, Trotluii^ Rogate^
Li/ssc, and Grcdtham. The soils of this
district are ahuost as various and diver-
sified 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 pen-
dulous boughs. The down or sheep-
walk, is a pleasing park-like spot, of
about one mile by hedf that space, jutting
out on the verge of the hill-country,
where it begins to break down into the
plains, and commanding a very engaging
view, being an assemblage of hill, dale,

OF SELBORNE. 3

woodlands, heath, and water. The pros-
pect is bounded to the south- east and
east by the vast range of mountains called
The Sussex Dow7is, by Guild-down near
Guilford^ and by the Downs round Dor-
king, and Ryegale in Surrey, to the
north-east, which altogether, with the
country beyond Alton, and Farnham,
fgrm a noble and extensive outline.
- At the foot of this hill, one stage or
step from the uplands, lies the village,
which consists of one single straggling
street, three quarters of a mile in length,
in a sheltered vale, and running parallel
with The Hanp'er. The houses are di-
vided from the hill by a vein of stiffclay
(good wheat-land), yet stand on a rock
of white stone, little in appearance re-
moved from chalk ; but seems so far from
being calcareous, that it endures extreme
heat. Yet that the freestone still pre-
serves somewhat that is analogous to
chalk, is plain from the beeches, which

B 2

4 NATURAL HISTORY

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 incon-
gruous 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 be-
hind, consist of a warm, forward, crum-
bling 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 co-
verts might extend down to the oppo-
site bank.

At each end of the village, which runs
from south-east to north-west, arises a
small rivulet ; that at the north-west end
frequently fails ; but the other is a fine
perennial spring, little influenced by
drought or wet seasons, called Well-

OF SELBOUNE. ,5

head* This breaks out of some high
grounds joining to Nore Hill, a noble
chalk promontory; remarkable for send-
ing forth two streams into two different
seas. The one to the south becomes a
branch of the Arun, running to Arundel,
and so falling into the British channel :
the other to the north. The Selborne
stream makes one branch of the Wet/ ;
and, meeting the Black down stream at
Hedleigh, and the Alton and Farnhaui
stream at Tilford-bridge, swells into a
considerable river, navigable at Godal-
ming ; from w hence it passes to Guildford^
and so into the Thames2it Wei/bridge ; and
thus at the Nore into the German ocean.

* This spring produced, September 14, 1781, after
a severe hot Summer, and a preceding dry Spring
and Winter, nine gallons of water in a minute,
which is five hundred and forty in an hour, and
twelve thousand nine hundred and sixty, or two
hundred and sixteen hogsheads, in twenty-four hours^
or one natural day. At this time many of the
wells failed, and all the ponds in the vales were
dry

0 NATURAI, IIISTOKV

Our wells, at an average, run to about
sixty-three feet, and when sunk to that
depth, seldom fail ; but produce a fine
limpid water soft to the taste, and much
commended by those who drink the pure
element, but which does not lather well
with soap.

To the north-west, north and east of
the village is a range of fair inclosures,
consisting of what is called a while 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 kii\d 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.

• This soil produces good wheat and clover.

OF SELBORNE. 7

As the parish still inclines down to-
wards Wolmer-forcst, at the juncture of
the clays andsand the soil becomes awet,
sandy loam, remarkable fur timber, and
infamous for roads. The oaks of Temple
and Blackmoor stand high in the estima-
tion of purveyors, and have furnished
much naval timber ; while the trees on
the freestone grow large, but are what
v\^orkmen call shakey, and so brittle as
often to fall to pieces in sawing. Be-
yond the sandy loam the soil becomes an
hungry lean sand, till it mingles with the
forest ; and w^ill produce little without
the assistance of lime and turnips.

S NATURAL IIISTOKV

LETTER II.

TO THE SAMi;.

In the court of Noriofi farm house, a
manor farm to the north-west of the vil-
lage, on the white malms, stood within
these twenty years a broad-leaved elm, or
icj/ch hazel, ulmus folio latissimo scabro of
i?«y, which, though it had lost a consi-
derable leading bough in the great storm
in the year 1703, equal to a moderate
tree, yet, when felled, contained eight
loads of timber; and being too bulky
for a carriage, was sawn off at seven feet
above the butt, where it measured near
eight feet in the diameter. This elm I
mention to show to what a bulk planted
elms may attain ; as this tree must cer-
tainly 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

OF SELBORXE. 9

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, sur-
rounded with stone steps, and seats
above them, was the delight of old and
young, and a place of much resort in
Summer evenings ; where the former sat
in grave debate, while the latter frolicked
and danced before them. Long might
it have stood, had not the amazing tem-
pest 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 plant-
ed this tree must certainly have been, as
appears from what is known concerning
the antiquities of the village.

10 NATLI5AL HIS'IORY

On the Blackmoor estate there is a
small wood called LoseVs, of a few acres,
that was lately furnished with a set of
oaks of a peculiar growth and great
value ; they were tall and taj)er like firs,
but standing near together, had very
small heads, only a little brush without
any large limbs. Abont 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 an-
swered the description at sixty feet.
The.'^e trees were sold for twenty poimds
n-])ie<c.

In the (•(•iiliT tif this grove there stood
ati oak, whif li. ihou^^h sjiapely nnd t,ill
on \.\\v wliulc, l)ii!_;((! out into a large
excrescence about the middle of the

OF SELBORNE. 11

stem. On this a pair of ravens had fixed
their residence for such a series of years,
that the oak was distinguished by the
title of The Raven Tree. Many were the
attempts of the neighbouring youths to
get at this eyry : the difficulty whetted
their inclinations, and each was ambi-
tious of surmounting the arduous task.
But when they arrived at the swelling,
it jutted out so in their way, and was so
far beyond their grasp, that the most
daring lads were awed, and acknowledged
the undertaking to be too hazardous.
So the ravens built on, nest upon nest,
in perfect security, till the fatal day ar-
rived in which the wood was to be le-
velled. 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

12 NAT UK A I. 11 IS TO UV

it gave way, the bird was Hung- from her
nest ; and, though her parental affection
deserved a better fate, was whipped
down by the twigs, which brought her
dead to the erround.

LETTEll III.

TO THE SAME

A HE 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 Doicn, and given to me
for the singularity of its a})pearance,
wliich to an incurious eye, seems like a
petrified fish of about four inches long,
the cardo })assing for a head and moutli.
It is in reality a bivalve of the LituKrau

or SELBORNE. IS

Genus of Mytilis and the species of Crista
Gain ; called by Lister, Rastellum ; by
Rumphius, Ostreum plicatum minus ; by
D' Argenville, Auris Porci, s. Crista Galli ;
and by those who make collections cock's
comb. Though I applied to several such
in London, I never could meet with an
entire specimen ; nor could I ever find
in books any engraving from a perfect
one. In the superb museum at Leicester
house, permission was given me to exa-
mine 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
Lndian ocean, where it fixes itself to a
zoophyte, known by the name Gorgonia.
The curious foldings of the suture the
one into the other, the alternate flutings-
or grooves, and the curved form of my
specimen being much easier expressed
by the pencil than by words, 1 have
caused it to be drawn and engraved.

14 NATURAL HISTORY

Cornua Ammonis are very common
about this village. As we were cutting
an inclining path up-T/re Hanger, the la-
bourers 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 Ems/iot,
they abound in the bank in a darkish sort
of marl ; and are usually very small and
soft : but in Clays Fond a little farther
on, at the end of the pit, where the soil
is dug out for manure, 1 have occasion-
ally observed them of large dimensions,
perhaps fourteen or sixteen inches in
diameter. But as these did not consist
of firm stone, but were formed of a kind
of terra lapidosa, or hardened clay, as
soon as they were exposed to the rains
and frost they mouldered away. These
seemed as if they were a very recent
production. In the chalk-pit, at the
north-west end of T/u Hanger, large
nautili are sometimes observed.

In the very thickest strata of our free-

OF SELBOllXr. 15

stone, and at considerable depths, well-
diggers often find large scallops or pec-
tines^ 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 THE SAME.

As in a former letter the freestone of
this place has been only mentioned inci-
dentally, I shall here become more par-
ticular.

This stone is in great request for
hearth-stones, and the beds of ovens r
and in lining of lime-kilns it turns to
good account ; for the workmen use

\G NATURAL IITSTORY

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 in-
juries of weather, and endures thirty or
forty years. When chiselled smooth,
it makes elegant fronts for houses, equal
in colour and grain to the JJaih 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 Porl-
land ; and rooms are floored with it ; but
it proves rather too soft for this pur-
pose. It is a freestone, cutting in all di-
rections ; yet has something of a grain
parallel \silh the horizon, and therefore
should not be surbcdded, but laid in
the same position that it grows in the

* There may probably be also in the chalk itself
that is burnt for lime a proportion of sand ; for few
chalks arc so pure as to have none.

OF SKLJJOIl N'K, 17

quarry.* On the ground abroad tliis fire-
stone will not succeed for pavements, be-
cause, probably, some degree of saltness
prevailing v^ithin it, the rain tears the
slabs to pieces. I Though this stone is too
hard to be acted on by vinegar ; yet both
the white part, and even the blue rag, fer-
ments strongly in mineral acids. Though
the white stone will not bear wet, yet in
every quarry, at intervals, there are thin
strata of blue rag, which resist rain and
frost, and are excellent for pitching of
stables, paths and courts, and for build-
ing of dry walls against banks ; a valu-
able species of fencing, much in use in
this village, and for mending of roads.

* To siirhed stone is to set it edgewise, contrary to

the posture it had in the quarry, says Dr. Plot, Ox-

fordsh. p. 77. But surbedding does not succeed in

our dry walls j neither do we use it so in ovens,

though he says it is best for Teynion stone.

t " Firestone is full of salts, and has no sulphur :
" must be close-grained, and have no interstices. No-
" thing supports fire like salts ; saltstone perishes ex-
'* posed to wet and frost." Plot's Staff, p. 152.
VOL. I. C

18 NATL RAF, Illsl 0I{ V

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 oi 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 halls.

In Wolmer Forest I see but one sort
of stone, called by the workmen sand,
ox forest, stone. This is generally of the
colour of rusty iron, and might probably
be worked as iron ore ; is very hard and
heavy, and of a firm, compjict texture,
and composed of a small roundish crys-
talline 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 pave-
iTient for paths about houses, never be-

OF SELBOUNK. 19

coming slippery in frost or rain ; is ex-
cellent for dry walls, and is sometimes
used in buildings. In many parts of
that waste it lies scattered on the surface
of the ground; but is dug on Weaver s
Down, a vast hill on the eastern verge of
that forest, where the pits are shallow,
and the stratum thin. This stone is im-
perishable.

From a notion of rendering their work
the more elegant, and giving it a finish,
masons chip this stone into small frag-
ments 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 embellish-
ment carries an odd appearance, and
has occasioned strangers sometimes to
ask us pleasantly, ** whether we fastened
*' our walls together with tenpenny
" nails ?"

c 2

i^0 NATUr. Af. HISTORV

L E T T E R V.

TO THE SAME.

Among tlic singularities of this place
the two rocky hollow lanes, the one to
Alton, and the other to the forest, de-
serve our attention. These roads, run-
ning through the malm lands, arc, by
the traffick of ages, and the fretting of
Mater, worn down through the first stra-
tum of our freestone, and partly through
the second ; so that they look more like
water-courses than roads; and are bedded
with naked rag for furlongs together.
In many places they are reduced sixteen
or eighteen feet beneath the level of the
fields ; and after floods, and in frosts,
exhibit very grotesque, and wild appear-
ances, 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

O^ SELBOKNi:. 21

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 horse-
men shudder while they ride along them ;
but delight the naturalist with their va-
rious botany, and particularly with their
cuvious Ji I ices with which they abound.

The manor of Seiborne, was it strictly
looked after, with all its kindly aspects,
and all its sloping coverts, would swarm
with game ; even now, hares, partridges
and pheasants abound ; and in old days
woodcocks were as plentiful. There are
few quails, because they more affect
open tields than inclosures ; after harvest
some few land-rails are seen.

The parish of Seiborne, by taking in so
much of the forest, is a vast district.
Those who tread the bounds are employ-
ed part of three days in the business,
and are cf opinion that the outline, in
all its curves and indentings, does not
comprise less than thirty miles.

22 NATURAJ. IIISTOKV

The village stands in a sheltered spot,
secured bv The Hano-er from the strona^
westerly winds. The air is soft, but
rather moist from tlu? effluvia of so many-
trees ; yet perfectly healthy and free
from a^^ues.

The quantity of rain that falls on it is
very considerable, as may be supposed in
so woody and mountainous a district. As
my experience in measuring the water is
but of short date, I am not qualified to give
the mean quantity.* I only know that

Inch.Huud.
rroiii May 1, ITTf), to the end of the year
there fell - - - -

From Jan. I, 1780, to Jan. 1, 1781

From Jan. 1, 1781, to Jan. 1, 1782

From Jan. 1, 1782, to Jan. 1. 1783

From Jan. 1, 178.'1, to Jan. 1, 1781'

From Jan. 1, 1781, to Jan. 1, 178.>

From Jan. I, 178."», to ,Tan. 1, 1786'

From .Ian. 1, 1786", to .Ian. 1, 1787 - 39 57

* A very intelligent gentleman as.sures me (and lie
sjKak.s from upwards of forty years experience) that
tlie mean rain of any place cannot be asccrtaiucd till

28

37!

27

32

30

71

r>o

2G!

33

71

35

80

31

55

OF SELI30RXE. 23

The village of Seiborne, and large ham-
let 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 industrious, and live com-
fortably in good stone or brick cottages,
which are glazed, and have chambers
above stairs : mud buildings we have
none. Besides the employment from
husbandry, the men work in hop gar-
dens, of which we have many ; and fell
and bark timber. In the spring and sum-
mer the women weed the corn ; and
enjoy a second harvest in September by

a person has measured it for a very long period. " If I
" had only measured the rain," says he, " for the four
" first years, from 1 740 to 1 743, I should have said
" the mean rain at London was I65 inch, for the
"year; if from 1740 to 1750, 18^ inches. The
"mean rain before 1763 was 20| ; from 1763 and
" since, 25| ; from 1770 to 1780, 26. If only 1773,
** 1774 and 1775, had been measured, Lyndon
" mean rain would have been called 32 inches."

24 NATURAL HISTORY

hop-picking. Formerly, in the dead
months they availed themselves greatly
by spinning wool, for making of harra-
gons, a genteel corded stuff, much in
vogue at that time for summer wear ;
and chiefly manufactured at Alton, a
neighbouring town, by some of the peo-
ple called Quakers. The inhabitants
enjoy a good share of health and lon-
gevity ; and the parish swarms with
children.

OF SELBOKNE. 25

LETTER VI.

TO THE SAME.

Should I omit to describe with some
exactness the forest of Wolmer, of which
three fifths perhaps lie in this parish, my
account of Selborne would be very im-
perfect, 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 xoysX 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 Brarnshot, Hedleigh, and
Kingsley. This royalty consists entirely
of sand covered with heath and fern ;

2b NATUlfAL HISTORY

but is somewhat diversified with hills
and dales, without having one standing
tree in the whole extent. In the bot-
toms, where the waters stagnate, are
many bogs, which formerly abounded
with subterraneous trees : though Dr.
Plot says positively,* that " there never
" were any fallen trees hidden in the
** mosses of the southern counties." But
he was mistaken : for I myself have seen
cottages on the verge of this wild dis-
trict, whose timbers consisted of a black
hard wood, looking like oak, which the
owners assured me they procured from
the bogs by probing the soil with spits,
or some such instruments : but the peat
is so much cut out, and the moors have
been so well examined, that none has
been found of late.'l" Besides the oak, 1

• See his Hist, of StaO'ordsliire.

t Old people have assured me, that on a Winter's
morning they have discovered these trees, in the
)x)gs, by the hoar frost, which lay longer over the
sjiace wore tlicy were concealed, than on tlic .sui-

or SELBOR.NE. 27

have also been shown pieces of fossil-
wood of a paler colour, and softer nature,
which the inhabitants called fir : but,

roundinfj morass. Nor does this seem to be a fan-
ciful notion, but consistent with true philosophy.
Dr. Hales saith, " That the warmth of the earth, at
" some depth under ground, has an influence in pro-
" moting a thaw, as well as the change of the wea-
<' ther from a freezing to a thawing state, is mani-
" fest, from this observation, viz. Nov. 29, 1731, a
" little snow having fallen in the night, it was, by
" eleven the next morning, mostly melted away on
" the surface of the earth, except in several places in
" Bushy-park, where there were drains dug and
" covered with earth, on which the snow continued
*' to lie, whether those drains were full of water or
" dry ; as also where elm-pipes lay under ground : a
" plain proof this, that those drains Intercepted the
" warmth of the earth from ascending from greater
" depths below them ; for the snow lay where the
" drain had more than four feet depth of earth over
" it. It continued also to lie on thatch, tiles, arid the
" tops of walls." See Hales's Hsemastatics, p. 360.
Quere, Might not such observations be reduced to
domestic use, by promoting the discovery of old ob-
literated drains and wells about houses; and in Ro-
man stations and camps lead to the finding of pave-
ments, baths and graves, and other hidden relics of
curious antiquity ?

^8 N ATI' UAL II I STORY

upon a nice examination, and trial by
fire, I could discover nothing resinous in
them ; and therefore rather suppose that
they were parts of a willow or alder, or
some such aquatic tree.

This lonely domain is a very agreeable
haunt for many sorts of wild fowls,
which not only frequent it in the winter,
but breed there in the summer ; such as
lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, as I
have discovered within these few years,
teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred
in good seasons on the verge of this
forest, into which they love to make
excursions : and in particular, in the dry
Summer of 1740 and 1741, and some
years after, they swarmed to such a
degree, that parties of unreasonable
sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes
thirty brace in a day.

But there was a nobler species of game
in this forest, now extinct, which I have
heard old people say abounded much
before shooting flying became so com-
mon, and that was the healh-cock, or black

OF SELBORNE. 2'9

game. When I was a little boy I recol-
lect one coming now and then to my
father's table. The last pack remem-
bered was killed about thirty-five years
ago : and within these ten years one so-
litary grei/ hen was sprung by some
beao:les in beatino- 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 hen.

Nor does the loss of our black game
prove the only gap in the Fauna Selbov'
7iiensis ; for another beautiful link in the
chain of beings is wanting, 1 mean the
red deer, which toward the beginning of
this century amounted to about five hun-
dred head, and made a stately appearance.
There is an old keeper, now alive, named
Adams, whose great grandfather (men-
tioned in a perambulation taken in 1035^)
grandfather, father, and self, enjoyed the
head keepership of Wolmer forest in suc-
cession for more than an hundred years.
This person assures me, that his father

30 XATT^RAT, TTTSTOnV

has often told him that Queen Amie, 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 Queens-ban A-, saw with
great complacency and satisfaction the
whole herd of red deer brought by the
kee])ers along the vale before her, con-
sisting then of about five hundred head.
A sight this worthy the attention of the
greatest sovereign ! But he farther adds
that, by means of the WaUliam blacks, or,
to use his own expression, as soon as
they began blacking, they were reduced
to about fifty head, and so continued
decreasing till the time of the late Duke
of Cumberland. It is now more than
thirty years ago that his highness sent
down an huntsman, and six yeomen-
prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with
gold, attended by the stag-hounds ; or-

OF SELBORX E. 31

dering them to take every deer in this
forest alive, and to convey them in carts
to Windsor. In the course of the sum-
mer they caught every stag, some of which
showed extraordinary diversion ; but in
the following winter, when the hinds were
also carried off, such fine chases were
exhibited as served the country people for
matter of talk and wonder for years after-
wards. I sawmyself one of the yeomen-
prickers single out a stag from the herd,
and must confess that it was the most cu-
rious feat of activity I ever beheld, supe-
rior to any thing in Mr. Astleys riding-
school. The exertions made by the horse
and deer much exceeded all my expecta-
tions ; though the former greatly excelled
the latter in speed. When the devoted
deer was separated from his companions,
they gave him, by their watches, law, as
they called it, for twenty minutes; when,
sounding their horns, the stop-dogs were
permitted to pursue, and a most gallant
scene ensued.

S'2 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER VII.

TO TIIJ: same.

1 HOUGH large herds of deer do much
harm to the neighbourhood, yet the injury
to the morals of the people is of more
moment than the loss of their crops. The
temptation is irresistible ; for most men
are sportsmen by constitution : and there
is such an inherent spirit for hunting in
human nature, as scarce any inhibitions
can restrain. Hence, towards the begin-
ning of this century, all this country was
wild about deer-stcalin£f. Unless he was
a hunter, as they affected to call them-
selves, no young person was allowed to
be possessed of manhood or gallantry.
The Waltlia)ti blades at length commit-
ted such enormities, that government
was forced to interfere with that severe
and sanguinary act called the black act*
which now comprehends more felo-

• Statute 9, Ceo. I. c. 22.

OF SELBORNK. 35

nies than any law that ever was framed
before. And, therefore, a late 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, over their ale, they used to recount
the exploits of their youth ; such as watch-
ing the pregnant hind to her lair, and,
when the calf was dropped, paring its feet
with a penknife to the quick to prevent
its escape, till it was large and fat enough
to be killed ; the shooting at one of their
neighbours with a bullet in a turnip -field
by moonshine, mistaking him for a deer ;
and the losing a dog in the following ex-
traordinary manner: — Some fellows, sus-
pecting that a calf new-fallen was depo-
sited in a certain spot of thick fern, went
with a lurcher, to surprise it ; when the

* This chase remains un-stocT^ed to this day ; the
- -bishop was Dr. Hoadletf.

VOL, I. D

34 NATURAL HISTORY

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 brjoke 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 burrows^
when they came to take away the deer,
they permitted the country-people to
destroy them all.

Such forests and wastes, when their al-
lurements to irregularities are removed,
are of considerable service to neighbour-
hoods that verge upon them, by furnish-
ing 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 oiG real-
ham has an admitted claim, I see (by an
old record taken from the Tower of Lon-

OF SELBORNE. 35

don), ofturning all live stock on the forest,
at proper seasons, bidentibus exceptis.*
The reason, I presume, why sheept are
excluded is, because, being 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, be-
*' tween Candlemasdiud Midsummer, any
" grig, ling, heath and furze, goss or fern,
'* is punishable with whipping and con-
" finement 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 en-
sued. The plea for these burnings is, that,

* For this privilege the owner of that estate used
to pay to the king annually seven bushels of oats.

+ In The Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer
has been kept up till lately, no sheep are admitted
to this dav. D 2

36 NATURAL 11 IS TORT

when the old coat of heath, &c. is con-
sumed, young will sprout up, and afford
much tender brouze for cattle; but, where
there is large oldfurze, the fire, following
the roots, consumes the very ground ; so
that for hundreds of acres nothing is to
be seen but smother and desolation, the
whole circuit round looking like the cin-
ders of a volcano ; and the soil being
quite exhausted, no traces of vegetation
are to be found for years. These confla-
grations, as they take place usually with a
north-east or east wind, much annoy this
villag-e 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 IFirtc/ie.y/^r, 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 ap-
prehensions for the next village, and so
on to tlie end of his journey.

OF SELBORNE. 3?

On two of the most conspicuous emi-
nences 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 re-
new annually on the feast of St. Barna-
bas, taking the old materials for a per-
quisite. 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, fur-
nish 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 THE SAME.

O N 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

38 NATURAL HISTORY

Bins or Beans pond, which is worthy
the attention of a naturalist or a sports-
man. For, being crowded at the upper
end with willows, and with the carex
cespitosa* it affords such a safeand pleas-
ing shelter to wild ducks, teals, snipes,
&c. that they breed there. In the winter
this covert is also frequented by foxes,
and sometimes by pheasants ; and the
bogs produce many curious plants. [For
which consult letter XLII. to Mr. Bar-
rington.^

By a perambulatio?i 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 circumscri-
bed. For, to say nothing of the farther

* I mc;in that sort wliich, rising into tall hassocks,
is called by the foresters lorrets ; a corruption, I sup-
pose, of turrets.

Note. In the hcginning of the Summer 1787, the
royal forests of fl'olwer and Iloil were measurcti by
persons seat down by government.

or SELBORNE. 39

side, with which I am not so well ac-
quainted, the bounds on this side, in old
times, came into Bimwood; and extended
to the ditch of Ward-le-ham Parky in
which stands the curious mount called
King Johns Hill, and Lodge Hill; and to
the verge ofHartlei/ Mauduit, called Mau-
duit-hatch ; comprehending also Short-
heath, Oakhanger, Q.nd 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
peramhulation, a rough estimate of the
value of the timbers, which were consi-
derable, growing at that time in the dis-
trict of TAe Holt; and enumerates the
officers, superior and inferior, of those
joint forests, for the time being, and their
ostensible fees and perquisites. In those
days, as at present, there were hardly
any trees in Wolmer forest.

Within the present limits of the forest

40 NATURAL HISTORY

are three considerable lakes, Hogmer,
Cranmcr, 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 dur-
ing the hotter hours ; where, being more
exempt from flies, and inhaling the cool-
ness 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 feedino:. Durinir
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 contin-
gency. Thus Nature, who is a great

OF SELBORNE. 41

economist, converts the recreation of
one animal to the support of another !
Tho7nso7i, who was a nice observer of
natural occurrences, did not let this
pleasing circumstance escape him. He
says, in his Summery

" A various group the herds and flocks compose ;

" ■ on the grassy bank

" Some ruminating lie ; while others stand,
" Half in the flood, and often bending, sip
" The circling surface."

Wolmer-pond, so called, I suppose, for
eminence sake, is a vast lake for this part
of the world, containing, in its whole
circumference, 2,646 yards, or very near
a mile and a half. The length of the
north-west and opposite side is about
7C4 yards, and the breadth of the south-
west end about 456 yards. This mea-
surement, 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.

42 NATURAL HISTORY

which we did not take into the reckon-
ing.

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 widgeons, 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 clear-
ness of its water, nor the resort of various
and curious fowls, nor its picturesque
grou])s of cattle, can render this meer so
remarkable as the great quantity of
coins that were found in its bed about
forty years ago.

OF SELBORNE. 43

LETTER IX.

TO THE SAME.

By way of supplement, I shall trouble
you once more on this subject, to inform
you that Wolmer, with her sister forest
Ayles Holt, alias Alice Holt* as it is
called in old records, is held by grant
from the crown for a term of years.

The grantees that the author remem-
bers 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 Pembroke ; Henry Bilson

* " In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar.
36. Ed. 3, it is called AishoU."

In the same, " Tit. Wolmer and AishoU Hantisc
" Dominus Rex habet unam capellam in haia sua de
" Kingesle." '' Haia, sepes, sepimcntuw, parous : a
" Gall, haie and haye." Spelman's Glossary.

44 NATURAL HISTORY

Legge and lady ; and now Lord Staicel,
their son.

The lady of General Hoice lived to an
advanced age, long surviving her hus-
band ; and, at her death, left behind her
many curious pieces of mechanism of her
father's constructing, who was a distin-
guished 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 FarnJiam, in the county of Surret/.

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 Wolmer is nothing
but a hungry, sandy, barren waste.

The former, being all in the parish of
Binsled, is about two miles in extent from
north to south, and near as much from

* This prince was the inventor of mezzoli/ilo.

OF SELBORNE. 45

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
Kingsley, Frinsham, Farnham, and Bent-
ley ; 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 an^^
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 Tlie Holt.

At present the deer of The Holt are
much thinned and reduced by the night-
hunters, Avho perpetually harass them in
spite of the efforts of numerous keepers,
and the severe penalties that have been
put in force against them as often as
they have been detected, and rendered
liable to the lash of the law. Neither
fines nor imprisonments can deter them :

46 ' NATIRAL HISTORY

SO impossible is it to extinguish the
spirit of sporting, which seems to be in-
herent in human nature.

General //owe 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 de-
stroyed them.

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 Stan el. He lays claim also
to the lop and top : but the poor of the
parishes of BifistedandFrhisha??!, Bentley
and Kingslei/y assert that it belongs to
them ; and, assembling in a riotous man-
ner, have actually taken it all away. One
man, who keejisa 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.

OF SELBORNE. 47

were winter-cut ^ viz. in February and
March, before the bark would run. In
old times The Holt was estimated to be
eighteen miles, computed measure, from
water-carriage, viz. from the town of
Chertsey, on the Thames ; but now it is
not half that distance, since the Wey
is made navigable up to the town of
Godalming in the county of Surrey.

LETTER X.

TO THE SAME.

August 4, 1767.

It has been my misfortune never to have
had any neighbours whose studies have
led them towards the pursuit of natural
knowledge ; so that, for want of a com-
panion 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.

48 NATURAT, IITSTORY

As to s7val/ows fJiirundines rusticoi)
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 battle-
ments of a church tower early in the
Spring, found two or three sicifis (hi-
rundincs apodcs) among the rubbish,
Avhich were, at first appearance, dead ;
but, on being carried toward the fire, re-
vived. 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 in-
formed me that, while he was a schoolboy
at Briirlilluhufiloney in Sussex, a great
fragment of the chalk-cliff fell down one
stormy winter on the beach ; and that
many people found swallows among the
rubbish : but, on my questioning him

or SELBORNE. 49

whether he saw any of those birds him-
self; to my no small disappointment, he
answered me in the negative ; but that
others assured him they did.

Young broods of 5?f;rt//oM;^ began to ap-
pear this year on July the eleventh, and
young martins (hirundines urhiccs) were
then fledged in their nests. Both species
will breed again once. For 1 see by my
fauna of last year, that young broods came
forth so late as September the eighteenth.
Are not these late hatchings more in
favour of hiding than migration ? Nay,
some young martins remained in their
nests last year so late as September the
twenty-ninth ; and yet they totally disap-
peared 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 oi August invariably !
while the latter stay often till the midd le of
October ; and once I saw numbers of house-
martins on the seventh oi November. The
martins and red-wingfieldfares were flying

VOL. I. E

50 NATURAL HISTORY

in sight together ; an uncommon assem-
blage of summer and winter birds !

A little yellow bird (it is either a species
of the alauda tr'ivialu, or rather perhaps
of the viotacillajrochilus) still continues
to make a sibilous shivering noise in the
tops of tall woods. The stoparola of Ray
(for which we we have as yet no name
in these parts) is called, in your Zoology,
the fly-catcher. There is one circum-
stance characteristic of this bird, which
seems to have escaped observation, and
that is, it takes its stand on the top of
some stake or post, from whence it
springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in
the air, and hardly ever touching the
ground, but returning still to the same
stand for many times together.

I perceive there are more than one
species of the molacilla trochilus : Mr.
Dcr/tam supposes, in Bays Fhilos. Let-
ters, that he has discovered three. In
these there is again an instance of some
very common birds that have as yet no
English name.

OF SELBORNE. 51

Mr. Stilling fleetva^ke^ a question whe-
ther the black-cap (motacilla atricapilla)
be a bird of passage or not ; I think
there is no doubt of it : for, in April, in
the first fine weather, they come troop-
ing, all at once, into these parts, but are
never seen in the Winter. They are
delicate songsters.

Numbers of snipes breed every Sum-
mer in some moory ground on the verge
of this parish. It is very amusing to
see the cock bird on wing at that time,
and to hear his piping and humming
notes.

I have had no opportunity yet of pro-
curing any of those mice which I men-
tioned to you in town. The person that
brought me the last says they are plenty
in harvest, at which time I will take care
to get more ; and will endeavour to put
the matter out of doubt, whether it be
a non-descript species or not.

I suspect much there may be two spe-
cies of water-rats. i?«y says, and Zzw-
ncBus after him, that the water-rat is web-

e2

52 NATURAL HISTORY

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 ampliibias (See Syst.
Nat.) which he says, " natat infossis Sf
urinatur.'' 1 should be glad to procure
one " plantis palmatis." Linnceus seems
to be in a puzzle about his mus amphiblus,
and to doubt whether it differs from his
mus terrestris ; which, if it be, as he al-
lows, the " mus agrcstis capite grandi
hrachi/uros" of Rai/, is widely different
from the water-rat, both in size, make,
and manner of life.

As to the faico, which I mentioned in
town, I shall take the liberty to send it
down to you into Wales ; presuming on
your candour, that you will excuse me
if it should appear as familiar to you as
it is strange to me. Though mutilated
** qucilem dices . . . antehac fuisse, tales
" cum sint relirjuice .'"

It haunted a marshy piece of ground
in quest of wild-ducks and snipes ; but>

OF SELBORNE. 53

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 1 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 1 live in is a very abrupt,
uneven country, full of hills and woods,
and therefore full of birds.

LETTER XL

TO THE SAME.

Selborke, September 9, 1767-

It will not be without impatience that I
shall wait for your thoughts with regard
to the/rt/co ; 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-

54 NATURAL IlISTOKY

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 o^ood observation on the
colour of the pupils and the irides.

The most unusual birds 1 ever observed
in these parts were a pair of hoopoes
(upupaj, which came several years ago
in the summer, and frequented an orna-
mented piece of ground, Avhich joins to
my garden, for some weeks. They used
to march about in a stately manner, feed-
ing in the walks, many times in the day •
and seemed disposed to breed in my
outlet ; but were frighted and perse-
cuted by idle boys, who would never let
them be at rest.

Three gross-beaks (loxia coccotlirauslesj
appeared some years ago in my fields, in
the Winter ; one of which I shot ; since
that, now and then one is occasionally
seen in the same dead season.

A cross-hill flo.via curvirostraj was
killed last year in this neighbourhood.

OF SELBORNE. 55

Our streams, which are small, and rise
only at the end of the village, yield no-
thing but the bulVs head or miller s thumb
fgohius Jluviatilis capitatusj, the trout
( truttajluviatilis), the eel fanguilla), the
lampern ( lampcetra parva et Jluviatilis )y
and the stickle-back ( pisciculus aculeatus).

We are twenty miles from the sea, and
almost as many from a great river, and
therefore see but little of sea-birds. As to
wild fowls, we have a few teams of ducks
bred in the moors where the snipes breed ;
and multitudes oiwido;eonsdi\\dt.teals\\\\\ci.xdi.
weather frequent our lakes in the forest.

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 the brown owl will eat indis-
criminately all that is brought ; snails,
rats, kittens, puppies, magpies, and any
kind of carrion or offal.

56 NATURAL HISTORY

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.

Redstarts, Jly- catchers, rchite -throats,
and reguli noji cristati, still appear ; but
I have seen no black-caps 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 auribus.

I was much entertained last Summer
with a tame bat, which would take flies
out of a person's hand. If you gave it
any thing to eat, it brought its wings
round before the mouth, hovering and
hiding its head in the manner of birds of
prey when they feed. The adroitness it
showed in shearing off" the wings of the
flies, which were always rejected, was
worthy of observation, and pleased me

OF SELBORNE. 57

much. Insects seemed to be most ac-
ceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh
when offered : so that the notion, that bats
go down chimnies and gnaw men's bacon,
seems no improbable story. While I
amused myself with this wonderful quad-
ruped, 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 dispatch
than I was aware of; but in a most ridi-
culous 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 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 Sum-
mer's evening, I think I saw myriads of
bats between the two places : the air
swarmed with them all along the Thames,
so that hundreds were in sight at a time,

I am,&c.

08 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER XII.

TO THE SAME.

SIR; November l, 1767.

It gave me no small satisfaction to hear
that the falco* turned out an imc-ommon
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.
1 have procured some of the mice men-
tioned in my former letters, a young one
and a female with young, both of which 1
have preserved in brandy. From the co-
lour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I
make no doubt but that the species is non-
descript. They are much smaller, and more
slender, than the niua domesticus medius of
H(i;/ ; and have more of the squirrel or
dormouse colour : their belly is white ; a

* This lunvk proved to be the J'alco pcrcgriiiKS ; a
varictv.

OF SELBORNE. 5.9

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
the corn above the ground, and sometimes
in thistles. They breed as many as eight
at a litter, in a little round nest composed
of the blades of grass or wheat.

One of these nests I procured this Au-
tumn, most artificially platted, and com-
posed of the blades of wheat ; perfectly
round, and about the size of a cricket-ball ;
with the aperture so ingeniously 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 con-
tained eight little mice that were naked and
blind. As this nest was perfectly full, how
could the dam come at her litter respec-
tively 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

60 NATURAL HISTORY

be contained herself in the ball with her
young, which moreover would be daily in-
creasing in bulk. This w^onderful procreant
cradle, an elegant instance of the efforts of
instinct, was found- in a wheat-field sus-
pended 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
believed would puzzle me. I called to see
it this summer, not knowing what to ex-
pect : but, the moment I took it in hand, I
pronounced it the male garrulus hohemicus,
or German silk-tail, from the five peculiar
crimson tags or points which it carries at
the ends of five of the short remiges. It
cannot, I suppose, with any propriety, be
called an English bird : and yet I see by
Rdjf'a Philosoph. Letters, that great flocks
of them, feeding on haws, appeared in this
kingdom in the Winter of 1G85.

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 wea-

OF SELBOllXE. 6l

ther, late in the Spring, which cut off all
the produce of the more tender and curi-
ous 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 em-
ployed some people to procure me a speci-
men, but without success. SeeLetterVIII.

Query — Might not Canary birds be natu-
ralized 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 Sunhury, 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

(V2 NATURAL HISTORY

me most was, that, from the time they be-
gan to congregate, forsaking the chimnies
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 coun-
tenance 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 Septejyiber,
as he would of his poultry going to roost a
little before sunset.

An observing gentleman in Zow^on writes
me word, that he saw an 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 J, 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 SELBORNE. 63

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 sus-
pect about them. I watched them nar-
rowly 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 inquisi-
tive : and, as to their hiding, no man pre-
tends to have found any of them in a tor-
pid state in the 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 ^/nca /

* See Adamxon' s Voyage to Senegal.

64 NATURA[. HISTORY

LETTER XIII.

TO TlIE SAME.

SIR; Selborne, Jan. 22, 1768.

As in one of your former letters you ex-
pressed the more satisfaction from my cor-
respondence on account of my living in the
most southerly county ; so now I may re-
turn 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 Chrislmas vast flocks of chaffinches
have appeared in the fields ; mai^ more, I
used to think, than could be hatched in any
one neighbourhood. 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 all mostly females ;

OF SELBORNE. 65

at least fifty to one. This extraordinary-
occurrence brought to my mind the remark
oi LinncBus ; that " before Winter all their
** hen chaffinches migrate through Holland
** into I tall/.'' Now 1 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 intel-
ligence, one might be able to judge whe-
ther 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 ob-
serve, when the Spring advances, assemble
on some tree in the 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 the
swallows and the fieldfares do congregate
with a gentle twittering before they make
their respective departure.

VOL. I. F

66 NATURAL HISTORY

You may depend on it that the bunting,
emheriza miliaria, does not leave this county
in the Winter. In Januarij 1767 I saw se-
veral dozen of them, in the midst of a se-
vere frost, among the bushes on the downs
near Atidover: in our woodland 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. Stilling fleet, in his Tracts, says that,
** if the wheatear (csnanthc) does not quit
" Englandy 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
quantities 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 neversaw (and
I am well acquainted with those parts)

OF SELBORNE. 6'7

above two or three at a time : for they are
never gregarious. They may perhaps mi-
grate in general ; and, for that purpose,
draw towards the coast ofSusseT in Autumn :
but that they do not all withdraw I am
sure; because I see a few stragglers in many
counties, at all times of the year, especially
about warrens and stone quarries.

I have no acquaintance, at present, among
the gentlemen of the navy : but have writ-
ten to a friend, who was a sea-chaplain in
the late war, desiring him to look into his
minutes, with 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 Anda-
lusia are so mild, that, in all likelihood,
the soft-billed birds that leave us at that

F 2

68 NATURAL HISTORY

season may find insects sufficient to sup-
port them there.

Some young man, possessed of fortune,
health, and leisure, should make an au-
tumnal voyage into that kingdom ; and
should spend a year there, investigating the
natural history of that vast country. Mr.
Willughbi/* 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 merulce torqiiatcB,

As to the small mice, I have farther 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:
* See Rate's Travels, p. 466.

OF SELBOllNE. 69

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 as-
sembled near an hundred, most of which
were taken ; and some I saw. I 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 medius domesticiis
weighs, I find, one ounce lumping weight,
which is more than six times as much as
the mouse above ; and measures from nose
to rump four inches and a quarter, and the
same in its tail. We have had a very se-
vere frost and deep snow this month. My
thermometer was one day fourteen degrees
and a half below the freezing point, within
doors. The tender evergreens were injured
pretty much. It was very providential that
the air was still, and the ground well

70 NATURAL HISTORY

covered with snow, else vegetation in
general must have suifered prodigiously.
There is reason to believe that some days
were more severe than any since the year
1739-40.

1 am, &c. &c.

LETTER XIV.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, March 12, 1768.

If some curious gentleman would procure
the head of a fallow deer, and have it dis-
sected, he would find it furnished with two
spiracula, or breathing-places, besides the
nostrils ; probably analogous to the puncla
lachrt/malia 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 inconveniency,

OF SELBORNE. 71

they can open two vents, one at the inner
corner of each eye, having a communica-
tion 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.* Mr. Ray observed
that, at Malta, the owners slit up the nos-
trils of such asses as were hard worked : for
they, being naturally straight or small, did

* In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent me
the following curious and pertinent reply. " I was
" much surprised to find in the antelope something ana-
" logons 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."

T2 NATTKAL lllSTOHV

not admit airsufficient to serve them when
they travelled, or laboured in that hot
climate. And we know that grooms, and
gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils
necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and
running horses.

Oppian, the Greek poet, by the follow-
ing line, seems to have had some notion
that stags have four spiracula :

" TtTfoiSv(ji.oi pni^y zjKTvfis vjtoivo'i oixvXoi"
" Quaclrifidoe nares, quaclrupliccs ad respirationeni
" canales."

Opp. Cyn. Lib. ii. 1. 181.

Writers copying from one another, make
Aristotle say that goats breathe at their ears ;
whereas he asserts just the contrary : —

" Tuq xiyxq xurx rtx uru.'' " AlcnidOfl does

** not advance what is true, when he avers
** that goats breathe through their ears."
History of animals. Book 1. chap. xi.

OF SELBORNE. 73

LETTER XV.

TO THE SAME

DEAR SIR; Selborne, March 30, 1768.

Some intelligent country people have a
notion that we have, in these parts, a species
of the genus musteliniim, besides the weasel,
stoat, ferret, and polecat ; a little reddish
beast, not much bigger than a field mouse,
but much longer, which they call a ca7ie.
This piece of intelligence can be little de-
pended on; but farther 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 preserved such a
curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds
myself nailed against the end of a barn^

74 NATURAL HISTORY

and was surprised to find that their bills,
legs, feet, and claws were milk-white.

A shepherd saw, as he thought, some
white larks on a down above my house this
Winter : were not these the emheriza 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.
In about a year it began to look dingy ;
and, blackening every succeeding year, it
became coal-black at the end of four. Its
chieffood was hempseed. Such influence
has food on the colour of animals ! The
pied and mottled colours of domesticated
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 dothe same, we found
it was the thrush kind that searched it out.

OF SELBORNE. 75

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
par us ; and was too long and too big for
the gloden-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, chara-
drius oedicnemus, should be mentioned by
the writers as a rare bird ; it abounds in all
the campaign parts oi Hampshire 2ind.Sussex,
and breeds, I think, all the Summer, having
young ones, I know, very late in the Au-
tumn. Already they begin clamouring in

16 NATURAL HISTORY

the evening. They cannot, I think, with
any propriety, be called as they are by Mr.
Hai/, " 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. LinncEus perhaps would call
the species mus niiniuius.

LETTER XVI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selbornk, AprU 18, 1768.

J HE history of the stone curlew charadrius
oedicnemus, is as follows. It lays its eggs,
usually two, never more than three, on the
bare ground, without any nest, in the
held ; so that the countryman, in stirring

OF SELBORNE. 77

his fallows, often destroys them. The
young run immediately from the egg like
partridges, &c. and are withdrawn to some
flinty field by the dam, where they sculk
among the stones, which are their best se-
curity ; for their feathers are so exactly of
the colour of our grey spotted flints, that
the most exact observer, unless he catches
the eye of the young bird, 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 be-
fore 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 dif-

78 NATURAL HISTORY

fer 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 quar-
ters 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 that is heard,
the wryneck sometimes excepted) begins
his two notes in the middle of March, and
continues them through the Spring and
Summer till the end of August, as appears
by my journals. The legs of the larger of
these two are flesh-coloured ; of the less,
black.

The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous
note in my fields last Saturday. Nothing
can be more amusing than the whisper of
this little bird, which seems to be close by,
though at an hundred yards distance ; and,
when close at your ear, is scarce any louder
than when a great way off. Had I not
been a little acquainted with insects, and

OF SELBORNE. 79

known that the grasshopper kind is not yet
hatched, I should have hardly believed but
that it had been a lociista whispering in the
bushes. The country people laugh when
you tell them that it is the note of a bird.
It is a most artful creature, sculking in the
thickest part of a bush ; and will sing at a
yard distance, provided it be concealed. I
was obliged to get a person to go on the
other side of the hedge where it haunted ;
and then it would run, creeping like a
mouse before us for an hundred yards to-
gether, through the bottom of the thorns ;
yet it would not come into fair sight : but
in a morning early, and when undisturbed,
it sings on the top of a twig, gaping and
shivering with its wings. Mr. Ray himself
had no knowledge of this bird, but received
his account from Mr. Johnson, who appa-
rently confounds it with the reguli nan
crista ti, from which it is very distinct. See
Rays Philos. LetterSy p. 108.

The fly-catcher fstoparolaj has not yet
appeared : it usually breeds in my vine.
The redstart begins to sing : its note is

80

NATURAL niSTORV

short and imperfect, but is continued till
about the middle oi June. The unlloic-iorens
(the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a
garden, destroying the pease, cherries,
currants, &c. ; and are so tame that a gun
will not scare them.

A List of the Summer Birds of Passage discovered in
this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the Order in

which they appear :

Linnffii Nomina.
Motacilla trochilus :

Smallest willow-wren,

Wrynccl<,

House-swallow,

Martin,

Sand-martin,

Cuckoo,

Nightingale,

Blackcap,

WTiitethroat,

Middle wiUow-wren,

Swift,

Stone curlew ?

Turtle-dove ?

Grasshopper-lark,

Landrail,

Largest willow-wren,

Redstart,

Goatsucker, or fern-owl,

Fly-catcher,

Ji/nx forquilfa :
Hirundo rustica :
Hiruudo urhica :
Hirundo riparia :
Cuculus canorus :
Motacilla hiscinia :
Motacilla atricapiUa :
Motacilla sylvia :
Motacilla tr-ochilus :
Hirundo apus :
Charadrius oedicnemus ?
Turtur aldrovandi ?
Alauda trivialis :
Rallus crex :
Motacilla trochilus :
Motacilla phccnicurus :
Caprimulgus europo'us :
Muscicapa grisola.

OF SELBORNK. 81

My countrymen talk much of a bird that
makes a clatter with its bill against a dead
bough, or some old pales, calling it ajar-
bird. I procured one to be shot in the very
fact ; it proved to be the sitta europcea (the
nuthatch J. Mr. Ray says that the less spot-
ted woodpecker does the same. This noise
may be heard a furlong or more.

Now is the only time to ascertain the
short-winged Summer birds ; for, when the
leaf is out, there is no making any remarks
on such a restless tribe ; and^ when once
the young begin to appear, it is all confu-
sion : there is no distinction of genus,
species, or sex.

In breeding- time snipes play over the
moors, piping and humming : they always
hum as they are descending. Is not their
hum ventriloquous like that of the turkey?
Some suspect it is made by their wings.

This morning I saw the golden-crowned
wren, whose crown glitters like burnished
gold. It often hangs like a titmouse, with
its back downwards.

Your's, &c. &c.

VOL. I. G

82 NATURAL HISTOHY

LETTER XVII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selbornk, June 18, I768.

On \Vednesdat/]iist arrived your agreeable
letter of June the 10th. It gives me great
satisfaction to find that you pursue these
studies still with such vigour, and are in
such forwardness with regard to reptiles
and fishes.

The reptiles, few as they are, I am not
acquainted with, so well as I could wish,
with regard to their natural history. There
is a degree of dubiousness and obscurity
attending the propagation of this class of
animals, something analogous to that of the
cryptogamia in the sexual system of plants :
and the case is the same with regard to
some of the fishes ; as the eel, &c.

The method in which toads procreate
and bring forth seems to be very much in
the dark. Some authors say that they are

OF SELBORNE. 83

viviparous: and yet 7^<^/j/ classes them among
his oviparous animals ; and is silent with
reo;ard to the manner of their bringing
forth. Perhaps they may be iau (xiv cJotoxoi,
i]^u) <J£ ^woT&xot, as is known to be the case
with the viper.

The copulation of frogs (or at least the
appearance of it; for Swammerdam proves
that the male has no penis intransj is noto-
rious to every body : because we see them
sticking 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 mat-
ter with regard to the venom of toads has
not been yet 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 un-

G 2

84 y A 1' L' HAL HIS T O R V

doubted autliority, that some ladies (ladies
you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy
to a toad, which they nourished Summer
after Summer, for many years, till he grew
to a monstrous size, with the maggots which
turn to flesh flics. The reptile used to come
forth every evening from an hole under the
garden-steps ; and was taken up, after sup-
per, on the table to be fed. But at last a
tame raven, kenning him as he put forth
his head, gave him such a severe stroke
with his horny beak as put out one eye.
After this accident the creature languished
for some time and died.

I need not remind a gentleman of your
extensive reading of the excellent account
there is from Mr. IJcrluim, in /^aj/"s Wisdom
of God in the Creation (p. 365), concern-
ing the migration of frogs from their breed-
ing ponds. In this account he at once sub-
verts 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

OF SELBOUNE. 85

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 my-
riads of those emigrants, no larger than
my little finger nail. Swammerdam gives a
most accurate account of the method and
situation in which the male impregnates
the spawn of the female. How wonderful
is the economy of Providence with regard
to the limbs of so vile a reptile ! While it
is an aquatic it has a fish-like tail, and no
legs : as soon as the legs sprout, the tail
drops off as useless, and the animal betakes
itself to the land !

Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when
he advances that the rana arborea is an
English reptile ; it abounds in Germany
and Switzerland.

It is to be remembered that the salaman-
dra aquatica of Ray (the v/ater-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
aquatica was hatched, lived, and died, in
the water. But John Ellis, Esq. F.R.S. (the

86 NATUKAl, HISTORY

coralline Eilis) asserts, in a letter to the
Royal Society, dated June the 5th, 1766, in
his account of the innd inguana, an amphi-
bious bipes from South Carolina, that the
water-eft, or newt, is only the larva of the
land-eft, as tadpoles are of frogs. Lest I
should be suspected to misunderstand his
meaning, I shall give it in his own words.
Speaking of the opercula or coverings to
the gills of the mudinguana, he proceeds to
say that '' The form of these pennated co-
'* verings approaches very near to what I
" have some time ago observed in the/a?i;rt
** or aquatic state of our English lacerta,
" known by the name of eft, or newt;
" which serve them for coverings to their
" 2-ills. and for fins to swim with while in
" this state ; and which they lose, as well
** as the fins of their tails, when they
" chamre their state and become land aiii-r
*• malsy as I have observed, by keeping
" them alive for some time myself/'

Linufcus, in his Sij.stema Nalurce, hints
at what Mr. Ellis advances more than
once.

OF SELBOllNE. 8?

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 an object of your publi-
cations, you will not omit to mention com-
mon salad-oil as a sovereign remedy against
the bite of the viper. As to the blind worm
( anguis fragilisy so called because it snaps in
sunder with a small blow), I have found,
on examination, that it is perfectly inno-
cuous. A neighbouring yeoman (to whom
I am indebted for some good hints) killed
and opened a female viper about the twenty-
seventh 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 ma-
turity as to contain anyrudiments of young.
Though they are oviparous, yet they are
viviparous also, hatching their young with-
in 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

88 NATUKAi- IIISTOKV

them ; whicli eggs do not hatch till the
Spring following, as 1 have often expe-
rienced. 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. Barringlon,
that no such thing ever happens. The ser-
pent kind eat, I believe, but once in a
year; or, rather, but only just at one sea-
son of the year. Country people talk much
of a water-snake, but, I am pretty sure,
without any reason ; for the common snake
(coluber natrix) delights much to sport in
the water, perhaps with a view to procure
frogs and other food.

I cannot well guess how you are to make
out your twelve species of reptiles, unless
it be by the various species, or rather va-
rieties, oi owx lac crli, of which /?«// enume-
rates five. 1 have not had opportunity of
ascertaining these ; but remember well to

OF SELBOKNE. 8.9

hiive seen, loniierly, several beautitlil green
lacerti on the sunny sandbanks near Farn-
ham, in Surrey ; and Ray admits there are
such in Ireland.

LETTER XVIII

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, July 27, 1768.

I RECEIVED your obliging and communi-
cative letter oi June the 28th, w^hile I was
on a visit at a gentleman's house, w^here 1
had neither books to turn to, nor leisure to
sit down, to return you an answer to many
queries, which I wanted to resolve in the
best manner that I am able.

A person, by my order, has searched our
brooks, but could find no such fish as the
gasterosteus pungitius : he found the gastero-
steus aculeatus in plenty. This morning, in
a basket, I packed a little earthen pot full
of wet moss, and in it some sticklebacks.

90 NATURAL HISTORY

male and female ; the females big with
spawn : some lamperns; some bulls heads;
but I could procure no minnows. This
basket will be in Fleet-street by eight this
evening ; so I hope Ulazel will have them
fresh and fair to-morrow morning. I gave
some directions, in a letter, to what parti-
culars the engraver should be attentive.

Finding, while I was on a visit, that I
was within a reasonable distance of Am-
bresbury, I sent a servant over to that town,
and procured several living specimens of
loaches, which he brought, safe and brisk,
in a glass decanter. They were taken in
the gullies that were cut for watering the
meadows. From these fishes (which mea-
sured from two to four inches in length)
I took the following description : " The
*' loach, in its general aspect, has a pel-
" lucid appearance : its back is mottled
" with irregular collections of small black
" dots, not reaching much below the linea
** lateralis, as are the back and tail fins : a
" black line runs from each eye down to
" the nose ; its belly is of a silvery white ;

OF SELBORNE. 91

" the upper jaw projects beyond the lower,
** and is surrounded with six feelers, three
** on each side : its pectoral fins are large,
** its ventral much smaller ; the fin behind
** its anus small ; its dorsal fin large, con-
" taining eight spines ; its tail, where it
"joins to the tail-fin, remarkably broad,
** without any taperness, so as to be cha-
" racteristic 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 Hun-
gerford, and did not forget to make some
inquiries concerning the wonderful method
of curing cancers by means of toads. Se-
veral intelligent persons, both gentry and
clergy, do, I find, give a great deal of cre-
dit to what was asserted in the papers : and
I myself dined with a Clergyman who
seemed to be persuaded that what is re-
lated is matter of fact : but, when 1 came
to attend to his account, I thought I dis-
cerned circumstances which did not a
little invalidate the woman's story of the

92 NATURAL IIISTOIM

manner in which she came by her skill.
She says of herself, " that, labouring under
*' a virulent cancer, she went to some church
*' where there was a vast crowd : on going
" into a pew, she was accosted by a strange
*' clergyman ; who, after expressing com-
** passion 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 tender-
ness for this single sufferer, and not feel
any for the many thousands that daily lan-
guish 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 expe-
dient to amuse the country with this dark
and mysterious relation.

The water-eft has not, that 1 can discern,
the least appearance of any gills ; for want

OF SELBORNE. 93

of which it is continually rising to the sur-
face 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 larv(B : for the larvce 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 crawl-
ing 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.

94 N Al Ul{ AL II ISTOU V

LETTER XIX.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Aug. 17, 1768.

I HAVE now, past dispute, made out three
distinct species of the willow-wrens (mota-
citlcB trochilij which constantly and invari-
ably use distinct notes. But, at the same
time, 1 am obliged to confess that I know
nothing of your willow-lark.* In my letter
of April the 18th, I had told you peremp-
torily that I knew your willow-lark, but
had not seen it then : but, when I came
to procure it, it proved, in all respects, a
very motacilla trochilus ; only that it is a
size larger than the two other, and the yel-
low-green of the whole upper part of the
body is more vivid, and the belly of a
clearer white. I have specimens of the
three sorts now lying before me ; and can
discern that there are three gradations of

* Brit. Zool. edit. 1776, octavo, p. .'381.

OF SELBORNE. 95

sizes, and that the least has black legs and
the other two flesh-coloured ones. The
yellowest bird is considerably the largest,
and has its quill-feathers and secondary
feathers tipped with white, which the others
have not. This last haunts only the tops
ol 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 oris-
tatus of Ray ; which he says *' cantat voce
striduld locustce." Yet this great ornitho-
logist never suspected that there were
three species.

LETTER XX.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Oct. 8, 17^8.

It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany :
all nature is so full, that that district pro-

96' N A T U R A f n I S 1() R V

(luces the greatest variety which is tlie most
examined. Several birds, which are said
to belong to the north only, are, it seems,
often in the south. I have discovered this
Summer three species of birds with us,
which writers mention as only to be seen
in the northern counties. The first that was
brought me (on the 14th oi May), was the
sandpiper, tringa hypokucus : it was a cock
bird, and haunted the banks of some ponds
near the village ; and, as it had a com-
panion, doubtless intended to have bred
near that water. Besides, the owner has
told me since, that, on recollection, he has
seen some of the same birds round his
ponds in former Summers.

The next bird that I procured (on the
21st of M(iyJ was a male red-backed but-
cher bird, lan'nis collario. 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 the
legs and wings of beetles.

OF SELBORNE. 97

The next rare birds (which were pro-
cured for me last week) were some ring-
ousels, turdi torqiiati.

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 edge where there were ber-
ries, 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 pro-
cured, little notice was taken. 1 mentioned
this circumstance to you in my letter of
November the 4th, 1767 : (you however
paid but small regard to what I said, as I
had not seen these birds myself:) but last
week the aforesaid farmer, seeing a large
flock, twenty or thirty of these birds, shot
two cocks and two hens : and says, on re-
collection, that he remembers to have ob-
served these birds again last Spring, about
Ladyday, as it were, on their return to the
north. Now perhaps these ousels are not
the ousels of the north of England, but be-
long to the more northern parts of Europe ;

VOL. I. H

98 NATURAL HISTORY

and may retire before the excessive rigor of
tie frosts in those parts; and return to
Lreed in the Spring-, when the cold abates.
If this be the case, here is discovered a new
bird (f Winter passage, concerning whose
migrations the writers are silent : but if
these birds should prove the ousels of the
north of England, then here is a migra-
tion disclosed within our own kingdom
never before remarked. It does not yet ap-
pear 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 con-
tinued so long unnoticed in the southern
counties. The ousel is larger than a black-
bird, and feeds on haws ; but last Autumn
(when there were no haws) it fed on yew-
berries : in the Spring it feeds on ivy-ber-
ries, which ripen only at that season, in
March and April.

I must not omit to tell you (as you have
been so lately on the study of reptiles) that
my people, every now and then, of late,
draw up with a bucket 0/ water from my

OF SELBORNB. 99

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 trou-
ble 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. may

find reason to give his decision in my
favour ; and then, I think, we may ad-
vance this extraordinary provision of nature
as a new instance of the wisdom of God in
the creation.

As yet I am not quite done with my
history of the oedicnemus, ox stone-curlew ;
far. I shall desire a gentleman in Sussex
(near whose house these birds congregate
in vast flocks in the Autumn) to observne
nicely when they leave him, (if they do
leave him) aad when they return again in
the Spring: I was with this gentleman
lately, and saw several single birds.

H 2

1(X) XATURAL HISTORV

LETTER XXI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborxe, Nov. 28, \768.

With regard to tlie 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 after-
ward «to watch them most narrowly M'he-
tlier thev do not withdraw themselves dur-
ing the dead of the Winter. When I have
obtained information with respect to this
circumstance, I shall have finished my his-
tory of the stone-curlew ; which 1 hope will
prove to your satisfaction, as it will be, I
trust, very near the truth. This gentleman,
as he occupies a large farm of his own, and
is abroad early and late, will be a very
proper spy upon the motions of these birds:
and besides, as I have prevailed on him to

, OF SELBORNE. 101

buy the Naturalist's Journal (with which
he is much delighted), I shall expect that
he will be very exact in his dates. It is
very extraordinary, as you observe, that a
bird so common wnth us should never
straggle to you.

And here will be the properest place to
mention, w^hile I think of it, an anecdote
which the above mentioned gentleman told
me when I w^as last at is 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 fviz. the puffins) breed,
I know, in that manner ; but I should never
have suspected the daws of building in
holes on the flat ground.

Another very unlikely spot is made use
of by daws as a place to breed in, and that
is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their

lOQ NATURAL HISTORY

nests in the interstices between the upright
and the impost stones of that amazing work
of antiquity : which circumstance alone
speaks tlie 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 Saturdai/,
November the 26th, saw a martin in a shel-
tered 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 speak-
ing with reserve and caution concerning the
cures done by toads : for, let people ad-
vance what they will on such subjects, yet
there is such a propensity in mankind to-
wards deceiving and being deceived, that
one cannot safely relate any thing from
common report, especially in print, with-
out expressing some degree of doubt and
suspicion.

Your approbation, with regard to my

OF SELBORNE. 103

new discovery of the migration of the ring-
ousel, gives me satisfaction; and I find you
concur with me in suspecting that they are
foreign birds which visit us. You will be
sure, I hope, not to omit to make inquiry
whether your ring-ousels leave your rocks
in the Autumn. What puzzles me most, is
the very short stay they make with us ; for
in about three weeks they are all gone. I
shall be very curious to remark whether
they will call on us at their return in the
Spring, as they did last year.

I want to be better informed with'regard
to icthyology. If fortune had settled me
near the sea-side, or near some great river,
my natural propensity would soon have
urged me to have made myself acquainted
with their productions : but as I have lived
mostly in inland parts, and in an upland
district, my knowledge of fishes extends
little farther than to those common sorts
which our brooks and lakes produce.

I am, &c.

104 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER XXII.

TO THE SAME.

cr

o

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Jan. 2, 1769.

As to the peculiarity of jackdaws buildin
with us under the ground in rabbit-bur-
rows, you have, in part, hit upon the rea-
son ; for, in reality, there are hardly any
towers or steeples in all this country. And
perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hampshire ?ii\&
iSWe^- 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 Norlhaniptonshire,
Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, and
the fens of Lincolnshire, I wis amazed at
the number of spires which presented them-
selves in every point of view. As an ad-
mirer of prospects, I have reason to lament

OF SELBORNE. l0.5

this want in my own country; for such
objects are very necessary ingredients in
an elegant landscape.

What you mention with respect to re-
claimed toads raises ray curiosity. An
ancient author, though no naturalist, has
well remarked that ''Every kind of beasts,
** and of birds^ and of serpents, and things
** in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed,
** of mankinds*

It is a satisfaction to me to find that a
green lizard has actually been procured for
you in Devonshire ; because it corroborates
my discovery, which I made many years
ago, of the same sort, on a sunny sandbank
near Farnham, in Surrey. I am well ac-
quainted with the south hams of Devon-
shire ; 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 moun-
tains do certainly not forsake them against
Winter, our suspicions that those which visit

* James, chap. iii. 7.

106 NATURAL HISTORY

this neighbourhood about Michaelmas are
not English birds, but driven from the more
northern parts of Euro jjchy the frosts, are
still more reasonable ; and it will be worth
your pains to endeavour to trace from
whence they come, and to inquire why
they make so very short a stay.

In your account of your error with re-
gard to the two species of herons, you in-
cidentally gave me great entertainment in
your description of the heronry at Cressi-
hall ; which is a curiosity I never could
manage to see. Forescore nests of such a
bird on one tree is a rarity which I would
ride half as many miles to have a sight of.
Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose
seat Creftsi-hall is, and near what town it
lies.* I have often thought that those vast
extents of fens have never been sufficiently
explored. If half a dozen gentlemen, fur-
nished with a good strength of water-spa-
niels, were to beat them over for a week,
they would certainly find more species.

There is no bird, I believe, whose man-

* Crcssi-hnU is near SpoMing, in Lincolnshire.

OF SELBORNE. 107

ners I have studied more than that of the
caprimulgiis (the goat-sucker), as it is a
wonderful and curious creature : but I have
always found that though sometimes it may
chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in
general it utters its jarring note sitting on
a bough : and I have for many an half
hour watched it as it sat with its under
mandible quivering, and particularly this
Summer. It perches usually on a bare twig,
with its head lower than its tail, in an atti-
tude 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 ray neighbours were assembled in
an hermitage on the side of a steep hill

108 NATURAL HISTORY

Mhere we drink tea, one of these churn-
owls came and settled on the cross of that
little straw edifice and began to chatter,
and continued his note for many minutes ;
and we were all struck with wonder to find
that the organs of that little animal, when
put in motion, gave a sensible vibration to
the whole building ! This bird also some-
times 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 manner through the
boughs of a tree.

It would not be at all strange if your
bat, which you have procured, should
prove a new one, since five species have
been found in a neighbouring kingdom.
The great sort that I mentioned is certainly
a non-descript : 1 saw but one this Sum-
mer, and that I had no opportunity of
taking.

Your account of the Indiun-graaa was
entertaining. 1 am no angler myself; but
inquiring of those that are, what they sup-
posed that f)Hrt of tljfir tackle to bf: made

OF SELBORNE. 109

of? they replied " of the intestines of a
" silkworm."

Though I must not pretend to great skill
in entomology, yet I cannot say that I am
ignorant of that kind of knowledge : I may
now and then perhaps be able to furnish
you with a little information.

The vast rains ceased with us much about
the same time as with you, and since we
have had delicate weather. jNIr. Barker,
who has measured the rain for more than
thirty years, says, in a late letter, that
more rain has fallen this year than in any
he ever attended to ; though, from Juft/
1763 to January 17G4, more fell than in
any seven months of this year.

110 KAJURAL HISTORY

LETTER XXIII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Feb. 28, I769.

It is not improbable that the Guernseif
lizard and our green lizards may be speci-
fically the same ; all that I know is, that,
when some years ago many Guernsey\vLdi\'d.&
were turned loose in Pembroke college gar-
den, in the university of Oxford, they lived
a great while, and seemed to enjoy them-
selves 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 re-
gret, that in Jujic 1746 I was visiting for a
week together at Spalding, without ever
being told that such a curiosity was just at

OF SELBORNE. Ill

hand. Pray send me word in your next
what sort of tree it is that contains such a
quantity of herons' nests ; and whether the
heronry consist of a whole grove or wood,
cr only of a few trees.

It gave me satisfaction to find we ac-
corded so well about the caprimulgus : all
I contended for was to prove that it often
chatters sitting as well as flying ; and there-
fore the noise was voluntary, and from
organic impulse, and not from the resist-
ance of the air against the hollow of its
mouth and throat.

If ever I saw any thing like actual migra-
tion, it was last Michaelmas-day. I was
travelling, and out early in the morning :
at first there was a vast fog ; but, by the
time that I was got seven or eight miles
from home towards the coast, the sun broke
out into a delicate warm day. We were
then on a large heath or common, and I
could discern, as the mist began to break
away, great numbers of swallows (hirun-
dines rusliccsj clustering on the stunted
shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted

ll'i NATURAL HISTORY

there all night. As soon as the air became
clear and pleasant they all were on the
wing at once ; and, by a placid and easy
flight, proceeded on southward towards the
sea : after this I did not see any more flocks,
only now and then a straggler.

I cannot agree with those persons that
assert that the swallow kind disappear some
and some gradually, as they come, for the
bulk of them seem to withdraw at once :
only some stragglers stay behind a long
while, and do never, there is the greatest
reason to believe, leave this island. Swal-
lows seem to lay themselves up, and to
come forth in a warm day, as bats do con-
tinually of a M-arm evening, after they have
disappeared for weeks. For a very respect-
able gentleman assured me that, as he was
walkino- with some friends under Mcrton-
wall on a remarkably hot noon, cither in
the last week in December or the first week
in Ja?iuart/,\\e espied three or four swallows
huddled together on the moulding of one
of the windows of that college. I have fre-
quently remarked that swallows are seen

or SELBORNE. 113

later at Oxford than elsewhere : is it owing
to the vast massy buildings of that place,
to the many waters round it, or to what
else ?

When I used to rise in a morning last
Autumn, and see the swallows and martins
clustering on the chimnies 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 migra-
tion, or hiding, imprinted on their minds
by their great Creator ; and with some de-
gree 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 im-
pression on my imagination, that they be-
came productive of a composition that

VOL. I. 1

114 NATURAL HISTORY

may perhaps amuse you for a quarter of an
hour when next I have the honour of writ-
ing to you.

LETTER XXIV

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, May 29, 17G9.

The scar ah (eus Julio I know very well,
having seen it in collections ; but have
never been able to discover one wild in its
natural state. Mr. Banks told me he
thought it might be found on the sea-coast.
On the thirteenth of April, I went to the
sheep-down, where the ring-ouselshdiVeheen
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. AVe shot
a cock and a hen ; they were pluni}) and
in high condition. The hen had but very

OF SELBORNE. 115

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 no-
thing very distinguishable, but somewhat
that seemed like blades of vegetables nearly
digested. In Autumn they feed on haws
and yew-berries, and in the Spring on ivy-
berries. I dressed one of these birds, and
found it juicy and well-flavoured. It is
remarkable that they make but a few days
stay in their Spring visit, but rest near a
fortnight at Michaelmas. These birds, from
the observations of three Springs and two
Autumns, are most punctual in their return ;
and exhibit a new migration unnoticed by
the writers, who supposed they never were
to be seen in any of the southern counties.
One of my neighbours lately brought me
a new salicaria, which, at first, I suspected
might have proved your v/illow-lark,* but
on a nicer examination, it answered much
better to the description of that species

* For this salicaria see letter August 30, I765.

I 2

IK) XATCRAT, II1ST(7RY

^vhich you shot at Rcvcshi/, in Liticolnalnrf..
My bird T 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 yel-
•* lowish white ; the rump is tawny, and
" the feathers of the tail sharp-pointed; the
" bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs are
*' duskv; thehinderclawloni^and crooked."
The person that shot it says that it sung
so like a reed-sparrow that he took it for
one ; and that it sings all night : but this
account merits farther inquiry. For my
part, I susj^ect it is a second sort of locus-
tella, hinted at by Dr. Dcrham in Ray's
Letters: see p. 108. He also procured
me a grasshopper-lark.

The question that you put with regard
to those genera of animals that are peculiar
to America, viz. how they came there, and
whence ? is too puzzling for me to answer ;
and yet so obvious as often to have struck

OF SELBORNE. 117

me with wonder. If one looks into the
writers on that subject little satisfaction is
to be found. Ingenious men will readily
advance plausible arguments to support
whatever theory they shall choose to
maintain ; but then the misfortune is, every
one's hypothesis is each as good as ano-
ther's, since they are all founded on con-
jecture. 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 difficulty
worthy of the interposition of a god !
*■* Increduhis odi"

118 NATURAL IlISTOKY

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-
EVENING WALK.

-equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis

Injienium Virg. Georg.

o

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 j
Then be the time to steal adown the vale.
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo'si* tale ;
To hear the clamorous curlew J; call his mate.
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;

* The angler's May-fly, the ephemera vulgnta Linn.
coracs forth from its aurelia state, and emerges out of
the water about six in the evening, and dies about eleven
at night, determining the date of its fly state in about five
or six liours. Tbcy usually begin to appear about the
•ttli of June, and continue in succession for near a fort-
night. See Swammcrduw, Dcrham, Scopoli, ^-c.

+ Vagrant cuckoo ; so called 1)ocausc, being tied down
by no incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its
young, it wanders without control.

\ Charndiius Ocdicncmus.

OF SELBORNE. 119

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, unsubdu'd of wing :
Amusive birds ! say where your hid retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat ;
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led.
When Spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ?
Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride.
The GOD of NATURE is your secret guide !

While deepening 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* cry ;
To see the feeding bat glance through the wood ;
To catch the distant falling of the flood ;
While o'er the cliff th' awaken'd churn-owl hung
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering

song ;
While high in air, and pois'd upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft enamour'd woodlarkf sings :
These, NATURE'S works, the curious mind

employ.
Inspire a soothing melancholy joy :

* Gryllus campestris.

t In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to w prodigious
height, and hang singing in the air.

130 NATURAL HISTORY

As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain

Steals o'er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vain !

Each rural sight, each sound, eacli smell com-
bine ;
The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine ;
The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze.
Or cottage-chimney smoking through the trees.

The chilling night-dews fall : — away, retire ;
For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire !*
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 hastened to his Hero's bed.f

I am, &c.

* The light of the female glow-worm (as she often
crawls up the stalk of a grass to make herself more con-
spicuous) is a signal to the male, which is a slender dusky
scarabaeus.

t See the story of Hero and Leander.

OF SELBORNE. 121

LETTER XXV.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Aug. 30, 1769.

It gives me satisfaction to find that my
account of the ousel migration pleases you.
You put a very shrewd question when you
ask me how I know that their autumnal
migration is southward ? Was not candour
and openness the very life of natural his-
tory, I should pass over this query just as
a sly commentator does over a crabbed pas-
sage in a classic ; but common ingenuous-
ness obliges me to confess, not without
some degree of shame, that I only reasoned
in that case from analogy. For as all other
autumnal birds migrate from the northward
to us, to partake of our milder Winters,
and return to the northward again when
the rigorous cold abates, so I concluded
that the ring-ousels did the same, as well
as their congeners the fieldfares ; and

122 NATURAL HISTORY

especially as ring-ousels are known to haunt
cold mountainous countries : but I have
good reason to suspect since, that they may
come to us from the westward ; because I
hear from very good authority, that they
breed on Dartmoor': and that they forsake
tliat wild district about the time that our
visitors appear, and do not return till late
in the Spring.

I have taken a great deal of pains about
your salicaria and mine, with a white stroke
over its eye and a tawny rump. I have
surveyed it alive and dead, and have pro-
cured several specimens ; and am perfectly
persuaded myself (and trust you will soon
be convinced of the same) that it is no more
nor less than the passer arundinaceus minor
of Raij. This bird, by some means or
other, seems to be entirely omitted in the
British 'Zoology ; and one reason probably
was ; because it is so strangely classed in
Ray, who ranges it among his picis afjines.
It ought no doubt to have gone among his
avicidfp, Cauda unicolore, and among your
slender-billed small birds of the same divi-

OF SELBORNE. 123

sion. Linnwus might with great propriety
have put it into his genus of motacilla ; and
the motacilla salicaria of his fauna siiecica
seems to come the nearest to it. It is no
uncommon bird, haunting the sides of
ponds and rivers where there is covert, and
the reeds and sedges of moors. The coun-
try people in some places call it the sedge-
bird. It sings incessantly night and day
during the breeding time, imitating the
note of a sparrow, a swallow, a sky-lark ;
and has a strange hurrying manner in its
song. My specimens correspond most mi-
nutely to the description of yowv fen-sali-
caria shot near Revesby. Mr. Ray has given
an excellent characteristic of it when he
says, '^ Rostrum ^ pedes in hdc aviculd multd
** majores sunt qutim pro corporis 7^atione"
See letter May 29, 1769.

I have got you the egg of an oedicnemus,
or stone-curlew, which was picked up in a
fallow on the naked ground : there were
two ; but the finder inadvertently crushed
one with his foot before he saw them.

When I wrote to you last year on rep-

1*24 NATURAL IIISTOKY

tiles, I wish 1 had not forgot to mention
the faculty that snakes have of stinking se
defendendo. I knew a gentleman who kept
a tame snake, which was in its person as
sweet as any animal while in good humour
and unalarmed ; but as soon as a stranger,
or a dog or cat, came in, it fell to hissing,
and filled the room wdth such nauseous
effluvia as rendered it hardly supportable.
Thus the squnck, or stonck, of Hat/'sSi/nop.
Quadr. is an innocuous and sweet animal ;
but, when pressed hard by dogs and men,
it can eject such a most pestilent and fetid
smell and excrement, that nothing can be
more horrible.

A gentleman sent me lately a fine speci-
men of the Icniius minor cincrascens cum ma-
cula in sea pu lis alba^ Rail ; which is a bird
that, at the time of your publishing your
two first volumes o{ British Zoologij, I find
you had not seen. You have described it
well Iruni Lldwardsa drawing.

OF SELBORNE. 125

LETTER XXVI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Dec. 8, 1769.

I WAS much gratified by your communi-
cative letter on your return from Scotland,
where you spent, I find, some considerable
time, and gave yourself good room to exa-
mine the natural curiosities of that exten-
sive kingdom, both those of the islands, as
well as those of the highlands. The usual
bane of such expeditions is hurry ! because
men seldom allot themselves half the time
' they should do ; but, fixing on a day for
their return, post from place to place, ra-
ther as if they were on a journey that re-
quired dispatch, than as philosophers in-
vestigating the works of nature. You must
have made, no doubt, many discoveries, and
laid up a good fund of materials for a future
edition of the British Zoology and will

126 NATURAL HISTORY

have no reason to repent that you have
bestowed so much pains on a part of Great
Britain that perhaps was never so well
examined before.

It has always been matter of wonder to
me that fieldfares, which are so congene-
rous to thrushes and blackbirds, should
never choose to breed in England: but that
they should not think even the highlands
cold and northerly, and sequestered enough,
is a circumstance still more strange and
wonderful. The ring-ousel, you find, stays
in Scotland the whole year round ; so that
we have reason to conclude that those mi-
grators that visit us for a short space every
Autumn do not come from thence.

And here, I think, will be the proper
place to mention that those birds were most
punctual again in their migration this Au-
tumn, appearing, as before, about the 30th
oi September : but their flocks were larger
than common, and their stay protracted
somewhat beyond the usual time. If they
came to spend the whole Winter wilh us,
as some of their congeners do, and then left

or SELBORNE. 127

US, as they do, in Spring, I should not be so
much struck with the occurrence, since it
would be similar to that of the other Win-
ter birds of passage ; but when I see them
for a fortnight at Michaelmas, and again for
about a week in the middle of April, I am
seized with wonder, and long to be in-
formed whence these travellers come, and
whither they go, since they seem to use
our hills merely as an inn or baiting place.

Your account of the greater brambling,
or snow-fleck, is very amusing; and strange
it is, that such a short-winged bird should
delight in such perilous voyages over the
northern ocean ! Some country people in
the Winter time have every now and then
told me that they have seen two or three
white larks on our downs ; but, on consi-
dering the matter, I begin to suspect that
these are some stragglers of the birds we
are talking of, which sometimes perhaps
may rove so far to the southward.

It pleases me to find that white hares are
so frequent on the Scottish mountains, and
especially as you inform me that it is a

128 NATURAL IIISTOnV

distinct species; for the quadrupeds of
Britain are so few, that every new species
is a great acquisition.

The eagle-owl, could it be proved to
belong to us, is so majestic a bird, that it
would grace our fauna much. I never
was informed before where wild-geese are
known to breed.

You admit, I find, that I have proved
your fcn-sa/icaria to be the lesser reed-spar-
row of Rat/ : and I think you may be secure
that I am right ; for I took very particular
pains to clear up that matter, and had some
fair specimens ; but, as they were not well
preserved, they are decayed already. You
will, no doubt, insert it in its proper place
in your next edition. Your additional
plates will much improve j^our work.

De Jhiffoii, I know, has described the
water shrew-mouse : but still I am pleased
to find you have discovered it in Lincoln-
shire, for the reason 1 have given in the
article of the white hare.

As a neighbour was lately ploughing in a
dry chalky field, far removed from any

OF SELBORNE. 129

water, he turned out a water-rat, that was
curiously laid up in an hybernaculum arti-
ficially formed of grass and leaves. At one
end of the burrow lay above a gallon of po-
tatoes regularly stowed, on which it was
to have supported itself for the Winter. But
the difficulty with me is how this amphibius
mus came to fix its Winter station at such
a distance from the water. Was it deter-
mined in its choice of that place by the
mere accident of finding the potatoes which
were planted there ; or is it the constant
practice of the aquatic-rat to forsake the
neighbourhood of the water in the colder
months ?

Though I delight very little in analogous
reasoning, knowing how fallacious it is
with respect to natural history ; yet, in the
following instance, I cannot help being in-
clined to think it may conduce towards the
explanation of a difficulty that I have men-
tioned before, with respect to the invariable
early retreat of the hirmido apus^ or swift,
so many weeks before its congeners : and
that not only with us, but also in Andalusia,

VOL. I. K

130 XATURAT, HISTORY'

where tliey also begin to retire about the
besinnino" o( Auoust.

The great large bat* (which by the by
is at present a non-descript m England, and
what I have never been able yet to procure)
retires or migrates very early in the Sum-
mer : it also ranges very high for its food,
feeding in a different region of the air ;
and that is the reason I never could pro-
cure one. Now this is exactly the case
with the swifts ; for they take their food in
a more exalted region than the other spe-
cies, and are very seldom seen hacking for
flies near the ground, or over the surface of
the water. From hence I would conclude
that these Inrundines, and the larger bats,
are supported by some sorts of high-flying
gnats, scarabs, or p/ialaufc, that are of
short continuance ; and that the short stay
of these strangers is regulated by the defect
of their food.

* The little bat appears almost every month in the
year ; bat I have never seen the large ones till the end
of April, nor after Juli/. They are most common in Jujie,
but never in any plenty : are a rare species with ns.

OF SKLBORNE. IvU

By my journal it appears that curlews
clamoured on to October the thirty -first ;
since which, I have not seen or heard any.
Swallows were observed on to November
the third;

LETTER XXVII.

TO THE SAMi:.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Feb. 22, 1770.

Hedge-hogs abound in my gardens and
fields. The manner in which they eat the
roots of the plantain in my grass-walk is
very curious : with their upper mandible,
which is much longer than their lower,
they bore under the plant, and so eat the
root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves
untouched. In this respect they are ser-
viceable, as they destroy a very troublesome
weed ; but they deface the walks in some
measure by digging little round holes. It
appears, by the dung that they drop upon

K 2

132 NATURAL HISTORY

the turf", that beetles are no inconsiderable
part of their food. In Jtnie last I procured
a litter of four or five young hedge-hogs,
which appeared to be about five or six days
old : they, I find, like puppies, are born
blind, and could not see when they came to
my hands. No doubt their spines are soft
and flexible at the time of their birth, or
else the poor dam would have but a bad
time of it in the critical moment of parturi-
tion : but it is plain that they soon harden ;
for these little pigs had such stiff prickles
on their backs and sides as would easily
have fetched blood, had they not been hand-
led with caution. Their spines are quite
white at this age ; and they have little hang-
ing ears, which I do not remember to be
discernible in the old ones. They can, in
part, at this age draw their skin down over
their faces ; but are not able to contract
themselves into a ball, as they do, for the
sake of defence, when full grown. The
reason, I suppose, is, because the curious
muscle that enables the creature to roll it-
self up in a ball was not then arrived at its

OF SELBORNE. 133

full tone and firmness. Hedge-hogs make
a deep and warm hi/bernaculiim with leaves
and moss, in which they conceal themselves
for the Winter : but I never could find that
they stored in any Winter provision, as
some quadrupeds certainly do.

I have discovered an anecdote with re-
spect to the fieldfare (turdus pilaris), which
I think is particular enough : this bird,
though it sits on trees in the day-time, and
procures the greatest part of its food from
white-thorn hedges ; yea, moreover, builds
on very high trees ; as may be seen by the
fauna suecica ; yet always appears with us
to roost on the ground. They are seen to
come in flocks just before it is dark, and to
settle and nestle among the heath on our
forest. And besides, the larkers, in drag-
ging their nets by night, frequently catch
them in the wheat-stubbles ; while the bat-
fowlers, who take many red-wings in the
hedges, never entangle any of this species.
Why these birds, in the matter of roosting,
should difi'er from all their congeners, and
from themselves also with respect to their

134 NATURAL IIISTOKY

proceedings by day, is a fact for ^vhich 1
am by no means able to account.

I have somewhat to inform you of con-
cerning the moose-deer; but in general fo-
reign animals fall seldom in my way ; my
little intelligence is confined to the narrow
sphere of my own (observations at home.

LETTER XXVIII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborxe, March 1770.

0 X Michael mas- (I ay 1 7G8 I managed to get
a sight of the female moose belonging to
the duke of Richmond, at Goodwood ; but
was greatly disappointed, when I arrived
at the spot, to find that it died, after having
appeared in a languishing way for some
time, on the morning before. However,
understanding that it was not stripped, I
proceeded to examine this rare quadruped ;

1 found it in an old greenhouse, slung under

OF SELBOKNE. 135

the belly and chin by ropes, and in a stand-
ing posture ; but, though it had been dead
for so short a time, it was in so putrid a
state that the stench was hardly support-
able. The grand distinction between this
deer, and any other species that I have
ever met with, consisted in the strange
length of its legs ; on which it was tilted
up much in the manner of the birds of the
grall(B order. I measured it, as they do
an horse, and found that, from the ground
to the wither, it was just five feet four
inches ; which height answers exactly to
sixteen hands, the growth that few horses
arrive at : but then, with this length of
legs, its neck was remarkably short, no
more than twelve inches ; so that, by strad-
dling with one foot forward and the other
backward, it grazed on the plain ground,
with the greatest difficulty, between its
legs : the ears were vast and lopping, and
as long as the neck ; the head was about
twenty inches long, and ass-like ; and had
such a redundancy of upper lip as I never
saw before, with huge nostrils. This lip^

J36 NATURAL HISTORY

travellers say, is esteemed a dainty dish in
North America. It is very reasonable to
suppose that this creature supports itself
chiefly by browsing of trees, and by wading
after water plants ; iowards which way of
livelihood the length of legs and great lip
must contribute much. I have read somC'
where that it delights in eating the nymphcBai
or water-lily. From the fore-feet to the
belly behind the shoulder it measured three
feet and eight inches ; the length of the
legs before and behind consisted a great
deal in the tibia, which was strangely long ;
but, in my haste to get out of the stench,
I forgot to measure that joint exactly. Its
scut seemed to be about an inch long ; the
colour was a grizzly black ; the mane about
four inches long ; the fore-hoofs were up-
right and shapely, the hind flat and splayed.
The Spring before it was only two years old,
so that most probably it was not then come
to its growth. What a vast tall beast must
a full grown stag be ! 1 have been told some
arrive at ten feet and a half! This poor
creature had at first a female companion of

or SELBORNE. 137

the same species, which died the Spring be-
fore. In the same garden was a young stag,
or red deer, between whom and this moose
it was hoped that there might have been a
breed ; but their inequality of height must
have always been a bar to any commerce
of the amorous kind. I should have been
glad to have examined the teeth, tongue,
lips, hoofs, &c. minutely ; but the putrefac-
tion precluded all farther curiosity. This
animal, the keeper told me, seemed to en-
joy itself best in the extreme frost of the
former Winter. In the house they showed
me the horn of a male moose, which had
no front-antlers, but only a broad palm
with some snags on the edge. The noble
owner of the dead moose proposed to make
a skeleton of her bones.

Please to let me hear if my female moose
corresponds with that you saw ; and whe-
ther you think still that the American
moose and European elk are the same
creature.

I am,
With the greatest esteem, kc.

138 xN AT URAL HISTORY

LETTER XXIX.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; SelbornEj May 12, 1770.

Last month we had such a series of cold
turbulent weather, such a constant succes-
sion of frost, and snow, and hail, and tem-
pest, that the regular migration or appear-
ance of the Summer birds was much inter-
rupted. Some did not show themselves (at
least were not heard) till weeks after their
usual time ; as the hlack-cap and n/iiie'
throat ; and some have not been heard yet,
as the grass/ioppcr-lark and largest tcillow-
wren. As to i\\c fly-catcher, I have not seen
it ; it is indeed one of the latest, but should
appear about this time : and yet, amidst all
this meteorous strife and war of the ele-
ments, two swallows discovered themselves
as long ago as the eleventh of April, in
frostand snow; but they withdrew quickly,
and were not visible again for many days.

OF SELIiOllNE. 139

House-martins, which are always more
backward than Swallows, were not ob-
served till May came in.

Among the monogamous birds several are
to be found, after pairing-time, single, and
of each sex : but whether this state of celi-
bacy is matter of choice or necessity, is not
so easily discoverable. When the house-
sparrows deprive my martins of their nests,
as soon as I cause one to be shot, the other,
be it cock or hen, presently procures a
mate, and so for several times following.

I have known a dove-house infested by a
pair of white owls, which made great
havock among the young pigeons : one of
the owls was shot as soon as possible; but
the survivor readily found a mate, and the
mischief went on. After some time the
new pair were both destroyed, and the
annoyance ceased.

Another instance I remember of a sports-
man, whose zeal for the increase of his
game being greater than his humanity,
after pairing-time he always shot the cock
bird of every couple of partridges upon

140 NATURAL HISTORY

his grounds ; supposing that the rivah'y of
many males interrupted the breed : he used
to say, that, though he had widowed the
same hen several times, yet he found she
was still provided with a fresh paramour,
that did not take her away from her usual
haunt.

Again ; I knew a lover of setting, an
old sportsman, who has often told me that
soon after harvest he has frequently taken
small coveys of partridges, consisting of
cock-birds alone ; these he pleasantly used
to call old bachelors.

There is a propensity belonging to com-
mon house-cats that is very remarkable ; I
mean their violent fondness for fish, which
appears to be their most favourite food ;
and yet nature in this instance seems to
have planted in them an appetite that, un-
assisted, they know not how to gratify :
for of all quadrupeds cats are the least dis-
posed towards water ; and will not, when
they can avoid it, deign to wet a foot,
much less to plunge into that element.

Quadrupeds that prey on fish arc amphi-

OF SELBORNE. 141

bious : such is the otter, which by nature
is so well formed for diving, that it makes"
great havock among the inhabitants of the
waters. Not supposing that we had any
of those beasts in our shallow brooks, I
was much pleased to see a male otter
brought to me, weighing twenty-one
pounds, that had been shot on the bank of
our stream below the Priory, where the
rivulet divides the parish of Selborne from
Harteley-Vuood,

142 NATUKAL lIlSTOItY

LETTER XXX.

TO TUE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Sei^bohne, Aug. 1, 1770.

liiE French, I think, in general are
strangely prolix in their natural history.
What Linjiisus says with respect to insects,
holds good in every other branch : " Ver-
** bosilas prascntis sccculi, calaniitas artis.'

Pray how do you a[)prove of Scojjoli's
new work ? as I admire his Entomologia, I
long to see it.

I forgot to mention in my last letter (and
had not room to insert in the former) that
the male moose, in rutting time, swims
from island to island, in the lakes and
rivers of North America, in pursuit of the
females. My friend, the chaplain, saw one
killed in the water as it was on that errand
in tlie river of St. Lmcrence : it was a mon-
strous beast, he told me ; but he did not
take the dimensions.

OF SELBORNE. 143

When I was last in town our friend Mr.
Barrino'toii most oblii^inolv carried me to
see many curious sights. As you w^ere then
wTiting to him about horns, he carried me
to see many strange and wonderful speci-
mens. There is, I remember, at Lord PeiU'
broke s, at Wilton, an horn-room furnished
with more than thirty different pairs : but
I have not seen that house lately.

Mr. Barrington showed me many asto-
nishing collections of stuffed and living birds
from all quarters of the world. After I had
studied over the latter for a time, I re-
marked that every species almost that came
from distant regions, such as South America,
the coast of Guinea, &c. were thick-billed
birds of the loxia and fringilla genera ;
and no motacillce or muscicapce, were to be
met with. When T came to consider, the
reason was obvious enough ; for the hard-
billed birds subsist on seeds which are
easily carried on board, while the soft-
billed birds, w^hich are supported by worms
and insects, or, what is a succcdaneinn for
themj fresh raw meat, can meet with neither

144 NATURAL HISTORY

in long and tedious voyages. It is from
this defect of food that our collections
(curious as they are) are defective, and we
are deprived of some of the most delicate
and lively genera.

I am, &c.

LETTER XXXI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Sklborne, Sept. 14, 1770.

You saw, I find, the ring-ousels again
among their native crags ; and are farther
assured that they continue resident in those
cold regions the whole year. From whence
then do our ring ousels migrate so regu-
larly every September, and make their ap-
pearance again, as if in their return, every
Jpril ? They are more early this year than
common, for some were seen at the usual
lull on the fourth of this month.

OF SELBORNE. 145

An observing Devonshire gentleman tells
me that they frequent some parts o^ Dart-
moor, and breed there ; but leave those
haunts about the end o{ September or begin-
ning of October, and return again about the
end of March.

Another intelligent person assures me
that they breed in great abundance all over
the Peak of Derby, and are called there
Tor-ousels ; withdraw in October and No-
vember, and return in Spring. This infor-
mation seems to throw some light on my
new migration.

Scopolis* new work (which I have just
procured) has its merits in ascertaining
many of the birds of the T/ro/ and Carniola.
Monographers, come from whence they
may, have, I think, fair pretence to chal-
lenge some regard and approbation from
the lovers of natural history ; for, as no
man can alone investigate all the works of
nature, these partial writers may, each in
their department, be more accurate in their
discoveries, and freer from errors, than

* Annuf! Primus Hixforico-Ncituralis.
VOL. I. L

146 NATURAL HISTORY

more general writers ; and so by degrees
may pave the way to an universal correct
natural history. Not that Scopoli is so cir-
cumstantial and attentive to the life and
conversation of his birds as I could wish :
he advances some false facts ; as when he
says of the hirundourhica that " pullos extra
" nidum 7ion nuirit.^' This assertion I know
to be wrong from repeated observation this
Summer ; for house-martins do feed their
young flying, though it must be acknow-
ledged not so commonly as the house swal-
low ; and the feat is done in so quick a man-
ner as not to be perceptible to indifferent
observers. He also advances some (I was
going to say) improbable facts ; as when he
says of the woodcock that ** pullos rostro
" portal fugiens ab lioste.'^ But candour for-
bids me to say absolutely that any fact is
false, because I have never been witness to
such a fact. I have only to remark that
the long unwieldy bill of the woodcock is
perhaps the worst adapted of any among
the winged creation for such a feat of na-
tural affection. I am, &c.

OF SF.LEORNE. 147

LETTER XXXII.

TO THE SAME,

DEAR SIR ; Selborne, Oct. 29, 1770.

After an ineffectual search in Liniiceus,
Brisson, &c. I begin to suspect that I discern
my brother's hirundo hyherna in Scopoli's
new-discovered hirundo rupestris, p. 167.
His description of ** Supra murinay subtus
*' albida ; rectrices tnaculd ovali albd in latere
*' interno) pedes nudiy nigri; rostrum7iigrum,
" remiges obscuriores qiiam jylumcB dorsales ;
** rectrices remigibus concolores ; caudci
" emarginatd nee forcipata ; agrees very
well with the bird in question ; but when
he comes to advance that it is *' statura
hirundinis urbicce" and that *' ** dejinitio
hirundinis riparice Linncei huic quoque con-
** venit*^ he in some measure invalidates all
he has said ; at least he shows at once that
he compares them to these species merely
from memory : for I have compared the

L 2

148 NATURAL HISTORY

birds themselves, and find they differ widely
in every circumstance of shape, size, and
colour. However, as you will have a speci-
men, I shall be glad to hear what your
judgment is in the matter.

Whether my brother is forestalled in his
non-descript or not, he will have the credit
of first discovering that they spend their
winters under the warm and sheltry shores
of Gibraltar and Barbary.

Scopolis characters of his ordines and
genera are clear, just, and expressive, and
much in the spirit of Lituicous. These few
remarks are the result of my first perusal
of Scopoli^s Annus Primus.

The bane of our science is the comparing
one animal to the other by memory : for
want of caution in this particular Scopoli
falls into errors : he is not so full with re-
gard to the manners of his indigenous birds
as might be wished, as you justly observe :
his Latin is easy, elegant, and expressive,
and very superior to Kramer's*

• See his Elenchus vegetabiliiim et animaliuyn per
Austriam injeriorem, Sfc.

or SELBORNE 149

I am pleased to see that my description
of the moose corresponds so well with

yours. I am, &c.

LETTER XXXIII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Nov. 26, 1770.

I WAS much pleased to see, among the col-
lection of birds from Gibraltar, some of
those short-winged English summer-birds
of passage, concerning whose departure we
have made so much inquiry. Now if these
birds are found in Andalusia to migrate to
and from Barbary, it may easily be sup-
posed that those that come to us may mi-
grate back to the continent, and spend
their Winters in some of the warmer parts
of Europe. This is certain, that many soft-
billed birds that come to Gibraltar appear
there only in Spring and Autumn, seeming
to advance in pairs towards the northward-

1.50 NATURAL HISTORY

for the sake of breeding during the Sum-
mer-montlis ; and retiring in parties and
broods towards the South at the decline of
the year : so that the rock of Gibraltar is
the great rendezvous, and place of obser-
vation, from whence they take their depar-
ture each way towards Europe or Africa.
It is therefore no mean discovery, I think,
to find that our small short-winged sum-
mer-birds of passage are to be seen Spring
and Autumn on the very skirts of Europe ;
it is a presumptive proof of their emigra-
tions.

Scopoli seems to me to have found the
hirundo melha, the great Gibraltar swift, in
Tirol, without knowing it. For what is
his hirundo alpina but the afore-mentioned
bird in other words ? Says he Omnia pri-
" om ^ (meaning the swift) ; " sed pectus al-
** hu7n ; paulo major priorc.'^ I do not sup-
pose this to be a new species. It is true
also of the mclba, that ** nidijic.atin excelsis
** Alpium rupibas." Vid. Annum Primum.
My Sussex friend, a man of observation
and good sense, but no naturalist, to whom

OF SELBORNE. I5i

I applied on account of the stone-curlew,
oedicnemus, sends me the following account;
■** In looking over my Naturalist's Journal
** for the month of April, I find the stone-
*' curlews are first mentioned on the seven-
** teenth and eighteenth, which date seems
** to me rather late. They live with us all
** the Spring and Summer, and at the begin-
*' ning of Autumn prepare to take leave by
** getting together in flocks. They seem to
*' me a bird of passage that may travel into
*' some dry hilly country South of us, pro-
** bably Spain, because of the abundance
** of sheep-walks in that country ; for they
** spend their Summers with us in such
*' districts. This conjecture I hazard, as
*' I have never met with any one that has
** seen them in England m the Winter. I
** believe they are not fond of going near
** the water, but feed on earth-worms, that
** are common on sheep-walks and downs.
*' They breed on fallows and lay-fields
** abounding with grey mossy flints, which
** much resemble their young in colour ;
■'* among which they skulk and conceal

152 NATURAL HISTORY

" themselves. They make no nest, but
" lay their eggs on the bare ground, pro-
'' ducing in common but two at a time.
'' There is reason to think their young run
** soon after they are hatched ; and that
*'• the old ones do not feed them, but only
'* lead them about at the time of feeding,
" which, for the most part, is in the night/'
Thus far my friend.

In the manners of this bird you see there
is something very analogous to the bustard,
whom it also somewhat resembles in
aspect and make, and in the structure of its
feet.

For a long time I have desired my rela-
tion to look out for these birds in Anda-
lusia ; and now he writes me word that, for
the first time, he saw one dead in the
market on the third o{ September.

When the oedicnemns flies it stretches
out its legs straight behind, like an heron.

1 am, SiC.

OF SELBORNE. 153

LETTER XXXIV.

TO THE SAME.
DEAR SIR; Selborne, March 30, 1771.

There is an insect with us, especially on
chalky districts, which is very troublesome
and teasing all the latter end of the Sum-
mer, getting into people's skins, especially
those of women and children, and raising
tumours which itch intolerably. This ani-
mal (which we call an harvest bug) is very
minute, scarce discernible to the naked eye,
of a bright scarlet colour, and of the genus
of A cams. They are to be met within
gardens on kidney beans, or any legumens ;
but prevail only in the hot months of Sum-
mer. Warreners, as some have assured me,
are much infested by them on chalky
downs ; where these insects swarm some-
times to so infinite a degree as to discolour
their nets, and to give them a reddish cast,

154 NATURAL HISTORY

while the men are so bitten as to be thrown
into fevers.

There is a small long shining fly in these
parts very troublesome to the housewife,
by getting into the chimnies, and laying its
eggs in the bacon while it is drying : these
eggs produce maggots called jumpers,
which, harbouring in the gammons and
best parts of the hogs, eat down to the bone,
and make great waste. This fly I suspect
to be a variety of the imisca pulris of Lin-
ncBus : it is to be seen in the Summer in
farm-kitchens on the bacon racks and about
the mantel-pieces, and on the ceilings.

The insect that infests turnips and many
crops in the garden (destroying often whole
fields while in their seedling leaves) is an
animal that wants to be better known. The
country people here call it the lumip-Jly and
black- dolphin ; but I know it to be one of the
colcoptcra ; the " chrysomela oleracea, salta-
** toria^femoribus posticis crassissimisy In
very hot Summers they abound to an amaz-
ing degree, and as you walk in a field or in
a garden, make a pattering like rain, by

or SELBORNE. 155

jumping on the leaves of the turnips or
cabbages.

There is an Oestrus, known in these parts
to every ploughboy ; which, because it is
omitted by LinncBus, is also passed over by
late writers ; and that is the curvicauda of
old Moufet, mentioned by Derham in his
Physico-theology, p.250 : aninsect worthy
of remark for depositing its eggs as it flies
in so dexterous a manner on the single hairs
of the legs and flanks of grass-horses. But
then Derham is mistaken when he advances
that this Oestrus is the parent of that won-
derful star-tailed maggot which he men-
tions afterwards ; for more modern entomo-
logists have discovered that singular pro-
duction to be derived from the e^g of the
musca chamceleon : see Geoffroi/, t. 17, f. 4.
A full history of noxious insects hurtful
in the field, garden, and house, suggesting
all the known and likely means of destroy-
ing them, would be allowed by the public
to , be a most useful and important work.
What knowledge there is of this sort lies
scattered, and wants to be collected ; great

156 NATURAL HISTORY

improvements would soon follow of -course.
A knowledge of the properties, economy,
propagation, and, in short, of the life and
conversation of these animals, is a neces-
sary step to lead us to some method of pre-
venting their depredations.

As far as I am a judge, nothing would re-
commend entomology more than some neat
plates that should well express the generic
distinctions o{ insects according to Linnceus ;
for I am well assured that many people
would study insects, could they set out
with a more adequate notion of those dis-
tinctions than can be conveyed at first by
words alone.

LETTER XXXV.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, 1771-

Happening to make a visit to my neigh-
bour's peacocks, I could not help observing
that the trains of tliosc magnificent birds

OF SELBORNE. 157

appear by no means to be their tails ; those
long feathers growing not from their uropy-
gium, but all up their backs. A range of
short brown stiff feathers, about six inches
long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real
tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the
train, which is long and top-heavy, when
set an end. When the train is up, nothing
appears of the bird before but it's head and
neck ; but this would not be the case were
those long feathers fixed only in the rump,
as may be seen by the turkey-cock when
in a strutting attitude. By a strong mus-
cular vibration these birds can make the
shafts of their long feathers clatter like the
swords of a sword dancer; they then
trample very quick with their feet, and run
backwards towards the females.

I should tell you that I have got an un-
common calculus cegogropila, taken out of
the stomach of a fat ox ; it is perfectly
round, and about the size of a large Seville
orange ; such are, I think, usually flat.

158 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER XXXVI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Sept. 1771.

The Summer through I have seen but two
of that large species of bat which I call
vespertilio altivolans, from its manner of
feeding high in the air : I procured one of
them, and found it to be a male : and made
no doubt, as they accompanied together,
that the other was a female : but, happen-
ing in an evening or two to procure the
other likewise, I was somewhat disap-
pointed, when it appeared to be also of the
same sex. This circumstance, and the great
scarcity of this sort, at least in these parts,
occasions some suspicions in my mind whe-
ther it is really a species, or whether it
may not be the male part of the more known
species, one of which may supply many
females ; as is known to be the case in
sheep, and some other quadrupeds. But
this doubt can only be cleared by a farther

OF SELBORNE. 159

examination, and some attention to the sex,
of more specimens : all that I know at
present is, that my two were amply fur-
nished with the parts of generation, much
resembling those of a boar.

In the extent of their wings they mea-
sured fourteen inches and an half : and
four inches and an half from the nose to the
tip of the tail : their heads were large, their
nostrils bilobated, their shoulders broad
and muscular; and their whole bodies
fleshy and plump. Nothing could be more
sleek and soft than their fur, which was of
a bright chesnut colour ; their maws were
full of food, but so macerated that the
quality could not be distinguished ; their
livers, kidnies, and hearts, were large, and
their bowels covered with fat. They
weighed each, when entire, full one ounce
and one drachm. Within the ear there was
somewhat of a peculiar structure that I did
not understand perfectly : but refer it to
the observation of the curious anatomist.
These creatures sent forth a very rancid
and offensive smell.

\60 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER XXXVII.

TO Tflli SAME.

DEAR SIR ; Selborne, 1771.

0 N the twelfth of Jult/ I had a fair oppor-
tunity of contemplating the motions of the
caprimidgus, or fern-owl, as it was playing
round a large oak that swarmed with scara-
bcBi solstitiales, or fern-chafers. The powers
of its wing were wonderful, exceeding, if
possible, the various evolutions and quick
turns of the swallow genus. But the cir-
cumstance that pleased me most was, that

1 saw it distinctly more than once, put out
its short leg while on the wing, and, by a
bend of the head, deliver somewhat into its
mouth. If it takes any part of its prey with
its foot, as I have now the greatest reason
to suppose it does these chafers, I no longer
wonder at the use of its middle toe, which
is curiously furnished with a serrated claw.

OF selborne: 161

Swallows and martins, the bulk of them
I mean, have forsaken us sooner this year
than usual ; for, on September the twenty-
second, they rendezvoused in a neighbour's
walnut-tree, where it seemed probable they
had taken up their lodging for the night.
At the dawn of the day, which was foggy,
they rose all together in infinite numbers,
occasioning such a rushing from the strokes
of their wings against the hazy air, as
might be heard to a considerable distance ;
since that no flock has appeared, only a
few stragglers.

Some swifts staid late, till the twenty-
second oi August — a rare instance! for they
usually withdraw within the first week.*

On September the twenty-fourth three or
four ring- ousels appeared in my fields for
the first time this season : how punctual
are these visitors in their Autumnal and
Spring migrations !

* See Letter liii. to Mr. Barrmgton.

VOL. I M

l6"2 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER XXXVIII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, March 15, 1773.

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
first of October, I saw young martins in
their nest nearly fledged ; and again, on
the twenty-first of October, we had at the
next house a nest full of young martins just
ready to fly ; and the old ones were hawk-
ing for insects with great alertness. The
next morning the brood forsook their nest,
and were flying round the village. From
this day I never saw one of the swallow
kind till November the third; when twenty,
or perhaps thirty, house-martins were play-
ing all day long by the side of the hanging
wood, and over my fields. Did these small
weak birds, some of which were nestlings

OF SKLBORNE. l6'3

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 (as a more northern
naturalist would say), may become their
hyhernacnlum, and afford them a ready and
obvious retreat?

We now begin to expect our vernal mi-
gration of ring-ousels every week. Persons
worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels
were seen at Christmas 1770 in the forest
of Bere, on the southern verge of this
county. Hence we may" conclude that
their migrations are only internal, and not
extended to the continent southward, if
they do at first come at all from the north-
ern 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 men-
tion that, in the Isle of Ascension, and other

M 2

l64 NATURAL HISTORY

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 my-
self have found these birds in little parties
in the Autumn cantoned all along the Sus-
sex downs, wherever there were shrubs and
bushes, from Chichester to Lewes ; particu-
larly in the Autumn of 1770.

I am. Ike.

OP SELBORNE. l65

LETTER XXXIX.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Nov. 9, 1773.

As you desire me to send you such obser-
vations as may occur, I take the liberty of
making the following remarks, that you
may, according as you think me right or
wrong, admit or reject what I here advance,
in your intended new edition of the British
Zoology.

The osprey* was shot about a year ago
at Frinsham-pond, a great lake, at about six
miles from hence, while it was sitting on
the handle of a plough and devouring a
fish : it used to precipitate itself into the
water, and so take its prey by surprise.

A great ash-coulouredt butcher-bird was
shot last winter in Tisted-park, and a red-

* British Zoology, vol. i. p. 128. t P. l6l.

\6() \.\Tl HAL HISTORY

backed butcher-bird at Silborm . they are
rara; aves in this country.

Crows * go in pairs tlit whole year
round.

(^ortnsh choughs^ abound, and breed on
IJiac/ii/- Head and on all the cliffs of the
Sussex coast.

The common wild pigeon, J or stock
dove, is a bird of passage in the south of
England, seldom appearing till towards the
end of November : is usually the latest win-
ter-bird of passage. Before our beechen
woods were so much destroyed, we had
myriads of them, reaching in strings for a
mile together as they went out in a morn-
ing to feed. They leave us early in Spring ;
w here 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.

• British ZoologA-. vol. 1 p. 167. t P. I9H

t P. 216. § p. 224.

1)1' '.I I II' I |; v, I I ()'/

A ^Miil Iciii.iM unalirrK iiK li> liin fsilicn l In-
iir^MlM lit 1 111^/ oufti:l»* on hm intuttr ; iliry

lilllM III liilllk': 'III llii ..l>l< . i>l .li II :

'I il I. II I. 1 iiol ..Illy '-"i,l; Bwrrlly ns '^'^y
Fill nil liii ._ lull iilno tt". \\\r\ jtluv 'Hi'l f'ly
iiliiiut un l.|j«: Wing, aii'l ['.uIk iilaily vvliilc
llw^y are ^^^vt-wWnv. mi "••mrfbn^s n«

tll»:!y feiJUnl '•!> Ill'- glc^Uii'l

./»/(M/ .(<;/« i t*;''^' iii">iiy pj!f:(nR I" ni' I" In-
li V«ry |<'<'<i 'M.i'lru<ip thttt J'^urn/>riin SWill-
loWB imj/Jfilr rlui llij/ mil vvniffl \n Srnr^nl .
Iir rlnc; iKil l;ilk ill iiil Ilk r ;i n ' -i n 1 1 li- .lri(/i«f, j
ami Jii'jljuhly ?itiW nuly fhr r-WiillnWe f»rfll«t
VA)\\n\ry , wliwli I I now Innld 'villm, ( \h-
V^tli'd O //»«,(/'. Ill II .iL^i I ir;l I lir Midi II i-l
\ui klK^Wrt Huinju ,111 -:VVivll(^Wfl, Woultilu;

ti^it Ijfivfe rmuUuimi the ^p^amj

J ii< hniitie'fimiUaw wftuh^s by rlrnpplut/

ihl'. Ill- WaU^r M« il Hicf. liiiti f.j)r(:K:R J4JM
|i(:Ur» roiiiiii'iuly ulioiit ji, Wf'-rk lifsfbrft fllfl
nuunt- mill /ill, iii'l ilioiil Irn (,i tw^lvrduyn

168 NATURAL HISTORY

lu 1772 there were young house-mar-
tins* in their nest till October the twenty-
third.

The swi/t-^ appears about ten or twelve
days later than the house-swallow : viz.
about the twenty-fourth or twenty-sixth
of April.

Whin-chats and stone-chatters^ stay with
us the whole year.

Some wheat-ears§ continue with us the
Winter through.

Wagtails, all sorts, remain with us all
the Winter.

Bulfinches,|| when fed on hempseed,
often become wholly black.

We have vast flocks of female chaf-
finches^ all the Winter, with hardly any
males among them.

When you say that in breeding time the
cock-snipes** make a bleating noise, and
I a drumming ^perhaps I should have ra-

* British Zoology, vol. ii. p. 244. t P. 245.

t P. 270,271. § P. 269. II P. 300.

11 P. 306. * P. 358.

OF SELBORNE. l69

ther said an humming), I suspect we mean
the same thing. However, while they are
playing about on the wing they certainly
make a loud piping with their mouths :
but whether that bleating or humming is
ventriloquous, or proceeds from the mo-
tion of their wings, 1 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 agof last Spring the little auk
was found alive and unhurt, but fluttering
and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles
from Alresfordy where there is a great lake :
it was kept awhile, but died.

I saw young tealsj taken alive in the
ponds of Wolmer-forest in the beginning of
July last, along with flappers, or young
wild-ducks.

* British Zoology, vol. ii. p. 360. t P. 409-
t P- 475.

170 NATURAL HISTORY

Speaking of the swift * that page says
" lis drink the dew ," whereas it should be
*' it drinks on the wing;" for all the swal-
low kind sip their water as they sweep over
the face of pools or rivers : like VirgiTs
bees, they drink flying; '' Jlumina suwma
lihant.'' In this method of drinking per-
haps this genus may be peculiar.

Of the sedge-birdt be pleased to say it
sings most part of the night ; its notes are
hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative
of several birds ; as the sparrow, swallow,
sky-lark. 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.

* Britisli Zoology, vol. ii. p. 15. + P. 1(),

OF SELBOUNE. l/l

LETTER XL.

TO THE SAME,

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Sept. 2, 1774.

Before your letter arrived, and of my own
accord, I had been remarking and compar-
ing' the tails of the male and female swal-
low, and this ere any young broods ap-
peared : so that there was no danger of
confounding the dams with their pulli : and
besides, as they were then always in pairs,
and busied in the employ of nidification,
there could be no room for mistaking the
sexes, nor the individuals of different chim-
nies the one for the other. From all my
observations, it constantly appeared that
each sex has the long feathers in its tail
that give it that forked shape j with this
difference, that they are longer in the tail
of the male than in that of the female.

Nightingales, when their young first
cume abroad, and are helpless, make a

172 NATURAL HISTORY

plaintive and a jarring noise ; and also a
snapping or cracking, pursuing people
along the hedges as they walk : these last
sounds seem intended for menace and
defiance.

The grasshopper-lark chirps all night in
the height of Summer.

Swans turn white the second year, and
breed the third.

Weasels prey on moles, as appears by
their being sometimes caught in mole-
traps.

Sparrow-hawks sometimes breed in old
crows' nests, and the kestril in churches
and ruins.

There are supposed to be two sorts of
eels in the island oi Eli/. The threads some-
times discovered in eels are perhaps their
young : the generation of eels is very dark
and mysterious.

Hen-harriers breed on the ground, and
seem never to settle on trees.

When redstarts shake their tails they
move them horizontally, as dogs do when
they fawn : the tail of the wagtail, when in

OF SELBORNE. 173

motion, bobs up and down like that of a
jaded horse.

Hedge-sparrows have a remarkable flirt
with their wings in breeding- time : as soon
as frosty mornings come they make a very
piping plaintive noise.

Many birds which become silent about
Midsummer reassume their notes again in
September; as the thrush, blackbird, wood-
lark, willow-wren, &c. ; hence August is by
much the most mute month, the Springs
Summer, and Autumn through. Are birds
induced to sing again because the tempera-
ment of Autumn resembles that of Spring ?

Linnmis ranges plants geographically ;
palms inhabit the tropics, grasses the tem-
perate zones, and mosses and lichens the
polar circles ; no doubt animals may be
classed in the same manner with pro-
priety.

House-sparrows build under eaves in the
Spring ; as the weather becomes hotter
they get out for coolness, and nest in plum-
trees and apple-trees. These birds have
been known sometimes to build in rooks*

174 NATURAL HISTORY

nests, and sometimes in the forks of boughs
under rooks' nests.

As my neighbour was housing a rick he
observed that his dogs devoured all the
little red mice thgit they could catch, but
rejected the common mice ; and that his
cats eat the common mice, refusing the
red.

Red-breasts sing all through the Spring,
Summer, and Autumn. The reason that they
are called Autumn songsters is, because in
the two first seasons their voices are
drowned and lost in the general chorus ; in
the latter their song becomes distinguish-
able. Many songsters of the Autumn seem
to be the young cock red-breast of that
year: notwithstanding the prejudices in
their favour, they do much mischief in
gardens to the Summer-fruits*

The titmouse, which early in Fehruari/
begins to make two quaint notes, like the
whetting of a saw, is the marsh titmouse,
the great titmouse sings with three cheerful

* They eai also the berries of the ivy, tlie honey-
suckle, and the eu<mymus curopa-us, or spindle-tree.

OF SELBORNE. 175

joyous notes, and begins about the same
time.

Wrens sing all the Winter through, frost
excepted.

House-martins came remarkably late this
year both in Hampshire and Devonshire :
is this circumstance for or against either
hiding or migration ?

Most birds drink sipping at intervals ;
but pigeons take a long continued draught,
like quadrupeds.

Notwithstanding what I have said in a
former letter, no grey crows were ever
known to breed on Dartmoor ; it was my
mistake.

The appearance and flying of the scara-
bceus solstitialis, or fern-chafer, commence
with the month of July, and cease about
the end of it. These scarabs are the con-
stant food of caprimulgi, or fern owls,
through that period. They abound on the
chalky downs and in some sandy districts,
but not in the clays.

In the garden of the Black-bear inn in
the town of Reading is a stream or canal

176 NATURAL HTSTORV

running under the stables and out into the
fields on the other side of the road : in this
water are many carps, which lie rolling
about in sight, being fed by travellers, who
amuse themselves, by tossing them bread :
but as soon as the weather grows at all
severe these fishes are no longer seen, be-
cause they retire under the stables, where
they remain till the return of Spring. Do
they lie in a torpid state ? if they do not,
how are they supported ?

The note of the white-throat, which is
continually repeated, and often attended
with odd gesticulations on the wing, is
harsh and displeasing. These birds seem
of a pugnacious disposition ; for they sing
with an erected crest and attitudes of rivalry
and defiance ; are shy and wild inbreeding-
time, avoiding neighbourhoods, and haunt-
ing lonely lanes and commons ; nay, even
the very tops of the Sussex-downs^ where
there arc bushes and covert ; but in July
and August they bring their broods into
gardens and orchards, and make great
havock among the summer-fruits.

OF SELBOKNE. 177

The black-cap has, in common, a full,
sweet, deep, loud, and wild pipe ; yet that
strain is of short continuance, and his mo-
tions are desultory -, but when that bird sits
calmly and. engages in song in earnest, he
pours forth very sweet, but inward melody,
and expresses great variety of soft and
gentle modulations, superior perhaps to
those of any of our warblers, the nightin-
gale excepted.

Black-caps mostly haunt orchards and
gardens ; while they warble their throats
are wonderfully distended.

The song of the red-start is superior,
though somewhat like that of the white-
throat : some birds have a few more notes
than others. Sitting very placidly on the
top of a tall tree in a village, the cock
sings from morning to night : he affects
neighbourhoods, and avoids solitude, and
loves to build in orchards and about houses ;
with us he perches on the vane of a tall
maypole.

The fly-catcher is of all our Summer birds

VOL. I. N

178 NATURAL HISTORY

the most mute and the most familiar ; it
also appears the last of any. It builds in a
vine, or a sweetbriar, against the wall of an
house, or in the hole of a wall, or on the
end of a beam or plate, and often close to
the post of a door where people are going
in and out all day long. This bird does not
make the least pretension to song, but uses
a little inward wailing note when it thinks
its young in danger from cats or other an-
noyances : it breeds but once, and retires
early.

Selborne parish alone can and has exhi-
bited at times more than half the birds that
are ever seen in all Sweden ; the former
has produced more than one hundred and
twenty species, the latter only two hundred
and twenty-one. Let me add also that it
has shown near half the species that were
ever known in Great-Britain.*

On a retrospect, I observe that my long
letter carries with it a quaint and magis-
terial air, and is very sententious ; but, when

* Sweden 2^1, Great-Briiain 252 species.

OF SELBORNE. 179

I recollect that you requested stricture and
anecdote, hope you will pardon the didactic
manner for the sake of the information it
may happen to contain.

LETTER XLI.

TO THE SAME.

It is matter of curious inquiry to trace
out how those species of soft-billed birds,
that continue with us the Winter through,
subsist during the dead months. The im-
becility of birds seems not to be the only
reason why they shun the rigour of our
Winters ; for the robust lory-neck (so much
resembling the hardy race of wood-peckers)
migrates, while the feeble little golden-
crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves
our severest frosts without availing himself
of houses or villages, to which most of our
Winter-birds crowd in distressful seasons,

N 2

180 NATURAL lilSTORY

while this keeps aloof in fields and woods ;
but perhaps this may be the reason why
they may often perish, and why they are
almost as rare as any bird we know.

I have no reason-to doubt but that the
soft-billed birds, which Winter with us,
subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia
state. All the species of wagtails in severe
weather haunt shallow streams near their
spring-heads, where they never freeze ;
and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of
the genus oi Phnjganecp* Sec.

Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gut-
ters in hard weather, where they pick up
crumbs and other sweepings : and in mild
weather they procure worms, which are
stirring every month in the year, as any
one may see that will only be at the trouble
of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any
mild Winter's night. Red-breasts and wrens
in the Winter haunt out-houses, stables,
and barns, where they find spiders and flies
that have laid themselves up during the

* Sec Dcrham's Physico-theology, p. 235.

OF SELBORNE. 181

cold season. But the grand support of the
soft-billed birds in Winter is that infinite
profusion of aurelicB of the lepidoplera ordo,
which is fastened to the twigs of trees and
their trunks ; to the pales and walls of gar-
dens and buildings ; and is found in every
cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and
even in the ground itself.

Every species of titmouse Winters with
us ; they have what I call a kind of inter-
mediate bill between the hard and the soft,
between the LinncBan genera of fringilla
and onotacilla. One species alone spends
its whole time in the woods and fields,
never retreating for succour in the severest
seasons to houses and neighbourhoods ; and
that is the delicate long-tailed titmouse,
which is almost as minute as the golden-
crowned wren : but the blue titmouse, or
nx[w(parus cceruleusj^ the cole-mouse fparus
aterj, the great black-headed titmouse
ffri7igiilag'o J ,2ii\d the marsh titmouse (parus
palustris), all resort, at times, to buildings ;
and in hard weather particularly. The great
titmouse, driven by stress of weather, much

182 NATURAL HISTORY

frequents houses, and, in deep snows, I
have seen this bird, while it hung with its
back downwards (to my no small delight
and admiration), draw straws lengthwise
from out the eaves. of thatched houses, in
order to pull out the flies that were con-
cealed between them, and that in such
numbers that they quite defaced the thatch,
and gave it a ragged appearance.

The blue titmouse, or nun, is a great fre-
quenter of houses, and a general devourer.
Besides insects, it is very fond of flesh; for
it frequently picks bones on dunghills : it
is a vast admirer of suet, and haunts but-
chers' shops. When a boy, I have known
twenty in a morning caught with snap
mouse-traps, baited with tallow or suet.
It will also pick holes in apples left on the
ground, and be well entertained with the
seeds on the head of a sun-flower. The
blue, marsh, and great titmice will, in very
severe weather, carry away barley and oat
straws from the sides of ricks.

How the icIitat'Lur and whin-chat sup-
port themselves in Winter cannot be so

OF SELBORNE. 183

easily ascertained, since they spend their
time on wild heaths and warrens ; the for-
mer especially, where there are stone quar-
ries : most probably it is, that their main-
tenance arises from the aurelice of the le-
pidoptera orcio, which furnish them with a
plentiful table in the wilderness.

I am, &c.

LETTER XLII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selbokne, March 9, 1775.

OOME future fan ?iist, a man of fortune,
will, I hope, extend his visits to the king-
dom of Ireland ; a new field, and a country
little known to the naturalist. He will not,
it is to be wished, undertake that tour
unaccompanied by a botanist, because the
mountains have scarcely been sufficiently
examined ; and the southerly counties of
so mild an island may possibly afford some

184 NATUK.AJ. HISTORY

plants little to he expected within the
British dominions. A person of a thinking
turn of mind will draw many just remarks
from the modern improvements of that
country, both in arts and agriculture, where
premiums obtained long before they were
heard of with us. The manners of the wild
natives, theirsuperstitions, their prejudices,
their sordid way of life, will extort from
him many useful reflections. He should
also take with him an able draughtsman ;
for he must by no means pass over the
noble castles and seats, the extensive and
])icturesque lakes and waterfalls, and the
lofty stupendous mountains, so little known,
and so engaging to the imagination when
described and exhibited in a lively man-
ner: such a work would be well received.

As I have seen no modern maj) of Scut-
Unid, 1 cannot pretend to say how accurate
or particular any such may be ; but this I
know, that tlie best old maps of that king-
dom are very defective.

The great obvious defect that I have re-
marked \\\ all maps of Scotland that have

or SELBORNE. 185

fallen in my way is, a want of a coloured
line, or stroke, that shall exactly define
the just limits of that district called The
Highlands. Moreover, all the great avenues
to that mountainous and romantic country
want to be well distinguished. The mili-
tary roads formed by general Wade are so
great and Roman-like an undertaking that
they well merit attention. My old map,
Molfs Map, takes notice of Fort William ;
but could not mention the other forts that
have been erected long since : therefore a
good representation of the chain of forts
should not be omitted.

The celebrated zigzag up the Coryarich
must not be passed over, Moll takes
notice of Hamilton and Dramlanrig, and
such capital houses ; but a new survey, no
doubt, should represent every seat and
castle remarkable for any great event, or
celebrated for its paintings, &c. Lord
Breadalbanes seat and beautiful policy
are too curious and extraordinary to be
omitted.

The seat of the Earl of EgUntoim, near

186 NATURAL HISTORY

Glasgow, is worthy of notice. The pine-
plantations of that nobleman are very grand
and extensive indeed.

I am, &c.

LETTER XLIII.

TO THE SAME.

A PAIR of honey-buzzards^ biiteo apivonis,
sive vespivoriis Rati, built them a large shal-
low nest, composed of twigs and lined
with dead bccchen leaves, upon a tall slen-
der beech near the middle of Selborne-
hanger, in the summer of 1780, In the
middle of the month of June a bold boy
climbed this tree, though standing on so
steep and dizzy a situation, and brought
down an egg, the only one in the nest,
which had been sat on for some time, and
contained the embrio of a young bird. The
Q.^^ was smaller, and not so round as those
of the common buzzard ; was dotted at

OF SELBORNE. 18?

each end with small red spots, and sur-
rounded in the middle with a broad bloody
zone.

The hen-bird was shot, and answered
exactly to Mr. JRat/'s description of that
species : had a black cere, short thick legs.
and a long tail. When on the wing this
species may be easily distinguished from
the common buzzard by its hawk-like ap-
pearance, small head, wings not so blunt,
and longer tail. This specimen contained
in its craw some limbs of frogs and many
grey snails without shells. The irides of
the eyes of this bird were of a beautiful
bright yellow colour.

About the tenth oiJuly in the same Sum-
mer a pair o{ sparrow-hawks bred in an old
crow's nest on a low beech in the same
hanger ; and as their brood, which was
numerous, began to grow up, became so
daring and ravenous, that they were a ter-
ror to all the dames in the village that had
chickens or ducklings under their care. A
boy climbed the tree, and found the young
so fledged that they all escaped from him ;

188 NATURAL HISTORY

])iit discovered that a good house had been
kept : the larder was well stored with pro-
visions ; for he brought down a young
l)lackbird, jay, and house-martin, all clean
picked, and some half devoured. The old
birds had been observed to make sad
havock for some days among the new-
flown swallows and martins, w^hich, being
but lately out of their nests, had not
acquired those powers and command of
wing that enable them, when more ma-
ture, to set such enemies at defiance.

LETTER XLIV.

TO Tin: SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Nov. 30, 1780.

tvEuv incident that occasions a renewal
of our correspondence will ever be pleasing
and agreeable to me.

As to the wild wood-pigeon^ the oenaa, or
imiaii'o, of Kaif^ I am much of your mind ;

OF SELBORNE. 189

and see no reason for making it the origin
of the common house-doue : but suppose
those that have advanced that opinion may
have been misled by another appellation,
often given to the oenas, which is that of
stock-dove.

Unless the stock-dove in the Winter
varies greatly in manners from itself in
Summer, no species seems more unlikely
to be domesticated, and to make an house-
dove. We very rarely see the latter settle
on trees at all, nor does it ever haunt the
woods ; but the former, as long as it stays
with us, from November perhaps to Febru-
ary, lives the same wild life with the ring-
dove, palumbus torquatus; frequents coppi-
ces and groves, supports itself chiefly by
mast, and delights to roost in the tallest
beeches. Could it be known in what man-
ner stock-doves build, the doubt would be
settled with me at once, provided they con-
struct their nests on trees, like the ring-
dove, as I much suspect they do.

You received, you say, last Spring a
stock-dove from Sussex ; and are informed

190 NATURAL HISTORY

that they sometimes breed in that county.
But why did not your correspondent de-
termine the place of its nidification, whe-
ther on rocks, cliffs, or trees ? If he was
not an adroit ornithologist I should doubt
the fact, because people with us perpe-
tually confound the stock-dove with the
riiisr-dovc.

For my own part, I readily concur with
you in supposing that house-doves are
derived from the small blue rock-jngeon, for
many reasons. In the first place the wild
stock-dove is manifestly larger than the
common house-dove, against the usual rule
of domestication, which generally enlarges
the breed. Again, those two remarkable
black spots on the rcmiges of each wing of
the stock-dove, which are so characteristic
of the species, would not, one should
think, be totally lost by its being re-
claimed ; but would often break out among
its descendants. But what is worth an
hundred arguments is, the instance you
give in Sir Roger Moslyiis house-doves in
Caernarvonshire; which, though tempted by

OF SELBORNE. 191

plenty of food and gentle treatment, can
never be prevailed on to inhabit their cote
for any time ; but, as soon as they begin
to breed, betake themselves to the fast-
nesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young
in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns
and precipices of that stupendous pro-
montory.

" Naturam expellas furca . . . tamen usque recurret."

I have consulted a sportsman, now in
his seventy-eighth year, who tells me that
fifty or sixty years back, when the beechen
woods were much more extensive than at
present, the number of wood-pigeons was
astonishing ; that he has often killed near
twenty in a day; and that with a long
wild-fowl piece he has shot seven or eight
at a time on the wing as they came wheel-
ing over his head : he moreover adds, which
I was not aware of, that often there were
among them little parties of small blue
doves, which he calls rockiers. The food
of these numberless emigrants was beech-
mast and some acorns ; and particularly

J 9'i N A r URAL IJ I S TO l{ V

barley, which they collected in the stub-
bles. But, of late years, since the vast
increase of turnips, that vegetable has fur-
nished a great part of their suj)port in hard
weather : and the holes they pick in these
roots greatly damage the crop. From
this food their flesh has contracted a ran-
cidness which occasions them to be re-
jected by nicer judges of eating, who
thought them before a delicate dish. They
were shot not only as they were feeding
in the fields, and especially in snowy wea-
ther, but also at the close of the eveninsr,
by men who lay in ambush among the
woods and groves to kill them as they came
in to roost.* Theseare the princij)al circum-
stances relating to this wonderful internal
migration, which with us takes place to-
wards thecnd oi November, and ceases early
in the Spring. Last Winter we had in Sel-
burne high wood about an hundred of these

* Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these
flocks used to withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmas
frosts were over.

OF SELBORNE. 193

doves ; but in former times the flocks were
so vast not only with us but all the district
round, that on mornings and evenings they
traversed the air, like rooks, in strings,
reaching for a mile together. When they
thus rendezvoused here by thousands, if
they happened to be suddenly roused from
their roost- trees on an evening,

" Their rising all at once was like the sound
*' Of thunder heard remote." ■

It will by no means be foreign to the
present purpose to add, that I liad a rela-
tion in this neighbourhood who made it a
practice, for a time, whenever he could
procure the eggs of a ring-dove, to place
them under a pair of doves that were sit-
ting in his own pigeon-house ; hoping
thereby, if he could bring about a coali-
tion, to enlarge his breed, and teach his
own doves to beat out into the woods and
to support themselves by mast : the plan
was plausible, but something always inter-
rupted the success ; for though the birds

VOL. I. o

1 94 NAinHAL IlISTOKY

were usually hatched, and sometimes grew
to half their size, yet none ever arrived at
maturity. I myself have seen these found-
lings in their nest displaying a strange
ferocity of nature, so as scarcely to bear to
be looked at, and snapping with their
bills by way of menace. In short, they
always died, perhaps for want of proper
sustenance : but the owner thought that
by their fierce and wild demeanor they
frighted their foster-mothers, and so were
starved.

Virgil, as a familiar occurrence, by way
of simile, describes a dove haunting the
cavern of a rock, in such engaging numbers,
that I cannot refrain from quoting the pas-
sage : and John Dryden has rendered it
so happily in our language, that without
further excuse I shall add his translation
also.

" Qualis spelunca subito commola Columba,

" Cui (lomus, et dulccs latcbroso in pumice nidi,

" Fertnr in arva volans, plausumquc extcrrita j^ennis

" Dat tecto ingcntem — mox acre lapsa quieto,

" Radit iter liquidnm, celeris neque oommovet alas.'*

OF SELBOKN^E. 195

" As when a dove her rocky hold forsakes,
'' Rous'd, in a fright her souiiding wings she shakes ;
" The cavern rings with clattering : — out she flies,
" And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies ;
" At first she flutters :^but at length she springs
" To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings."

I am, &c.

o 2

196 NATIM{AL IIISTOIIY

LETTER I.

TO THE

HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, June 30, 1769.

Whex 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 promise, because I see
you are a gentleman of great candour, and
one that will make allowances; especially
where the writer professes to be an out-door
naturalist, one that takes his observations
from the subject itself, and not from the
writings of others.

OF SELBORNE.

197

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 :

1. Wryneck,

2. Smallest willow-

wren,

3. Swallow,

4. iNIartin,
5 Sand-martin,

6. Black-cap,

7. Nightingale,

8. Cuckoo,

9. jNIiddle willow-

wren.

RAII NOMINA.

S 'Jyyiv, sive torquil-
\ la:

< Regulus 71071 n'is-
I tat us :

Hirundo domestica :
Hiriindo riistica :
Hirundo riparia :
j4tiicaj)illa ;
Luscinia :
Cuciilus :

< Regulus 71011 C7-is-
/ talus :

10. White-throat, Ficedula ajffitiis ;

11. Red-start,

12. Stone-Curlew,

13. Turtle-dove,

14. Grasshopper-

lark,

15. Switt,

16. Less reed-spar-

row,

17. Land-rail,

18. Largest willow.

wren,

Ruticilla •

Oedic/ie»tHS :
Tuvtur.

( Alauda minima lo-
\ casta voce :

Hirundo apus :

5 Passer arundina.
f ecus minor :

Orti/gomet}-a :

5 Regulus non cris-
( tutus :

USUALLY APPEARS
ABOUT

} The middle of March: hars^
i note.

} March 23 : chu'ps till Sev.
^ temher.

Jpril 13.

Ditto.

Ditto.

Do. a sweet wild note.

Beginning of April.

Middle of April.

) Ditto : a sweet plaintive
5 note.

5 Do. mean note ; sings on
l till September.

S Ditto : more agreeable
I song.

5 End of March : loud noc-
\ turnal whistle.

C ^liddle April .- a small sibi-

< lous note, till the end of
^ July.

About April 27.
C A sweet jjolyglot, but hur-

< rying : it has the notes of
^ many birds.

S A loud harsh note, crex
\ crex.

C (.'antat vocestriduld InctistcB ;
-' end of April., on the tops
of liigh beeches.

>

198 NATURAL HISTORY

19. Goat-sucker, or?^ . , ( Beginning of y»7«y; cl.al-

fern-owl S ^'V^'"«*5^""' • i ters by night with a sni-

' * ( gular "noise.

CMa;/ 12. A very mute

20. Fly-catcher, Stoparola : •? bird : this is the latest

^ Summer bird of j)assage.

This assemblage of curious and amusing
birds belongs to ten several genera of the
Liiindan system ; and are all of the ordo of
passeres, save the jf/n.v and cuculusy which
^re piece y and the charadrius f oedicnenius )
and rallus (ortygomelraj, vv^hich are grallce.

These birds, as they stand numerically,
belong to the following Linnccan genera :

Jynx . 13. Columba :

2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 16, 18. Motncilla: 17. Rallus:

3,4,5,15, Hlrundo : 19. Caprimulgus .

8. Cticulus 1 14. Alaufla :

12. C/unadritts . 20. Muscicajm,

Most soft-billed birds live on insects, and
not on grain and seeds \ and therefore at
the end of Summer they retire : but the
following soft-billed birds, though insect-
eaters, stay with us the year round :

KAII XOSirVA.

Redbreast, RubecuUc : ( '^"f ^^^ (Vequent house.; and

-...„. n A I J . •{ haunt out-buddingsm the

^^'^''' Passertroglndf/us.-^ Winter : eat .pi.rer..

or SELBOKNE.

199

Hedge-sparrow, Cunuca .

"WTiite-wagtail.
Yellow-wagtail,
Grey- wagtail,

Wheat-ear,

Whiii-chat,
Stone-chatter,

Golden-crowned
wren,

IMotaciUa alba :
Motacillajiavu :
Motacdla chierea

Oenantlie .

Oenauthe secunda.
Oenanthe tertia.

i Regiihu

s cristatus.

Haunt sinks for crumbs and

other sweepings.
These frequent shallow ri-
vulets near the Spring
heads, where they never
freeze: eat the aureliaeof
Phryganea. The smallest
birds that walk.
( Some of these are to be
} seen with us the AYinter
^ through.

S

This is the smallest British
bird : haunts the tops of
tall trees; stays the Win-
ter through.

A List of the Winter Birds of Passage
round this neighbourhood, ranged some-
ichat in the order in ivhich they appear :

KAII NOMINA

1. Ring-ousel, Merula torqnatu .-

2. Redwing,

3. Fieldfare,

4. Royslon-crow,

5. Woodcock,

6. Snipe,

7. Jack-snii)e,

8. Wood-pigeon,

Turdus iliacus ;
Turdus pilaris .-
Comix einerea :
Scolopax :

Galliiia"o minor

Gallinago niinima.

(Jenas ;

This is a new migration,
which I have lately dis-
covered about Michael-
mas \veek, and again
about the fr)urteentn of
March.
About old Michaelmas.
\ Though a percher by day,
' roosts on the ground.

Most frequent on downs.
[ Ajjpears about o\d. Michael-

• mrts.

\ Some snipes constantly

• breed with us.

Seldom appear;
not ill such
formerlv.

till late;
plenty as

200

NATURAL IIISTOKY

9. Wil<l-s\\an,

10. "Wild-goose,

11. Wiltl-cluck,

12. roihiinl,

13. Wijreon,

Ik Teal, breeds
with us in If^ol-
mer-forcst.

15. Cioss-beak,

16. Cross-bill,

17. Silk-tail,

Ci/iinus/erus :
jinser /ems.
Anas torijuatd minor.
Anas fera fuscu :
Penelope :

■ Querquedida :

Coceot/iraitstes .-

Lex:
Garrulus bohemicus : ,

On some large waters.

•On our lakes and streams.

These are only wanderers
that appear occasion-
ally, and are not ob-
servant of any regular
migration.

These birds, as they stand numerically,
belong to the following- Linnccan genera :

1, 2, 3, Turdus:

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 11,

4 Corvus :

Anaji :

5, 6, 7, Scolopax :

1 5. 16,

JjOxiil :

8, Coluniba :

17,

/fnipelis.

Birds that sing in the night are l)\it few.

Nightingale, Luscinia : 5 " "^ " slia'Hest covert hid."

^ '^ ( Milton.

Woodlark, /llaudu arhona . Suspended in mid air.

T ^.„„^ I „ \ I'asscr arundinaceus ? . i ■ -n

I iOss reed-Sparrow, i minor • \ Among reeds and wiUow.s.

1 shall now proceed to such birds as
continue to sing after Midsummer, but as
they are rather numerous, they would
exceed the bounds of this paper : besides,
as this is now the season fur remarking on
that subject, I am willing to repeat my

or SELBORNE. 201

observations on some birds concerning the
continuation of whose song I seem at pre-
sent to have some doubt.

I am. &c.

LETTER II.

TO TJIE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Nov. 2, 1769.

When I did myself the honour to write
to you about the end of last June on the
subject of natural history, I sent you a list
of the Summer-birds of passage which I
have observed in this neighbourhood ; and
also a list of the Winter-birds of passage :
1 mentioned besides those soft-billed birds
that stay with us the Winter through in
the south of England, and those that are
remarkable for singing in the night.

According to my proposal, I shall now
])roceed to such birds (singing birds strictly

202

NATURAL HISTORY

SO called) as continue in full song till alter
Midsummer ; and shall range them some-
what in the order in which they first
begin to open as the Spring advances.

RAII NOMIVA.

1. Woorl-lark,

/llandu (trborea

2. Soi.K-lhrush. \ Tmd^is simplicilcr

3. AN'ren. Passer troglotlytca
\. Redbreast, nubecula :

5. liedge-sjjarrow, Currucn :

In Januan/, and conti-
nues to sing tlirougii
all the Summer and
Autumn.

{In Februari/ and on to
August, reassun)e their
song in Aulmmi.

< All the year, hard frost
\ excepted.

Ditto.

< Earlv in Fvbruani^ to
I July the 10th.

^ ,, ,, , r, . „ ( V^axly in Fehrifan/, and

6. \ ellowliammer, Emberiza Jluia • ] on through July to ylu-

7. Skylark,

8. Swallow,

9. Black-caj),

10. Titlark,

11. Blackbird,

Alauda vulgaris :
Hirundo domestica .
Atriaipilla :

Alauda pratoru)!! .

Alcruln vulgaris

1 2. A\liite.lhroat, Ficeduto' affinis .

13. Cioldfinch,
H. Greenfinch,

Cnrduelis
Chloris :

gust the 21st.

In Februari/, and on to

October.
From A//ril to September.
Beginning of April to

J'dy 13th.

i From middle of April to
July the 16th.

Sometimes in February
and March, and so on
to Jul// tiie twcntv-
third ; reassumes in
Autumn.

[ In April, and on to July
} 23.

I A/nil, and through to

September IH. ,

On 1" •''//'/ and August 2.

OF SELBORNE.

203

15. IjCss reed-spar-
row,

16. Common linnet,

5 Passer ai-undina- } May, on to beginning of
\ ceus 7ninor : ^ y July.

r reeds and whistles on
till August ; i;eassumes
its note when they
begin to congregate
in October, and again
early before the flocks
separate.

Birds that cease to be in full song, and
are usually silent at or before Midsummer :

17. Middle willow
wren,

18. Redstart,

19. Chaffinch,

20. Nightingale.

< Regulus non oris- i JNIiddle of Jane : begins
( tatiis : ) ill A/iril.

Ruticilla :

Fringilla ■

Luscinia .

Ditto : begins in May.

S Beginning of June •■ sings
f ^rst in February.

]\Iiddle of June : sings
first in April.

Birds that sing for a short time, and
very early in the Spring :

21. Missel-bird,

22. Great titmouse, P Pringillago :
or ox-eye, S » °

''January tlie 2nd, 1770,
■ in February. Is called
in Hampshire and Sus-
sej; the storm-cock, be-
Turdus viscivorus X cause its song is sup-
posed to forebode windy
wet weather: is the
largest singing bird we
have.
In February, March,
April : reassuraes for
a short time in Sep^
tember.

204

NATURAL HISTORY

Birds that have somewhat of a note or
song, and yet are hardly to be called sing-
hig birds :

RATI NOMINA.

23. Golden-crowned
wren,

Qi. Marsh-titmouse,

25. Small willow-
wren.

26. Largest ditto,

27. Grassho])per-
lark,

28. Martin,

29. Bullfincli,
:}0. Bunting,

> Reg II

Its note as minute as
its person ; fretiuents
the tops of high oaks
and firs : the smallest
British bird.
Haunts great woods :
two harsh sharp notes.
5 Rcgulus non ens- / Sings in AJarch, and on

lus -eristdtus .

I'arus palustris .

I tatus :

Ditto :

S Alaudu minima
\ voce locustte :

Hirundo ugrestis

Pijrrhula.
Ember izti Albu .

\ to September.
i Cantut voce striduld In-
<^ citstcp ; from end of
y4i>ril to August.
Chirps all night, from the
iddle of April to the
nd oi' July.
All the breeding time ;
from Mui/ to Septem-
ber.

C Chirp
< mi(
i end

S From the end of Janu-
\ nry to July.

All singing birds, and those that have
any pretensions to song, not only in Dri-
tain, but perhaps the world through, come
inider the Linncean ordo otpasseres.

The above-mentioned birds, as they stand
numerically, belong to the following Lin-
ncBan genera.

1, 7, 10, 27,

Alauda :

s,

28,

Tlirundo ;

2.11,21,

Turdus :

13,

Ki, 19.

Friiig ilia :

3,4. 5, f), 12, 1. "J, i
17, 18. 2L», 23, 25, 26,

► Motncitta :

22,

2i,

/'urns :

6, 30,

Emberiz'i .

11,

29,

Lodio ■•

OV SKXBORNE. 205

Birds that sing as they fly are but few :

Skylark,
Titlark,

Woodlark,

-Blackbird,

White-throat,

Swallow,
Wren,

BAIl NOMINA.

Alauda vulgaris •
Alauda pratorum .

Alauda ai-borea :
Merula .-

Ficedulce affitiis :

J Hirundo domes-
\ tic a :
\ Passer trogio-
( dytes :

S Risiijff, suspended, and
? falling.

C In its descent ; also sit-
-< ting on trees, and walk-
i_ ing on the ground.
C Suspended ; in hot Sum-
< mer nights all night
f long.
Sometimes from bush to
bush.

5 Uses when singing on the
, wing odd jerks and ges-
( ticulations.

i In soft sunny weather.

> Sometimes from bush to
S bush.

Birds that breed most early in these parts

Raven,

Song-thrush,
Blackbird,

Rook,

Woodlark,

Ring-dove,

I

Corvus :

T Urdus :
Merula -.

Comix frugilega

Alauda arborea :
Palumbus to?:
quatus :

< Hatches in February and
I March.

In March.

In March.
5 Builds the beginning of
\ March.

Hatches in April.
i Lays the beginning of
5 April.

All birds that continue in full song till
after MidsummeK appear to me to breed
more than once.

Most kinds of birds seem to me to be
wild and shy somewhat in proportion to
their bulk ; I mean in this island, where

206 NATURAL HISTORY

they are much pursued and annoyed : but
in Ascension Island, and many other deso-
late places, mariners have found fowls so
unacquainted with an human figure, that
they would stand still to be taken ; as is
the case with boobies, &c. As an example
of what is advanced, I remark that the
golden-crested wren (the smallest British
bird) will stand unconcerned till you come
within three or four yards of it, while the
bustard f Otis), thelargest British land fowl,
does not care to admit a person within so
many furlongs. I am, &c.

LETTEK III.

TO THE SAINIE.

DEAR SIH; Sklbokne. Jan. l.'J, 1770.

Ir was no smnll matter of satisfaction to
me to find that you were not displeased
with my little niefhodus of birds. If there
was any merit in the sketch, it must be

or SELBORNE. 207

owing to its punctuality. For many months
I carried a list in my pocket of the birds
that were to be remarked, and, as I rode
or walked about my business, I noted each
day the continuance or omission of each
bird's song ; so that I am as sure of the
certainty of my facts as a man can be of any
transaction whatsoever.

I shall now proceed to answer the several
queries which you put in your two oblig-
ing letters, in the best manner that I am
able. Perhaps Eastwick, and its environs,
where you heard so very few birds, is not
a woodland country, and therefore not
stocked with such songsters. If you will
cast your eye on my last letter, you will
find that many species continued to warble
after the beginning of July.

The titlark and yellow hammer breed late,
the latter very late ; and therefore it is no
wonder that they protract their song : for
I lay it down as a maxim in ornithology,
that as long as there is any incubation going
on there is music. As to the redbreast and
wren, it is well known to the most in-

*2()8 N A T URAL HIS 1 O K Y

curious observer that thcv wliistle tlie vear
round, hard frost excepted ; especially the
latter.

It was not in my power to procure you a
black-cap, or a less reed-sparrow, or sedge-
bird, alive. As the first is undoubtedly,
and the last, as far as I can yet see, a Sum-
mer bird of passage, they would require
more nice and curious management in a
cage than 1 should be able to give them :
they are both distinguished songsters. The
note of the former has such a wild sweet-
ness that it always brings to my mind those
lines in a song in " An You Like It.,''

" And tune his merry note

" Unto the 7vUd bird's throat." Shakespeare.

The latter has a surprising variety of
notes resembling the song of several otlicr
birds ; but then it has also an hurrying
manner, not at all to its advantage : it is
notwithstanding a delicate polyglot.

It is new to me that titlarks in cages
sing in the night ; perhaps only caged birds
do so. I once knew a tame redbreast in a
cage that always sang as long as candles

OF SELBORNE. 209

were in the room ; but in their wild state
no one supposes they sing in the night.

I should be almost ready to doubt the
fact, that there are to be seen much fewer
birds in July than in any former month,
notwithstanding so many young are hatched
daily. Sure T am, that it is far otherwise
with respect to the awallou'i tribe, which
increases prodigiously as the Summer ad-
vances : and I saw, at the time mentioned,
many hundreds of young wagtails on the
banks of the Cherwell, which almost co-
vered the meadows. If the matter appears
as you say in the other species, may it not
be owing to the dams being engaged in
incubation, while the young are concealed
by the leaves ?

Many times have I had the curiosity to
open the stomach of woodcocks and snipes ;
but nothing ever occurred that helped to
explain to me what their subsistence might
be : all that 1 could ever find was a soft
mucus, among which lay many pellucid
small gravels. I am, &c.

VOL. I. p

210 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER IV.

TO THE SAME

DEAR SIR ; Selborne, Feb. I9, 1770.

Your observation that " the cuckoo does
*' not deposit its egg- indiscriminately in
" the nest of the first bird that comes in its
" way, but probably looks out a nurse in
** some degree congenerous, with whom to
" intrust its young," is perfectly new to
me ; and struck me so forcibly, that I na-
turally fell into a train of thought that led me
to consider whether the fact M^as so, and
what reason there was for it. When I came
to recollect and inquire, I could not find
that any cuckoo had ever been seen in these
parts, except in the nest of the wagtail, the
hedge-sparrow, the titlark, the white-throat,
and the red-breast, all soft-billed insectivo-
rous birds. The excellent Mr. Willughhy
mentions the nest of the palumbus (ring-
dove J, and o( the fringil la f chaffinch J, birds

OF SELBORNE. 211

that subsist on acorns and grains, and such
hard food : but then he does not mention
them as of his own knowledge ; but says
afterwards that he saw himself a wagtail
feeding a cuckoo. It appears hardly possi-
ble that a soft-billed bird should subsist on
the same food with the hard-billed : for the
former have thin membranaceous stomachs
suited to their soft food ; while the latter,
the granivorous tribe, have strong muscular
gizzards, which, like mills, grind, by the
help of small gravels and pebbles, what is
swallowed. This proceeding of the cuckoo,
of dropping its eggs as it were by chance,
is such a monstrous outrage on maternal
affection, one of the first great dictates of
nature, and such a violence on instinct,
that, had it only been related of a bird in
the Brazils, or Peru, it would never have
merited our belief. But yet, should it fur-
ther appear that this simple bird, when di-
vested of that natural a-ro^yn that seems to
raise the kind in general above themselves,
and inspire them with extraordinary de-
grees of cunning and address, may be still

p 2

212 NATURAL HISTORY

endued with a more enlarged faculty of dis-
cerning what species are suitable and con-
generous nursing-mothers for its disre-
garded eggs and young, and may deposit
them only under their care, this would be
adding wonder to wonder, and instancing,
in a fresh manner, that the methods of Pro-
vidence are not subjected to any mode or
rule, but astonish us in new lights, and in
various and changeable appearances.

What was said by a very ancient and
sublime writer concerning the defect of na-
tural affection in the ostrich, may be well
applied to the bird we are talking of:

" She is hardened against her young ones,
*' as though they were not hers :

" Because God hath deprived her of wis-
" dom, neither hath he imparted to her iin-
" derstandingT*

Query. Does each female cuckoo lay but
one egg in a season, or does she drop seve-
ral in different nests according as opportu-
nity offers ? I am, &c.

• Job. xxxix. 16, 17-

OF SELBOTxNE. 213

LETTER V.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, April 12, 1770.

I HEARD many birds of several species sing
last year after Midsummer ; enough to prove
that the Summer solstice is not the period
that puts a stop to the music of the woods.
The yellow-hammer, no doubt, persists with
more steadiness than any other ; but the
woodlark, the wren, the redbreast, the swal-
low, the white-throat, the goldfinch, the
common linnet, are all undoubted instances
of the truth of what I advanced.

If this severe season does not interrupt
the regularity of the Summer migrations,
the blackcap will be here in two or three
days. I wish it was in my power to pro-
cure you one of those songsters ; but I am
no bird-catcher ; and so little used to birds
in a cage, that I fear if I had one it would
soon die for want of skill in feeding.

214 NATURAL HISTORY

Was your reed-sparrow, which you kept
in a cage, the thick-billed reed-sparrow of
the Zoology, p. 320 ; or was it the less
reed-sparrow ol' Ray, the sedge-bird of
Mr. Pennant\ last publication, p. 16 ?

As to the matter of long-billed birds
growing fatter in moderate frosts, 1 have
no doubt within myself what should be
the reason. The thriving at those times
appears to me to arise altogether from
the gentle check which the cold throws
upon insensible perspiration. The case
is just the same with blackbirds, &c. ;
and farmers and warrcners observe, the
first, that their hogs fat more kindly at
such times, and the latter that their rab-
bits are never in such good case as in
a gentle frost. But when frosts are se-
vere, and of long continuance, the case is
soon altered ; for then a want of food soon
overbalances the repletion occasioned by
a checked perspiration. 1 have observed,
moreover, that some human constitutions
are more inclined to plumpness in Winter
than in Summer.

OF SELBOIINE. 215

When birds come to suffer by severe
frost, I find that the first that fail and die
are the redwing-fieldfares, and then the
song- thrushes.

You wonder, with good reason, that the
hedge-sparrows, &c. can be induced at all
to sit on the egg of the cuckoo without
being scandalized at the vast dispropor-
tioned size of the supposititious egg : but
the brute creation, I suppose, have very
little idea of size, colour, or number. For
the common hen, I know, when the fury
of incubation is on her, will sit on a single
shapeless stone instead of a nest full of
eggs that have been withdrawn ; and,
moreover, a hen-turkey, in the same cir-
cumstances, would sit on in the empty nest
till she perished with hunger.

I think the matter might easily be deter-
mined whether a cuckoo lays one or two
eggs, or more, in a season, by opening a
female during the laying-time. If more
than one was come down out of the ovary,
and advanced to a good size, doubtless

216 NATURAL HISTORY

then she would that Spring lay more than
one.

I will endeavour to get a hen, and to
examine.

Your supposition that there may be some
natural obstruction in singing birds while
they are mute, and that when this is re-
moved the song recommences, is new and
bold; I wish you could discover some good
grounds for this suspicion.

I was glad you were pleased with my
specimen of the caprimulgus, or fern-owl ;
you were, I find, acquainted with the bird
before.

When we meet, I shall be glad to have
some conversation with you concerning the
proposal you make of my drawing up an
account of the animals in this neighbour-
hood. Your partiality towards my small
abilities persuades you, I fear, that I am
able to do more than is in my power : for
it is no small undertaking for a man unsuj)-
ported and alone to begin a natural history
frorii his own autopsia ! Though there is

OF SELBORNE. 217

endless room for observation in the field of
nature, which is boundless, yet investiga-
tion (where a man endeavours to be sure of
his facts) can make but slow progress ; and
all that one could collect in many years
would go into a very narrow compass.

Some extracts from your ingenious " In-
vestigations of the difference between the
present temperature of the air in Italy," &c.
have fallen in my way ; and gave me great
satisfaction ; they have removed the objec-
tions that always arose in my mind when-
ever I came to the passages which you
quote. Surely the judicious Virgil, when
writing a didactic poem for the region of
Italy, could never think of describing-
freezing rivers, unless such severity of
weather pretty frequently occurred !

P. S. Swallows appear amidst snows
and frost

218 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER VI.

TO THE SAME.
DEAR SIR; Selborne, May 21, 1770.

1 HE severity and turbulence of last month
so interrupted the regular process of Sum-
mer migration, that some of the birds do
but just begin to show themselves, and
others are apparently thinner than usual ;
as the w^hite-throat, the black-cap, the red-
start, the fly-catcher. I well remember
that after the very severe Spring in the year
1730-40, Summer birds of passage were
very scarce. They come probably hither .
with a south-cast wind, or when it blows
between those points ; but in that unfa-
vourable year the winds blowed the whole
Spring and Summer through from the
opposite quarters. And yet amidst all
these disadvantages two swallows, as I
mentioned in my last, appeared this year
as early as the eleventh of April amidst

OF SELBORNE. 219

frost and snow ; but they withdrew again
for a time.

I am not pleased to find that some people
seem so little satisfied with Scopoli's new
publication;* there is room to expect
great things from the hands of that man,
who is a good naturalist : and one would
think that an history of the birds of so
distant and southern a region as Carniola
would be new and interesting. I could
wish to see that work, and hope to get it
sent down. Dr. Scopoli is physician to
the wretches that work in the quicksilver
mines of that district.

When you talked of keeping a reed-
sparrow, and giving it seeds, I could not
help wondering; because the reed-sparrow
which I mentioned to you (passer arundi-
naceus minor RaiiJ is a soft-billed bird, and
most probably migrates hence before Win-
ter ; whereas the bird you kept (passer tor-
quatus Rati) abides all the year, and is a
thick-billed bird. I question whether the

* This work he calls his Annus Primus Historko
NaturalU.

220 NATURAL HISTORY

latter be much of a songster ; but in this
matter I want to be better informed. The
former has a variety of hurrying notes, and
sings all night. Some part of the song of
the former, I suspect is attributed to the
latter. We have plenty of the soft-billed
sort ; which Mr. Pennanl had entirely left
out of his British Zoology, till I reminded
him of his omission. See British Zoology
last published, p. 16.*

■ I have somewhat to advance on the dif-
ferent manners in which different birds fly
and walk ; but as this is a subject that I
have not enough considered, and is of such
a nature as not to be contained in a small
space, I shall say nothing further about it
at present. t

No doubt the reason why the sex of birds
iu their first plumage is so difficult to be
distinguished is, as you say, ** because they
" are not to pair and discharge their pa-
" rental functions till the ensuing Spring."
As colours seem to be the chief external

• See letter xxv. to Mr. Pcunintt.
f Sec letter xlii. to Mr. Barringfon.

OF SELBORNE. 221

sexual distinction in many birds, these co-
lours do not take place till sexual attach-
ments begin to obtain. And the case is
the same in quadrupeds ; among whom, in
their younger days, the sexes differ but
little : but, as they advance to maturity,
horns and shaggy manes, beards and
brawny necks, &c. &c., strongly discrimi-
nate the male from the female. We may
instance still further in our own species,
where a beard and stronger features are
usually characteristic of the male sex :
but this sexual diversity does not take
place in earlier life ; for a beautiful youth
shall be so like a beautiful girl that the
difference shall not be discernible ;

" Quem si puellarum insereres choro,

" Mire ^agaces falleret hospites

" Discrimen obscurum, solutis

" Crinibus, ambiguoque vultu." Hon.

222 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER VII.

TO THE SAME.

RiNGMER, near Lewes,
DEAR SIR; Oct. 8, 1770.

1 AM glad to hear that Kuckalm is to fur-
nish you witli the birds of Jamaica ; a sight
of the hirundines of that hot and distant
island would be a great entertainment to
me.

The Aiini of Scopoli are now in my pos-
session ; and I have read the A?mus Primus
with satisfaction : for though some parts of
this work are exceptionable, and he may
advance some mistaken observations ; yet
the ornithology of so distant a country as
Carniola is very curious. Men that under-
take only one district are much more likely
to advance natural knowledge than those
that grasp at more than they can possi-
bly be acquainted with : every kingdom.

OF SELBORNE. 223

every province, should have its own mono-
grapher.

The reason, perhaps, why he mentions
nothing of Ray's Ornithology may be the
extreme poverty and distance of his coun-
try, into which the works of our great na-
turalist may have never yet found their way.
You have doubts, I know, whether this
Ornithology is genuine, and really the work
of S'copoli: as to myself, I think I discover
strong tokens of authenticity ; the style
corresponds with that of his Entomology ;
and his characters of his Ordines and Ge-
nera are many of them new, expressive and
masterly. He has ventured to alter some
of the Linncean genera with sufficient show
of reason,

It might, perhaps, be mere accident that
you saw so many swifts and no swallows at
Staines ; because, in my long observation
of those birds, I never could discover the
least degree of rivalry or hostility between
the species.

Ray remarks that birds of the gallin<B
order, as cocks and hens, partridges, and

224 NATaRAT, HISTORY

pheasants, &c. are /?M/t'£rrt/r/ce5, such as dust
themselves, using that method of cleansing
their feathers, and ridding themselves of
their vermin. As far as I can observe, many
birds that dust themselves never wash : and
I once thought that those birds that wash
themselves would never dust ; but here I
find myself mistaken ; for common house-
sparrows are great pulveratriccs, being fre-
quently seen grovelling and wallowing in
dusty roads ; and yet they are great wash-
ers. Does not the skylark dust ?

Query. Might not Mahomet and his fol-
lowers take one method of purification from
these jmlvcratrices .? because I find from tra-
vellers of credit, that if a strict mussulman
is journeying in a sandy desert where no
water is to be found, at stated hours he
strips off his clothes, and most scrupulously
rubs his body over with ^and or dust.

A countryman told me he had found a
young /<?ni-ou7 in the nest of a small bird
on the ground ; and that it was fed by the
little bird. I went to see this extraordinary
phenomenon, and found that it was a young

or SELBORXE 225

cuckoo hatched in the nest of a tit-lark :
it was become vastly too big for its nest,
appearing

in tenui re

Majores pennas nido extendisse

and was very fierce and pugnacious, pur-
suing my finger, as I teased it, for many
feet from the nest, and sparring and buffet-
ting with its wings like a game-cock. The
dupe of a dam appeared at a distance,
hovering about with meat in its mouth, and
expressing the greatest solicitude.

In July I saw several cuckoos skimming
over a large pond ; and found, after some
observation, that they were feeding on the
libellulcE, or dragon-JJies ; some of which
they caught as they settled on the weeds,
and some as they were on the wing. Not-
withstanding what LinncEus says, I cannot
be induced to believe that they are birds of
prey.

This district affords some birds that are
hardly ever heard of at Selhorne. In the
first place considerable flocks of crossbeaks

VOL. I. Q

226 NATURAL HISTORY

(loxia cMri'eVo.9/rffJ have appeared this Sum-
mer in the pine-groves belonging to this
house ; the icater-oiisel is said to haunt the
mouth of the Lcices river, near Neichaven ;
and tlic Cornish rhough builds, I know,
all along the chalky cliffs of the Sussex
shore.

I was greatly pleased to see little parties
of ring-ousels (my newly-discovered mi-
graters) scattered, at intervals, all along the
Sussex downs from Chichester to Lewes.
Let them come from whence they will, it
looks very suspicious that they are can-
toned along the coast in order to pass the
channel when severe weather advances.
They visit us again in April, as it should
seem, in their return ; and are not to be
found in the dead of Winter. It is remark-
able that they are very tame, and seem to
have no manner of apprehensions of dan-
ger from a person with a gun. There are
bustards on the wide downs near Bright-
helmslone. No doubt you are acquainted
with the Sussex downs : the prospects and
rides round Lewes are most lovely !

OF SELDORNE. 22?

As I rode along near the coast I kept a
very sharp look-out in the lanes and woods,
hoping I might, at this time of the year,
have discovered some of the Summer short-
winged birds of passage crowding towards
the coast in order for their departure : but
it was very extraordinary that I never saw
a redstart,, white-throat, black-cap, un-
crested wren, fly-catcher, &c. And I re-
member to have made the same remark in
former years, as I usually come to this
place annually about this time. The birds
most common along the coast at present
are the stone-chatters, whinchats, buntings,
linnets, some few wheat- ears, tit-larks, &c.
Swallows and house-martins abound yet,
induced to prolong their stay by this soft,
still, dry season.

A land tortoise, which has been kept for
thirty years in a little walled court belong-
ing to the house where I now am visiting,
retires under ground about the middle of
November, and comes forth again about the
middle of ApriL When it first appears in
the Spring it discovers very little inclina-

Q 2

228 NATURAL HISTORY

tion towards food ; but in the height of
Summer grows voracious : and then as the
Summer declines its appetite declines ; so
that for the last six weeks in Autumn it
hardly eats at all. -Milky plants, such as
lettuces, dandelions, sowthistles, are its
favourite dish. In a neighbouring village
one was kept till by tradition it was sup-
posed to be an hundred years old. An in-
stance of vast longevity in such a poor
reptile!

LETTER VIII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Dec. 20, 1770.

The birds that I took for aherdavines
were reed-sparrows (passeres torquatij.

There are, doubtless, many home internal
migrations within this kingdom that want
to be better understood : witness those vast

OF SELBORNE. 229

flocks of hen chaffinches that appear with
us in the Winter without hardly any cocks
among them. Now was there a due pro-
portion of each sex, it should seem very
improbable that any one district should
produce such numbers of these little birds ;
and much more when only one half of the
species appears : therefore we may con-
clude that the fringillce ccelehes, for some
good purposes, have a peculiar migration of
their own in which the sexes part. Nor
should it seem so w^onderful that the inter-
course of sexes in this species of birds
should be interrupted in Winter ; since in
many animals, and particularly in bucks
and does, the sexes herd separately, except
at the season when commerce is necessary
for the continuance of the breed. For this
matter of the chaffinches see Fauna Suecica,
p. 85, and Sy sterna Naturce, p. 318. I see
every Winter vast flights of hen chaffinches,
but none of cocks.

Your method of accounting for the pe-
riodical motions of the British singing birds,
or birds of flight, is a very probable one :

230 NATURAL li I STORY

since the matter of food is a great regulator
of the actions and proceedings of the brute
creation : there is but one that can be set
in competition with it, and that is love.
But I cannot quite iicquiesce with you in
one circumstance, when you advance that,
" when they have thus feasted, they again
" separate into small parties of five or six,
" and get the best fare they can within a
" certain district, having no inducement
" to go in quest of fresh-turned earth,"
Now if you mean that the business of con-
gregating is quite at an end from the con-
clusion of wheat-sowing to the season of
barley and oats, it is not the case with us ;
for larks and chaffinches, and particularly
linnets, flock and congregate as much in the
very dead of Winter as when the husband-
man is busy with his ploughs and harrows.
Sure there can be no doubt but that
woodcocks and fieldfares leave us in the
Spring, in order to cross the seas, and to
retire to some districts more suitable to the
))urpose of breeding. That the former pair
bel'orc they retire, and liuit the hens are

OF SELBORNE. 231

forward with egg, I myself, when I was a
sportsman, have often experienced. It
cannot indeed be denied but that now and
then we hear of a woodcock's nest, or young-
birds, discovered in some part or other of
this island : but then they are always men-
tioned as rarities, and somewhat out of the
common course of things : but as to red-
wings and fieldfares, no sportsman or natu-
ralist has ever yet, that 1 could hear, pre-
tended to have found the nest or young of
those species in any part of these kingdoms.
And I the more admire at this instance as
extraordinary, since, to all appearance, the
same food in Summer as well as in Winter
might support them here which maintains
theircongenerSjtheblackbirds and thrushes,
did they choose to stay the Summerthrough.
From hence it appears that it is not food
alone Avhich determines some species of
birds with regard to their stay or depar-
ture. Fieldfares and redwings disappear
sooner or later according as the warm
weather comes on earlier or later. For I

232 NATURAL HISTORY

well remember, after that dreadful Winter
1739-40, that cold north-east winds con-
tinued to blow on through April and May,
and that these kinds of birds (what few
remained of them) djd not depart as usual,
but were seen lingering about till the be-
ginnhig o^ June.

The best authority that we can have for
the nidification of the birds above-men-
tioned in any district, is the testimony of
faunists that have written professedly the
natural history of particular countries.
Now, as to the fieldfare, Limiaus, in his
Fauna Snecica, says of it, that " viaximis
ill (irhoribus nidijicatr and of the redwing
he says, in the same place, that *' nidijicat
171 iticcliis arbusculis, sive sejnbus : ova sex
ccBruleo-viridia inasculis nigris variis.*'
Hence we may be assured that fieldfares and
redwings breed in Swede?!. Scopoli says, in
his Annus Primus, of the woodcock, that
" 7iiij)ta ad nas venit circa (cquinoctium ver-
naUr meaning mTirol, of whichheis a na-
tive. And afterwards he adds, " nidijicat in

OF SELBORNE. 233

paludihus alpinis: ova poiiit 3 — 5. It does
not appear from Kramer that woodcocks
breed at d\\'n\ Austria: but he says, "Avis
" h(EC septentrionalium provinciarum cestivo
** tempore incola est ; uhiplerumquenidijicat.
** App>ropinquante hi/emeaustraiiores provin-
" cias petit : hinc circa plenilunium mensis
" Octobris plerumque Austriam transmigrat.
*' Tunc riirsus circa plenilunium potissimum
*' mensis Martii per Austriam matrimonio
" juncta ad septentrioiiales provincias redit."
For the whole passage (which I have
abridged) see Elenchus, &c. p. 351. This
seems to be a full proof of the migration
of woodcocks ; though little is proved
concerning the place of breeding.

P. S. There fell in the county of Rut-
land, in three weeks of this present very
wet weather, seven inches and a half of
rain, which is more than has fallen in any
three weeks for these thirty years past in
that part of the world. A mean quantity
in that county for one year is twenty
inches and an half.

234. NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER IX.

TO THE SAME.

Fyfield, near Andover, Feb. 12, 177I-
DEAR SIR;

You are, I know, no great friend to
migration ; and the well-attested accounts
from various parts of the kingdom seem to
justify you in your suspicions, that at least
many of the swallow kind do not leave us
in the Winter, but lay themselves up like
insects and bats, in a torpid state, and
slumber away the more uncomfortable
months till the return of the sun and fine
weather awakens them.

But then we must not, I think, deny
migration in general ; because migration
certainly does subsist in some places, as
my brother in Andalusia has fully informed
me. Of the motions of these birds he has
ocular demon.stration, for many weeks to-

OF SELBORNE. Q,S5

gether, both spring and fall : during which
periods myriads of the swallow kind tra-
verse the Straits from north to south, and
from south to north, according to the season.
And these vast migrations consist not only
of hirundines but of bee-birds, hoopoes, oro
pendolos, or golden thrushes, &c. &c. and
also of many of oxxx soft-billed summer birds
of passage ; and moreover of birds which
never leave us, such as all the various sorts
of hawks and kites. Old Belon, two hun-
dred years ago, gives a curious account of
the incredible armies of hawks and kites
which he saw in the spring-time traversing
the Thracian Bosphorus from Asia to Eu-
rope. Besides the above-mentioned, he
remarks that the procession is swelled
by whole troops of eagles and vultures.

Now it is no wonder that birds residing
in Africa should retreat before the sun as it
advances, and retire to milder regions, and
especially birds of prey, whose blood being
heated with hot animal food, are more im-
patient of a sultry climate : but then I can-
not help wondering why kites and hawks.

236 NATURAL HISTORY

and such hardy birds as are known to defy
all the severity of Eughnuf, and even of
Sweden and all north Europe, should want
to migrate from the south of Europe, and
be dissatisfied with tlieWinters of ^ ndalusia.
It does not appear to me that much stress
may be laid on the difficulty and hazard
that birds mus-t run in their migrations, by
reason of vast oceans, cross winds, &c. ; be-
cause, if w^e reflect, a bird may travel from
England to the equator without launching
out and exposing itself to boundless seas,
and that by crossing the water at Dover,
and again at Gibraltar. And I with the
more confidence advance this obvious re-
mark, because my brother has always found
that some of his birds, and particularly the
swallow kind, are very sparing of their
pains in crossing the Mediterranean : for
when arrived ViVGibraltar, they do not

" Rang'd in figure wedge their way,
" And set forth

" Their airy caravan high over seas

" Flying, and over lands with mutual wing

" Easing their flight:" Milton.

OF SELBORNE. 237

but scout and hurry along in little detached
parties of six or seven in a company ; and
sweeping low, just over the surface of the
land and water, direct their course to the
opposite continent at the narrowest passage
they can find. They usually slope across
the bay to the south-west, and so pass over
opposite to Tangier, which, it seems, is the
narrowest space.

In former letters we have considered
whether it was probable that woodcocks in
moon-shiny nights cross the German ocean
from Scandinavia. As a proof that birds of
less speed may pass that sea, considerable
as it is, I shall relate the following incident,
which, though mentioned to have hap-
pened so many years ago, was strictly mat-
ter of fact : — As some people were shooting
in the parish of Trotten, in the county of
Sussex, they killed a duck in that dreadful
Winter 1708-9, with a silver collar about
its neck,* on which were engraven the
arms of the king of Denmark. This anec-

* I have read a like anecdote of a swan.

238 NATURAL IITSTORY

dote the rector of Trotitn at that time has
often told to a near relation of mine ; and,
to the best of my remembrance, the collar
was in the possession of the rector.

At present I do not know any body near
the sea-side that will take the trouble to
remark at what time of the moon wood-
cocks first come : if I lived near the sea
myself I would soon tell you more of the
matter. One thing I used to observe when
I was a sportsman, that there were times
in which woodcocks were so sluggish and
sleepy that they would droj) again when
flushed just before the spaniels, nay, just at
the muzzle of a gun that had been fired at
them : whether this strange laziness was
the effect of a recent fatiguing journey 1
shall not presume to say.

Nightingales not only never reach North-
umberland and Scotland, but also as I have
been always told, Devonshire and Cornwall.
In those two last counties we cannot attri-
bute the failure of them to the want of
warmth : the defect in the west is rather a
presumptive argument that these birds

OF SELBORNE. 239

come over to us from the continent at the
narrowest passage, and do not stroll so far
westward.

Let me hear from your own observa-
tion whether skylarks do not dust. I think
they do : and if they do, whether they
wash also.

The alauda pratensis of Rai/ was the
poor dupe that was educatmg the booby
of a cuckoo mentioned in my letter of Octo-
ber last.

Your letter came too late for me to pro-
cure a ring-ousel for Mr. Tunstal during
their autumnal visit ; but I will endeavour
to get him one when they call on us again
in April. I am glad that you and that gen-
tleman saw my Andalusian birds ; I hope
they answered your expectation. Roi/stort,
or grey crows, are Winter birds that come
much about the same time with the wood-
cock : they, like the fieldfare and red wing,
have no apparent reason for migration : for
as they fare in the Winter like their conge-
ners, so might they, in all appearance, in
the Summer. Was not Tenant, when a boy.

240 NATURAL HISTORY

mistaken ? did he not find a missel-thrush's
nest, and take it for the nest of a field-
fare ?

The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon, cenas
Raii, is the last \V^inter bird of passage
which appears with us ; and is not seen till
towards theend o^ November : about twenty
years ago they abounded in the district of
Selhorne ; and strings of them were seen
morning and evening that reached a mile
or more : but since the beechen woods have
been greatly thinned, they are much de-
creased in number. The ring-dove, palum-
bus Rail, stays with us the whole year, and
breeds several times through the Summer.

Before I received your letter of October
last I had just remarked in my journal that
the trees were unusually green. This un-
common verdure lasted on late into Novem-
ber ; and may be accounted for from a late
Spring, a cool and moist Summer; but more
particularly from vast armies of chafers, or
tree-beetles, which, in many places, redu-
ced M-liole woods to a leafless naked state.
These trees shot again at JMidsummer, and

OF SKLBOKNE. ^41

then retained their foliage till very late in
the year.

My musical friend, at whose house I am
now visiting, has tried all the owls that
are his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe
set at concert-pitch, and finds they all
hoot in B flat. He will examine the night-
ingales next Spring.

I am, &c. &c.

LETTER X.

TO THE SAME

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Aug. 1,1771.

From what follows, it will appear that
neither owls nor cuckoos keep to one note.
A friend remarks that many (most) of his
owls hoot in B flat ; but that one went
almost half a note below A. The' pipe he
tried their notes by was a common half-
crown pitch-pipe, such as masters use for

VOL. I. R

24^ NATURAf, HISTORY

tuning of harpsichords ; it was the common
London pitch.

A neighbour of mine, who is said to have
a nice ear, remarks that the owls about this
village hoot in three different keys, in G
flat, or F sharp, in B flat and A flat. He
heard two hooting to each other, the one
in A flat, and the other in B flat. Query :
Do these different notes proceed from dif-
ferent species, or only from various indivi-
duals ? The same person finds upon trial
that the note of the cuckoo (of which we
have but one species) varies in different
individuals , for, about Sclborne wood, he
found they were mostly in D : he heard
two sing together, the one in D, the other
in D sharp, who made a disagreeable con-
cert : he afterwards heard one in-D sharp,
and about Woolmer-forest some in C. As to
nightingales, he says that their notes are so
short, and their transitions so rapid, that he
cannot well ascertain their key. Perhaps
in a cage and in a room, their notes may
be more distinguishable. This person has
tried to settle the notes of a swift, and of

OF SKLUOHXF,. '243

several Other small birds, but cannot bring
them to any criterion.

As I have often remarked that redwings
are some of the first birds that suffer with
us in severe weather, it is no wonder at all
that they re treatfrom5'crtM(/?72ai;eawWinters:
and much more the ordo oi grallce, who all,
to a bird, forsake the northern parts of Eu-
rope at the approach of Winter. " GrallcB
*' tanquam conjuratcB unanimiier infugam se
*' conjiciunt ; ne earum unicam quidem inter
" nos hahitantem invenire possimus ; ut enim
" (Estate in australibus degere nequeunt ob
" defectum himbiicorum, terramque siccam ;
*' ita nee infrigidisobeandem causa m,'' says
Ekmarck the Swede, in his ingenious little
treatise called Migratioiies Avium, which
by all means you ought to read while your
thoughts run on the subject of migration.
See Amcenitatcs Acade'micce, vol. iv. p. 565.

Birds may be so circumstanced as to be
obliged to migrate in one country and not
in another : but the gralhe (which pro-
cure their food from marshes and boggy
ground) must in Winter forsake the more

R 2

^44 NATURAL H 1 S I O R Y

northerly parts of Europe, or perish for
want of food.

I am glad you are making inquiries from
Liiinaus concerninf:r the woodcock : it is
expected of him that he should be able to
account for the motions and manner of life
of the animals of his own Fauna.

Faunists, as you observe, are too apt to
acquiesce in bare descriptions, and a few
synonyms : the reason is plain : because all
that may be done at home in a man's study,
but the investigation of the life and con-
versation of animals, is a concern of much
more trouble and difficulty, and is not to
be attained but by the active and inquisi-
tive, and by those that reside much in the
country.

Foreign systematics, are, [observe, much
too vague in their specific differences ;
which are almost universally constituted by
one or two particular marks, the.rest of the
description running in general terms. But
our countf}'man, the excellent Mr. Rat/, is
the only describer that conveys some pre-
cise idea in everv term or word, maintain-

OF SELBORNE. 245

ing his superiority over his followers and
imitators in spite of the advantages of fresh
discoveries and modern information.

At this distance of years it is not in my
power to recollect at what periods wood-
cocks used to be sluggish or alert when I
was a sportsman : but, upon my mentioning
this circumstance to a friend, he thinks he
has observed them to be remarkably listless
against snow^y foul w^eather : if this should
be the case, then the inaptitude for flying
arises only from an eagerness for food ; as
sheep are observed to be very intent on
grazing against stormy wet evenings.

I am, &c. &c.

LETTER XI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Feb. 8, 1772.

When I ride about in the Winter, and see
such prodigious flocks of various kinds of
birds, I cannot help admiring at these con-

246 NATURAL HISTORY

gregations, and wishing that it was in my
power to account for those appearances
almost peculiar to the season. The two
great motives which regulate the proceed-
ings of the brute creation are love and hun-
ger ; the former incites animals to perpe-
tuate their kind, the latter induces them to
preserve individuals : whether either of
these should seem to be the ruling passion-
in the matter of congregating is to be con-
sidered. As to love, that is out of the ques-
tion at a time of the year when that soft
passion is not indulged; besides, during the
amorous season, such a jealousy prevails
between the male birds, that they can hardly
bear to be together in the same hedge or
held. Most of the singing and elation of
spirits of that time seem to me to be the
effect of rivalry and emulation : and it is to
this spirit of jealousy that 1 chiefly attri-
bute the equal dispersion of birds in the
Spring over the face of the country.

Now as to the business of food : as these
animals are actuated by instinct to hunt for
necessary food, they should not, one would

OF SELBOliNE. 24?

suppose, crowd together in pursuit of sus-
tenance at a time when it is most likely to
fail ; yet such associations do take place in
hard weather chiefly, and thicken as the
severity increases. As some kind of self-
interest, and self-defence is no doubt the
motive for the proceeding, may it not arise
from the helplessness of their state in such
rigorous seasons ; as men crowd together,
when under great calamities, though they
know not why ? Perhaps approximation
may dispel some degree of cold ; and a
crowd may make each individual appear
safer from the ravages of birds of prey and
other dangers.

If I admire when I see how much con-
generous birds love to congregate, I am the
more struck when I see incongruous ones
in such strict amity. If we do not much
wonder to see a flock of rooks usually at-
tended by a train of daws, yet it is strange
that the former should so frequently have a
flight of starlings for their satellites. Is it
because rooks have a more discerning scent
than their attendants, and can lead them to

248 NATURAL HISTORY

spots more productive of food ? Anatomists
say that rooks, by reason of two large nerves
which run down between the eyes into the
upper mandible, have a more delicate feel-
ing in their beaks than other round-billed
birds, and can grope for their meat when
out of sight. Perhaps, then, their associates
attend them on the motives of interest, as
greyhounds wait on the motions of their
finders ; and as lions are said to do on the
yelpings of jackals. Lapwings and starlings
sometimes associate.

LETTER XIL

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; March 9, 1772.

As a gentleman and myself were walking
on the fourth of last November round the
sea-banks at Newhaven, near the mouth of
the Lewes river, in pursuit of natural know-

OF SELBORNE. 249

ledge, we were surprised to see three house-

SM'allows gliding very swiftly by us. That

morning was rather chilly, with the wind

at north-west ; but the tenor of the weather

for some time before had been delicate, and

the noons remarkably w^arm. From this

incident, and from repeated accounts which

I meet with, I am more and more induced

to believe that many of the swallow kind

do not depart from this island ; but lay

themselves up in holes and caverns ; and

do, insect-like and bat-like, come forth at

mild times, and then retire again to their

latebrce. Nor make I the least doubt but

that, if I lived at Newhaven, Seaford,

Brighthelmstone, or any of those towns near

the chalk-cliffs of the Sussex coast, by

proper observations, I should see swallows

stirring at periods of the Winter, when the

noons were soft and inviting, and the sun

warm and invigorating. And I am the

more of this opinion from what I have

remarked during some of our late Springs,

that though some swallows did inake their

appearance about the usual time, viz. the

250 NATURAL lIISTOIiy

thirteenth or fourteenth oi April, yet, meet-
ing with an harsh reception, and blustering
cold north-east winds, they immediately
withdrew, absconding for several days,
till the weather gave them better encou-
ragement.

LETTER XIII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; April 12, 1772.

AVhile I was in Sussex last Autumn my
residence was at the village near Lewes,
from whence I had formerly the pleasure
of writing to you. On the first of Novem-
ber I remarked that the old tortoise, for-
merly mentioned, began first to dig the
ground in order to the forming of its hyber-
naculum, 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 mo-

OF sp:lbor]ne. 251

tion 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 copulation. Nothing can be more assi-
duous 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 thirteenth of November, yet the work
remained unfinished. Harsher weather,
and frosty mornings, would have quickened
its operations. No part of its behaviour
ever struck me more than the extreme timi-
dity 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 at-

252 ' NATURAL HISTORY

tended to, it becomes an excellent weather-
glass ; for as sure as it walks elate, and as
it were on tiptoe, feeding with great ear-
nestness in a morning, so sure Mill it rain
before night. It is totally a diurnal animal,
and never pretends to stir after it becomes
dark. The tortoise, like other reptiles, has
an arbitrary stomach as well as lungs ; and
can refrain from eating as well as breathing
for a great part of the year. When first
awakened it eats nothing ; nor again in
the Autumn before it retires : through the
height of the Summer it feeds voraciously,
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 bene-
factress with awkward alacrity : but remains
inattentive to strangers. Thus not only
" the ox knoKcth his ownet\ and the ass his
master s crib,^'* but the most abject reptile

* Isaiah i. 3.

OF SELBORNE. 253

and torpid of beings distinguishes the hand
that feeds it, and is touched with the feel-
ings of gratitude ! I am, &c. &c.

P. S. In about three days after 1 left
Susr,ex the tortoise retired into the ground
under the hepatica.

LETTER XIV.

TO THE SAME

DEAR SIR; Sejlbokne, March 26, 1773.

The more I reflect on the (rro^yvi of ani-
mals, 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
H'ill drive before her with relentless cruelty.

'254 NATURAL JU STORY

This affection sublimes the passions,
quickens the invention and sharpens the
sagacity of the brute creation. Thus an
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 par-
tridge will tumble along before a sportsman
in order to draw away the dogs from her
helpless covey. In the time of nidification
the most feeble birds will assault the most
rapacious. All the hirundines of a village
are up in arms at the sight of an hawk,
whom they will persecute till he leaves that
district. A very exact observer has often
remarked that a pair of ravens nesting in
the rock of Gibraltar would suffer no vul-
ture or eagle to rest near their station, but
would drive them from the hill with an
amazing fury : even the blue thrush at the
season of breeding would dart out from the
clefts of the rocks to chase away the kestril,

OF SELBOUNE. 255

or the sparrow-hawk. If you stand near
the nest of a bird that has young, she will
not be induced to betray them by an inad-
vertent fondness, but will wait about at a
distance with meat in her mouth for an
hour together,.

Should I farther corroborate what I have
advanced above by some anecdotes which
I probably may have mentioned before in
conversation, yet you will, I trust, pardon
the repetition for the sake of the illustra-
tion.

The fly-catcher of the Zoology (the stopa'
rola of Ray) builds every year in the vines
that grow on the walls of my house. A
pair of these little birds had one year inad
vertently placed their nest on a naked
bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being
aware of the inconvenience that followed.
But an hot sumiy season coming on before
the brood was half fledged, the reflection
of the wall became insupportable, and must
inevitably have destroyed the tender young,
had not affection, suggested an expedient,
and prompted the parent-birds to hover

'256 N^ATUHAI- HISTORY

over the nest all the hotter hours, while
with wings expanded, and mouths gaping
for breath, they screened off the heat from
their suifering offspring.

A farther instance I once saw of notable
sagacity in a willow- v.ren, which had built
in a bank in my fields. This bird a friend
and myself had observed as she sat in her
nest ; but were particularly careful not to
disturb her, though we saw she eyed us
with some degree of jealousy. Some days
after, as we passed that way, we were de-
sirous of remarking how this brood went
on ; but no nest could be found, till I hap-
pened to take up a large bundle of long
green moss, as it were, carelessly thrown
over the nest, in order to dodge the eye of
any impertinent intruder.

A still more remarkable mixture of saga-
city and instinct occurred to me one day
as my people were pulling off the lining of
an 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

OF SELBORNE. 257

difficulty that it could be taken ; when it
proved to be a large white-bellied field-
mouse with three or four young clinging
to her teats by their mouths and feet. It
was amazing that the desultory and rapid
motions of this dam should not oblige her
litter to quit their hold, especially when it
appeared that they were so young as to
be both naked and blind !

To these instances of tender attachment,
many more of which might be daily disco-
vered by those that are studious of nature,
may be opposed that rage of affection, that
monstrous perversion of the a-ro^yri, 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 prepos-
terous murder. When I hear now and then
of an abandoned mother that destroys her
offspring, I am not so much amazed ; since
reason perverted, and the bad passions let
loose, are capable of any enormity : but

VOL. I. s

258 NATURAL HISTORY

why the parental feelings of brutes, that
usually flow in one most uniform tenor,
should sometimes be so extravagantly
diverted, I leave to abler philosophers
than myself to determine.

I am, &c.

LETTER XV.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, July 8, 1773.

Some young men went down lately to a
pond on the verge ofWolmer-forest to hunt
flappers, or young wild-ducks, many of
which they caught, and, among the rest,
st)me 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 Eng-
land, and was much pleased with the dis-
covery : this I look upon as a great stroke
in natural history.

OF SELBORNE. 259

We have had, ever since I can remem-
ber, 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 sun-
set (for then the mice begin to run) they
sally forth in quest of prey, and hunt all
round the hedges of meadows and small
enclosures for them, which seem to be their
only food. In this irregular country we
can stand on an eminence and see them
beat the fields over like a setting-dog, and
often drop down in the grass or corn. I
have minuted these birds with my watch
for an hour together, and have found that
they return to their nest, the one or the
other of them, about once in five minutes ;
reflecting at the same time on the adroit-
ness 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

s 2

260 NATURAL HISTORY

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 cla-
morous hooting appears to me to come
from the wood kinds. The white owl does
indeed snore and hiss in a tremendous man-
ner ; and these menaces well answer the
intention of intimidating : for I have known
a whole village up in arms on such an oc-
casion, imagining the church-yard to be
full of goblins and spectres. White owls
also often scream horribly as they fly along;
from this screaming probably arose the
common people's imaginary species of
scrccch-owl, which they superstitiously think
attends the windows of dying persons. The

OF SELBORNE. 26l

plumage of the remiges of the wings of
every species of owl that I have yet exa-
mined is remarkably soft and pliant. Per-
haps it may be necessary that the wings of
these birds should not make much resist-
ance or rushing, that they may be enabled
to steal through the air unheard upon a
nimble and watchful quarry.

While I am talking of owls, it may not
be improper to mention what I was told
by a gentleman of the county of Wilts. As
they were grubbing a vast hollow pollard-
ash that had been the mansion of owls for
centuries, he discovered at the bottom a
mass of matter that at first he could not
account for. After some examination, he
found that it was a congeries of the bones
of mice (and perhaps of birds and bats) that
had been heaping together for ages, being,
cast up in pellets out of the crops of many
generations of inhabitants. For owls cast
up the bones, fur, and feathers of what
they devour, after the manner of hawks.
He believes, he told me, that there were
bushels of this kind of substance.

262 NATURAL HISTORY

When brown owls hoot, their throats
swell as big as an hen's egg. I have known
an owl of this species live a full year with-
out 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 pre-
sume are necessary to collect every ray of
light, and large concave ears to command
the smallest degree of sound or noise.

1 am, &c.

It will be proper to premise here that the sixteenth,
eighteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first letters have been
published already in the Pliilosophical Transactions:
but as nicer observation has furnished several corrections
and additions, it is hoped that the re-publication of them
will not give offence ; especially as these sheets would
be very imperfect without them, and as they will be new
to many readers who had no opportunity of seeing them
when they made their first appearance.

OF SELBORNE. 263

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 trouble-
some insects. Some districts in the South
seas, near Guiaquil,* are desolated, it seems,
by the infinite swarms of venomous mos-
quitoes, 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 con-
templates the myriads of insects that sport
in the sun-beams of a Summer evening in
this country, will soon be convinced to
what a degree our atmosphere would be
choaked with them was it not for the
friendly interposition of the swallow tribe.

Many species of birds have their peculiar
lice ; but the hirundines alone seem to be

* See Ulloa'a Travels.

264

NATURAL HISTORY

annoyed with diptcrousinfiects, which, infest
every species, and are so large, in propor-
tion to themselves, that they must be ex-
tremely irksome and injurious to them.
These are the /lippaboicte hirundhies, with
narrow subulated wings, abounding in
every nest ; and are hatched by the warmth
of the bird's own body during incubation,
and crawl about under its feathers.

A species of them is familiar to horsemen
in the south of England under the name of
forest-Jiy ; and to some of side-fiy, from its
running sideways like a crab. It creeps
under the tails, and about the groins, of
horses, which, at their first coming out of
the north, are rendered half frantic by the
tickling sensation ; while our own breed
little regards them.

The curious Reaumur discovered the large
eggs, or rather pup(c, of these flies as big
as the flics themselves, which he hatched in
his own bosom. Any person that will take
the trouble to examine the old nests of
cither species of swallows may find in them
ihe black shining cases or skins of the pupa;

OF SELBORNE. 265

of these insects : but for other particulars,
too long for this place, we refer the reader
to V Histoire d' Insectes of that admirable
entomologist. Tom. iv. pi. 11.

LETTER XVI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Nov. 20, 1773.

In obedience to your injunctions I sit
down to give you some account of the
house-martin, or martlet; and, if my mono-
graphy of this little domestic and familiar
bird should happen to meet with your ap-
probation, I may probably soon extend my
inquiries to the rest of the British liirun-
dines — the swallow, the swift, and the
bank-martin.

A few house-martins begin to appear
about the sixteenth oi April ; usually some

266 NATURAL HISTORY

few days later than the swallow. For some
time after they appear, the hirundiiies m
general pay no attention to the business of
nidification, butplayandsport about, either
to recruit from th^ fatigue of their journey,
if they do migrate at all, or else that their
blood may recover its true tone and tex-
ture after it has been so long benumbed by
the severities of Winter. About the mid-
dle of Ma//, if the weather be fine, the
martin begins to think in earnest of pro-
viding a mansion for its family. The crust
or shell of this nest seems to be formed of
such dirt or loam as comes most readily to
hand, and is tempered and wrought to-
gether with little bits of broken straws to
render it tough and tenacious. As this
bird often builds against a perpendicular
wall without any projecting ledge under,
it requires its utmost efforts to get the first
foundation firmly fixed, so that it may
safely carry the superstructure. On this
occasion the bird not only clings with its
claws, but partly supports itself by strongly
inclining its tail against the wall, making

OF SELBORNE. 26?

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 pro-
vident architect has prudence and forbear-
ance enough not to advance her work too
fast ; but by building only in the morning,
and by dedicating the rest of the day to
food and amusement, gives it sufficient time
to dry and harden. About half an inch
seems to be a sufficient layer for a day.
Thus careful workmen when they build
mud-walls (informed at first perhaps by
this little bird) raise but a moderate layer
at a time, and then desist ; lest the work
should become top-heavy, and so be ruined
by its own weight. By this method in
about ten or twelve days is formed an
hemispheric nest with a small aperture to-
wards 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-spar-
row, as soon as the shell is finished, to seize

268 NATURAL HISTORY

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 Avill 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 exa-
mined 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, M^th tender assiduity, carry
out what comes away from their young.
Was it not for this affectionate cleanliness
the nestlings would soon be burnt up, and

OF SELBORNE. ^69

destroyed in so deep and hollow a nest, by
their own caustic excrement. In the quad-
ruped creation the same neat precaution is
made use of; particularly among dogs and
cats, where the dams lick away what pro-
ceeds 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 tiXixw,
or full growth, they soon become impatient
of confinement, and sit all day with their
heads out at the orifice, where the dams
by clinging to the nest, supply them with
food from morning to night. For a time
the young are fed on the wing by their
parents ; but the feat is done by so quick
and almost imperceptible a slight, that a
person must have attended very exactly to
their motions before he would be able to

270 NATURAL HISTORY

perceive it. As soon as the young are able
to shift for themselves, the dams imme-
diately turn their thoughts to the business
of a second brood : while the first flight,
shaken oft' and rejected by their nurses,
congregate in great flocks, and are the birds
that are seen clustering and hovering on
sunny mornings and evenings round towers
and steeples, and on the roofs of churches
and houses. These congregatings usually
begin to take place about the first week in
August; and therefore we may conclude
that by that time the first flight is pretty
well over. The young of this species do
not quit their abodes all together ; but the
more forward birds get abroad some days
before the rest. These, approaching the
eaves of buildings, and playing about be-
fore them, make people think that several
old ones attend one nest. They are often
capricious in fixing on a nesting-place, be-
ginning many edifices, and leaving them
unfinished ; but when once a nest is com-
pleted in a sheltered place, it serves for
several seasons. Those which breed in a

OF SELBORNE. 2?!

ready-finished house get the start, in hatch-
ing, 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 remem-
bered where they bred for many years in
vast abundance in an 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 an house without eaves in
an exposed district, where some martins
build year by year in the corners of the
windows. But, as the corners of these
windows (which face to the south-east and

272 NATURAL HISTORY

south-west) are too shallow, the nests are
washed down every hard rain ; and yet
these birds drudge on to no purpose from
Summer to Summer, without changing their
aspect or house. It is a piteous sight to
see them labouring when half their nest is
washed away and bringing dirt — " generis
lapsi sarcire rimias." Thus is instinct a
most wonderful unequal faculty ; in some
instances so much above reason, in other
respects so far below it ! Martins love to
frequent towns, especially if there are great
lakes and rivers at hand ; nay they even
affect the close air of London. And I have
not only seen them nesting in the Borough,
but even in the Strand and Fleet-street ;
but then it was obvious from the dinginess
of their aspect that their feathers partook
of the filth of that sooty atmosphere. Mar-
tins are by far the least agile of the four
species ; their wings and tails are short,
and therefore they are not capable of such
surprising turns and quick and glancing
evolutions as the swallow. Accordingly
they make use of a placid easy motion iu

OF SELDORNE. 273

a middle region of the air, seldom mount-
ing to any great height, and never sweep-
ing 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 twenty-first, 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 fre-
quent 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 third and sixth, after

VOL. I. T

274 NATURAL HISTORY

hey 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 in-
deed, or unless they do not return to the
district where they are bred, they must
undergo vast devastations some how, and
some where ; 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 co-
vered with soft downy feathers down to
their toes. They are no songsters ; but
twitter in a pretty inward soft manner in
their nests. During the time of breeding
they are often greatly molested with fleas.

I am, &c.

or SELliORNE. 27''>

LETTER XVII.

TO THE SAME.

rvr A p CTP RiXGMER near Lewes>

1 RECEIVED your last favour just as I was
setting out for this place ; and am pleased
to find that my monography met with yout
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 mis-
take, 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, T hope, as it was intended, as
an humble attempt to promote a more mi-
nute inquiry into natural history ; into the

T 2

276 NATURAL HISTORY

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
J.ir undines.

Tl o gh I have now travelled the Sussex
downs upwards of thirty years, yet I still
investigate that chain of majestic mountains
with fresh admiration year by year ; and
think I see new beauties every time I tra-
verse it. This range, which runs from
Chichester eastward as far as East- Bourn,
is about sixty miles in length, and is called
The South Downs, properly speaking, only
round Lewes. As you pass along you com-
mand a noble view of the wild, or weald,
on one hand, and the broad downs and sea
on the other. Mr. Bai/ used to visit a fa-
mily* just at the foot of these hills, and
was so ravished with' the prospect from
Pluvi])ton-])lain near Lewes, that he men-
tions those scapes in his " Wisdom of God
hi the ^yorks of the Creation"' with the
utmost satisfaction, and thinks them equal

* Mr. Coiirlhoj)!', of DaJim/,

OF SELBORNE. 277

to any thing he had seen in the finest parts
of Europe.

For my own part, I think there is some-
what peculiarly sweet and amusing in the
shapely-figured aspect of chalk-hills in
preference to those of stone, which are
rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless.

Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion,
and not so happy as to convey to you the
same idea ; but I never contemplate these
mountains without thinking I perceive
somewhat analogous to growth in their
gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like
protuberances, their fluted sides, and regu-
lar hollo ws and slopes, that carry at once the
air of vegetative dilatation and expansion

'Or was there ever a time when these

immense masses of calcarious matter were
thrown into fermentation by some adven-
titious moisture ; were raised and leavened
into such shapes by some plastic power ;
and so made to swell and heave their broad
backs into the sky so much above the less
animated clay of the wild below ?

By what I can guess from the admeasure-

278 NATURAL HISTORY

ments of the hills that have been taken
round my house, I should suppose that these
hills surmount the wild at an average at
about the rate of tive hundred feet.

One thing is very remarkable as to the
sheep ; from the westward till you get to
the river Adur all the flocks have horns,
and smooth white faces, and white legs ;
and a hornless sheep is rarely to be seen :
but as soon as you pass that river eastward,
and mount Beeding-hill, all the flocks at
once become hornless, oi', as they call them,
poll-sheep; and have moreover black faces
with a white tuft of wool on their fore-
heads, and speckled and spotted legs : so
that you would think that the flocks of
Laban were pasturing on one side of the
stream, and the variegated breed of his son-
in-law Jacob were cantoned along on the
other. And this diversity holds good re-
spectively on each side from the valley of
Jirambcr and Beeding to the eastward, and
westward all the whole length of the downs.
If you talk with the shepherds on this sub-
ject, they tell you that the case has been

OF SELBORNE. 279

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 intel-
ligent friend of mine near Chichester is de-
termined to try the experiment ; and has
this Autumn, at the hazard of being laughed
at, introduced a parcel of black-faced horn-
less rams among his horned western ewes.)
The black-faced poll sheep have the short-
est legs and the finest wool.

As I had hardly ever before travelled
these downs at so late a season of the year,
I was determined to keep as sharp a look-
out as possible so near the southern coast,
with respect to the Summer short-winged
birds of passage. We make great inquiries
concerning the withdrawing of the swallow
kind without examuiing enough into the
causes why this tribe is never to be seen in
Winter; for, entre nous, the disappearing of
the latter is more marvellous than that of
the former, and much more unaccountable.
The hirundines, if they please, are certainly
capable of migration ; and yet, no doubt.

280 NATURAL HISTORY

are often found in a torpid state : but red-
starts, nightingales, white-throats, black-
caps, &c. &c. are very ill-provided for long
flights; have never been once found, as I
ever heard of, in ajtorpid state, and yet can
never be supposed, in such troops, from
year to year to dodge and elude the eyes of
the curious and inquisitive, which from day
to day discern the other small birds that are
known to abide our winters. But, not-
withstanding all my care, I saw nothing
like a Summer bird of passage : and what
is more strange, not one wheat-ear, though
they abound so in the Autumn as to be a con-
siderable perquisite to the shepherds that
take them ; and though many are to be seen
to my knowledge all the Winter through in
many parts of the south of England. The
most intelligent shepherds tell me that some
few of these birds appear on the downs in
March, and then withdraw to breed, pro-
bably, in warrens and stone-quarries : now
and then a nest is plowed up in a fallow
on the downs under a furrow, but it is
thought a rarity. At the time of wheat-

OF SELBORNE. 281

harvest they begin to be taken in great
numbers ; are sent for sale in vast quantities
to Brighthelmstone dindTunbridge ; and ap-
pear at the tables of all the gentry that en-
tertain with any degree of elegance. About
Michaelmas they retire, and are seen no
more till March. Though these birds are>
when in season, in great plenty on the
South downs round Lewes, yet at East-
Bourn, which is the eastern extremity of
those downs, they abound much more.
One thing is very remarkable — that though
in the height of the season so many hun-
dreds of dozens are taken, yet they never
are seen to flock ; and it is a rare thing to
see more than three or four at a time : so
that there must be a perpetual flitting and
constant progressive succession. It does
not appear that any wheat-ears are taken
to the westw£irdoi' 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 1 had

282 NATURAL HISTORY

formerly remarked them in the month of
October all the way from Chichester to
Lewes wherever there were any shrubs and
covert : but not one bird of this sort came
within my obser\:^tion. I only saw a few
larks and whin-chats, some rooks, and
several kites and buzzards.

About Midsummer a flight of cross-bills
comes to the pine-groves about this house,
but never makes any long stay.

The old tortoise, that I have mentioned
in a former letter, still continues in this
garden ; and retired under ground about
the twentieth of November, and came out
again for one day on the thirtieth : it lies
now buried in a wet swampy border under
a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped
at present in mud and mire !

Here is a large rookery round this house,
the inhabitants of which seem to get their
livelihood very easily ; for they spend the
greatest part of the day on their nest-trees
when the weather is mild. These rooks
retire every evening all the Winter from
this rookery, where they only call by the

OF SELBOJINE. 283

way, as they are going to roost in deep
woods : at the dawn of day they always
revisit their nest-trees, and are preceded
a few minutes by a flight of daws, that act,
as it were, as their harbingers.

I am, &c.

LETTER XVIII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Jan. 29, 1774.

The house swallow, or chimney-swallow,
is, undoubtedly, the first comer of all the
British hirwidines ; and appears in general
on or about the thirteenth of April, as I
have remarked from many years observa-
tion. Not but now and then a straggler is
seen much earlier : and, in particular, when
I was a boy I observed a swallow for a
whole day together on a sunny warm
Shrove Tuesday ; which day could not fall

284 NATURAL HISTORY

out later than the middle of March, and
often happened early in Fcbruaru.

It was worth remarking that these birds
are seen first about lakes and mill-ponds ;
and it is also very -particular, that if these
early visitors happen to find frost and
snow, as was the case of the two dreadful
Springs of 1 770 and 1771, they immediately
withdraw for a time. A circumstance this,
much more in favour of hiding than mi-
gration ; since it is much more probable
that a bird should retire to its hybernacu-
lum 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
chimnies, but often within barns and out-
houses against the rafters and so she did in
Virgil's, time.

■" Ante

" Garrula quam ti^^iis nidos suspcndat hirundo."

In Swcfhn she builds in barns, and is
called ladu swala, the barn-swallow. Be-

or SELBORNE. 285

sides, in the warmer parts of Europe there
are no chimnies to houses, except they are
English-built : in these countries she con-
structs 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 for-
merly drawn up for the purpose of manure :
but in oreneral with us this liirundo breeds
in chimnies ; 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 afire ; 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 chim-
ney does this little bird begin to form her
nest about the middle of May, which con-
sists, like that of the house-martin, of a
crust or shell composed of dirt or mud,
mixed with short pieces of straw, to render

286 NATURAL HISTORY

it tough and permanent ; with this difFer-
ence, that whereas the shell of the martin
is nearly hemispheric, that of the swallow
is open at the top, and like half a deep
dish: this nest is. lined with fine grasses,
and feathers which are often collected as
they float in the air.

Wonderful is the address which this
adroit bird shows all day long in ascend-
ing and descending with security through
so narrow a pass. When hovering over the
mouth of the funnel, the vibrations- of her
wings acting on the confined air occasion
a rumbling like thunder. It is not impro-
bable that the dam submits to this incon-
venient situation so low in the shaft, in
order to secure her broods from rapacious
birds, and particularly from owls, which
frequently fall down chimnies, 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 pro-
gressive method by which the young are

OF SELBORNE. 287

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 bu sines of a second brood as soon as
she is disengaged from her first ; which at
once associates with the first broods oi house-

288 NATURAL HISTORY

marl'ijis; and with them congregates clus-
tering on sunny roofs, towers, and trees.
This hirundo brings out her second brood
towards the middle and end o{ Av<r^ist,

All the Summer long is the swallow a
most instructive pattern of unwearied in-
dustry and affection ; for, from morning to
night, while there is a family to be sup-
ported, she spends the whole day in skim-
ming close to the ground, and exerting the
most sudden turns and quick evolutions.
Avenues, and long walks under hedges,
and pasture-fields, and mown meadows
where cattle graze, are her delight, espe-
cially if there are trees interspersed ; be-
cause 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, j)robal)ly the male bird is
the excubitor to house-martins, and other
little birds, announcing the approach of
birds of prey. For as soon as an hawk ap-
pears, with a shrill alarming note he calls

OP SELBORNE. 289

all the swallows and martins about him ;
who pursue in a body, and buffet and strike
their enemy till they have driven him from
the village, darting down from above on his
back, and rising in a perpendicular line in
perfect security. This bird also will sound
the alarm, and strike at cats when they
climb on the roofs of houses, or otherwise
approach the nests. Each species of hi-
rundo drinks as it flies along, sipping the
surface of the water; but the swallow alone,
in general, washes on the wing, by dropping
into a pool for many times together : in
very hot weather house-martins and bank-
martins dip and wash a little.

The swallow is a delicate songster, and
in soft sunny weather sings both perching
and flying ; on trees in a kind of concert,
and on chimney tops : is also a bold flyer,
ranging to distant downs and commons
even in windy weather, which the other
species seem much to dislike ; nay, even
frequenting exposed sea-port towns, and
makinglittle excursions over the salt-water.
Horsemen on wide downs are often closely

VOL. I. u

290 XATURAf. HISTORY

attended by a little party of swallows for
miles together, which plays before and
behind them, sweeping around, and collect-
ing all the sculking^ insects that are roused
by the trampling oj" the horses feet : when
the wind blows hard, without this expe-
dient, they are often forced to settle to
pick up their lurking prey.

This species feeds much on little cole-
optertty as well as on gnats and flies ; and
often settles on dug ground, or paths, for
gravels to grind and digest its food. Be-
fore they depart, for some weeks, to a bird,
they forsake houses and chimnies, and roost
in trees ; and usually withdraw about the
beginning of October ; though some few
stragglers may appear on at times till the
first week in November.

Some few pairs haunt the new and open
streets of London next the fields, but do
not enter, like the house-martin, the close
and crowded parts of the city.

Both male and female are distinguished
from their congeners by the length and
forkedness of their tails. They are un-

OF SELBORNE. 291

doubtedly the most nimble of all the
species ; and when the male pursues the
female in amorous chase, they then go be-
yond their usual speed, and exert a rapidity
almost too quick for the eye to follow.

After this circumstantial detail of the
life and discerning o-ro^-yji of the swallow,
I shall add, for your further amusement,
an anecdote or two not much in favour of
her sagacity : —

A certain swallow built for two years
together on the handles of a pair of garden-
shears, that were stuck up against the
boards in an out- house, and therefore must
have her nest spoiled whenever that imple-
ment was wanted : and, what is stranger
still, another bird of the same species built
its nest on the wings and body of an owl
that happened by accident to hang dead
and dry from the rafter of a barn. This .
owl, with the nest on its wings, and with
eggs in the nest, was brought as a curio-
sity worthy the most elegant private mu-
seum in Great Britain. The owner, struck

u 2

292 NATURAL HISTORY

with the oddity of the sight, furnished the
bringer with a large shell, or conch, de-
siring 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 esixs.

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.*

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.
I am,

with all respect, &c. &c.

* Sir Ashton Levers Musseurn.

OF SELBORNE. 293

LETTER XIX.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Feb. 14, 1774-

I RECEIVED your favour of the eighth,
and am pleased to find that you read my
little history of the swallow with your usual
candour : nor was I the less pleased to find
that you made objections where you saw
reason.

As to the quotations, it is dilficult to
say precisely which species of hirundo
Virgil might intend in the lines in ques-
tion, 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 pas-
sages quoted, the poet had his eye on the
swallow.

In the first place the epithet garruia suits

294^ NATURAL HISTORY

the swallow well, who is a great songster ;
and not the martin, which is rather a mute
bird ; and when it sings is so inward as
scarce to be heard. Besides, if lignum in
that place signifies a rafter rather than a
beam, as it seems to me to do, then I think
it must be the swallow that is alluded to,
and not the martin ; since the former does
frequently build within the roo/' against the
rafters ; while the latter always, as far as
I have been able to observe, builds without
the roo/ against eaves and cornices.

As to the simile, too much stress must
not be laid on it ; yet the epithet 7iigra
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 mo-
tions (comparatively clumsy) of the martin
well represent the sudden and artful evo-
lutions and quick turns which Jutnrna gave
to her brother's chariot, so as to elude the
eager pursuit of the enraged .Eneas. The

OF SELBOllNE. 295

verb sonat also seems to imply a bird that
is somewhat loquacious.*

We have had a very wet Autumn and
Winter, so as to raise the springs to a pitch
beyond any thing 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, Rud Wiltshire. The coun-
try 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,
that the corn vales must be drowned ; and
so it has proved for these ten or eleven
years past. For land-springs have never
obtained more since the memory of man
than during that period ; nor has there been
known a greater scarcity of all sorts of
grain, considering the great improvements

* " Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes
" Pervolatj et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo,
" Pabula pan'a legens, nidisque loquacibus escas :
*' Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum
" Stagna sonat"

296 NATURAL HISTORY

of modern husbandry. Such a run of wet
seasons a century or two ago would, I
am persuaded, have occasioned a famine.
Therefore pamphlets and newspaper letters,
that talk of combinations, tend to inflame
and mislead ; since we must not expect
plenty till Providence sends us more fa-
vourable seasons.

The wheat of last year, all round this
district, and in the county of Rutland, and
elsewhere, yields remarkably bad : and our
wheat on the ground, by the continual
late sudden vicissitudes from fierce frost
to pouring rains, looks poorly ; and the
turnips rot very fast. I am, &c,

LETTER XX.

TO THE SAME,

DEAR SIR ; Selborne, Feb. 26, 1774.

1 HE sand-martin, or bank-martin, is by
much the least of any of the British liirun-

OF SELBORNE. 297

dines ; and, as far as we have ever seen, the
smallest knov^n hirundo : though Brisson
asserts that there is one much smaller, and
that is the hirundo esculejita.

But it is much to be regretted that it is
scarce possible for any observer to be so full
and exact as he could wish in reciting the
circumstances attending the life and con-
versation of this little bird, since it isfera
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 domes-
ticated, 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 scat-
tered about in that wild district. The only
instance I ever remember where this species
haunts any building is at the town of Bi-

298 NATURAL HISTORY

shops Wall/tcnn, in this county, where many
sand-martins nestle and breed in the scaf-
fold holes of the back-wall of William of
Wykchams stables : but then this wall
stands in a very sequestered and retired
enclosure, and faces upon a large and
beautiful lake. And indeed this species
seems so to delight in large waters, that
no instance occurs of their abounding, but
near vast pools or rivers : and in particular
it has been remarked that they swarm in
the banks of the Thames in some places
below Londoii-hruhre.

It is curious to observe with what dif-
ferent degrees of architectonic skill Provi-
dence has endowed birds of the same genus,
and so nearly correspondent in their general
mode of life ! for while the swallow and
the house-martin discover the greatest ad-
dress in raising and securely fixing crusts
or shells of loam as cunabula for their
young, the bank-martin terebrates a round
and regular hole in the sand or earth, which
is serpentine, horizontal, and about two feet
deep. At the inner cud of this burrow.

OF SELBORXi:. 299

does this bird deposit, in a good degree
of safety, her rude nest, consisting of fine
grasses and feathers, usually goose-feathers,
very inartificially laid together.

Perseverance will accomplish any thing:
though at first one would be disinclined to
believe that this weak bird, with her soft
and tender bill and claws, should ever be
able to bore the stubborn sand-bank with-
out entirely disabling herself; yet with
these feeble instruments have I seen a pair
of them make great dispatch : and could
remark how much they had scooped that
day by the fresh sand which ran down the
bank, and was of a different colour from
that which lay loose and bleached in the
sun.

In what space of time these little artists
are able to mine and finish these cavities I
have never been able to discover, for rea-
sons given above ; but it would be a matter
worthy of observation, where it falls in the
way of any naturalist to make his remarks.
This I have often taken notice of, that se-

300 NATURAL HisroRy

veral holes of different depths are left un-
finished at the end of Summer. To imagine
that these beginnings were intentionally-
made in order to be in the greater forward-
ness for next Spring, is allowing perhaps
too much foresight and reriim prudcntia to
a simple bird. May not the cause of these
laiebrcB being left unfinished arise from their
meeting in those places with strata too
harsh, hard, and solid, for their purpose,
which they relinquish, and go to a fresh
spot that works more freely ? Or may they
not in other places fall in with a soil as
much too loose and mouldering, liable to
founder, and threatening to overwhelm
them and their labours ?

One thing is remarkable — that, after
some years, the old holes are forsaken and
new ones bored ; perhaps because the old
habitations grow foul and fetid from long
use, or because they may so abound with
fleas, as to become untenantable. This
species of swallow moreover is strangely
annoyed with fleas : and we have seen fleas,

OF SELBORNE. 301

bed fleas fpulex irritans), swarming at the
mouths of these holes, like bees on the
stools of their hives.

The following circumstance should by
no means be omitted — that these birds do
not make use of their caverns by way of
hybernacula, as might be expected ; since
banks so perforated have been dug out with
care in the Winter, when nothing was
found but empty nests.

The sand-martin arrives much about the
same time with the swallow, and lays, as
she does, from four to six white eggs. But
as this species is cryptogame, carrying on
the business of nidification, incubation, and
the support of its young in the dark, it
would not be so easy to ascertain the time
of breeding, were it not for the coming
forth of the broods, which appear much
about the time, or rather somewhat earlier
than those of the swallow. The nestlings
are supported in common like those of their
congeners, with gnats and other small in-
sects ; and sometimes they are fed with

302 NATUKAL HISTORY

libellulw (dragon-flies) almost as long as
themselves. In the last week in Ju7ie we
have seen a row of these sitting on a rail
near a great pool as perchers ; and so young
and helpless, as easily to be taken by hand :
but whether the dams ever feed them on
the wing, as swallows and house-martins
do, we have never yet been able to deter-
mine : nor do we know whether they pur-
sue and attack birds of prey.

When they happen to breed near hedges
and enclosures, they are dispossessed of
their breeding holes by the house-sparrow,
which is on the same account a fell adver-
sary to house-martins.

These hirundines are no songsters , but
rather mute, making only a little harsh
noise when a person approaches their nests.
They seem not to be of a sociable turn,
never with us congregating with their con-
geners in the Autumn. Undoubtedly they
breed a second time, like the house-
martin and swallow ; and withdraw about
Michaelmas.

OF SELBOllNE. 303

Though in some particular districts they
may happen to abound, yet in the whole,
in the south of England at least, is this
much the rarest species. For there are
few towns or large villages but what
abound with house-martins ; few churches,
towers or steeples, but w^hat are haunted
by some swifts ; scarce a hamlet or single
cottage-chimney that has not its swallow ;
while the bank-martins, scattered here and
there, live a sequestered life among some
abrupt sand-hills, and in the banks of some
few rivers.

These birds have a peculiar manner of
flying; flitting about with odd jerks, and
vacillations, not unlike the motions of a
butterfly. Doubtless the flight of all hirun-
dines is influenced by, and adapted to, the
peculiar sort of insects which furnish their
food. Hence it would be worth inquiry to
examine what particular genus of insects
affords the principal food of each respec-
tive species of swallow.

Notwithstanding what has been ad-
vanced above, some few sand-martins, I

304 NATURAL HISTORY

see, haunt the skirts of London, frequent-
ing the dirty pools in Saint George* s- Fields,
and about While-Chapel. The question is
where these build, since there are no banks
or bold shores in that neighbourhood : per-
haps they nestle in the scaffold holes of
some old or new deserted building. They
dip and wash as they fly sometimes, like
the house-martin and swallow.

Sand-martins differ from their congeners
in the diminutiveness of their size, and in
their colour, which is what is usually called
a mouse-colour. Near Valencia in Spain,
they are taken, says Willughbi/, and sold
in the markets for the table ; and are called
by the country people, probably from their
desultory jerking manner of flight, Papillon
de Montagna.

OF SELBORNE. 305

LETTER XXI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Sept. 28, 1774.

As the swift or hlack-martin is the largest
of the British hirimdines, so is it undoubt-
edly the latest comer. For I remember
but one instance of its appearing before
the last week in April: and in some of our
late frosty, harsh Springs, it has not been
seen till the beginning of May. This spe-
cies usually arrives in pairs.

The swift, like the sand-martin, is very
defective in architecture, making no crust,
or shell, for its nest : but forming it of dry
grasses and feathers, very rudely and inarti-
ficially put together. With all my atten-
tion to these birds, I have never been able
once to discover one in the act of collecting
or carrying in materials : so that I have
suspected (since their nests are exactly the
same) that they sometimes usurp upon the

VOL. I. X

30() NATURAL HISTORY

house-sparrows, and expel them, as spar-
rows do the house and sand martin ; well
remembering that I have seen them squab-
bling together at the entrance of their holes ;
and the sparrows up in arms, and much
disconcerted at these intruders. And yet
I am assured by a nice observer in such
matters, that they do collect feathers for
their nests m Andalusia ; and that he has shot
them with such materials in their mouths.
Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the
business of nidification quite in the dark, in
crannies of castles, and towers, and steeples,
and upon the tops of the walls of churches
under the roof; and therefore cannot be so
narrowly watched as those species that
build more openly : but, from what I could
ever observe, they begin nesting about the
middle ofJlIat/ ; and I have remarked, from
eggs taken, that they have sat hard by the
ninth oi June. In general they haunt tall
buildings, churches, and steeples, and breed
only in such : yet in this village some pairs
frequjent the lowest and meanest cottages,
and educate their young under those

OF SELBORME. 307

thatched roofs. We remember but one
instance where they breed out of build-
ings ; and that is in the sides of a deep
chalk-pit near the town of Odiham, in this
county, where we have 'seen many pairs
entering the crevices, and skimming and
squeaking round the precipices.

As I have regarded these amusive birds
with no small attention, if I should ad-
vance something new and peculiar with
respect to them, and different from all other
birds, I might perhaps be credited ; espe-
cially as my assertion is the result of many
years exact observation. The fact that I
would advance is, that swifts tread, or
copulate, on the wing : and I would wish
any nice observer, that is startled at this
supposition, to use his own eyes, and I
think he will soon be convinced. In ano-
ther class of animals, viz. the insect, no-
thing is so common as to see the different
species of many genera in conjunction as
they fly. The swift is almost continually
on the wing ; and as it never settles on the
ground, on trees, or roofs, would seldom

X 2

308 X A T IT II AT. n 1 S T O R V

find opportunity for amorous rites, was it
not enabled to indulge them in the air.
If any person would watch these birds of
a fine morning in ]\/ai/, as they are sailing
round at a great height from the ground,
he Mould see, every now and then, one
drop on the back of another, and both of
them sink down together for many fathoms
w^ith a loud piercing shriek. This I take
to be the juncture when the business of
generation is carrying on.

As the swift eats, drinks, collects mate-
rials for its nest, and, as it seems, propa-
gates on the wing : it appears to live more
in the air than any other bird, and to per-
form all functions there save those of sleep-
ing and incubation.

This hirundo differs widely from its con-
geners in laying invariably but lico eggs at
a time, which are milk-white, long, and
peaked at the small end ; whereas the other
species lay at each brood houijour to six.
It is a most alert bird, rising very early,
and retiring to roost very late ; and is on
the winsr in the heisrht of Summer at least

OF SELBOR.YE. 30^

sixteen hours. In the longest days it does
not withdraw to rest till a quarter before
nine, in the evening, being the latest of all
day birds. Just before they retire, whole
groups of them assemble high in the air,
and squeak and shoot about with wonder-
ful rapidity. But this bird is never so much
alive as in sultry thundry weather, when it
expresses great alacrity, and calls forth all
its powers. In hot mornings several, get-
ting together in little parties, dash round
the steeples and churches, squeaking as
they go in a very clamorous manner : these,
by nice observers, are supposed to be males
serenading their setting hens ; and not
without reason, since they seldom squeak
till they come close to the walls or eaves,
and since those within utter at the same
time a little inward note of complacency.

When the hen has sat hard all day she
rushes forth just as it is almost dark, and
stretches and relieves her weary limbs, and
snatches a scanty meal for a few minutes,
and then returns to her duty of incubation.
Swifts, when wantonly and cruelly shot

310 NATURAL HISTORY

while they have young, discover a little
lump of insects in their mouths, which they
pouch and hold under their tongue. In
general they feed in a much higher district
than the other species : a proof that gnats
and other insects do also abound to a con-
siderable height in the air : they also range
to vast distances ; since loco-motion is no
labour to them, who are endowed with such
wonderful powers of wing. Their powers
seem to be in proportion to their levers ;
and their wings are longer in proportion
than those of almost any other bird. When
they mute, or ease themselves in flight,
they raise their wings, and make them
meet over their backs.

At some certain times in the Summer I
had remarked that swifts were hawking
very low for hours together over pools and
streams ; and could not help inquiring into
the object of their pursuit that induced
them to descend so much below their usual
range. After some trouble, I found that
they were i^ikmg p/ni/g ant cc, ephemera, and
//7^f///{/rt (cadew-flies, may-flies, and dragon-

OF SELBORNE. 311

flies) that were just emerged out of their
aurelia state. I then no longer wondered
that they should be so willing to stoop
for a prey that afforded them such plentiful
and succulent nourishment.

They bring out their young about the
middle or latter end of July : but as these
never become perchers, nor, that ever I
could discern, are fed on the wing by their
dams, the coming forth of the young is not
so notorious as in the other species.

On the thirtieth of last Jane I untiled
the eaves of an house where many pairs
build, and found in each nest only two
squab, naked pulli : on the eighth of Jult/ I
repeated the same inquiry, and found they
had made very little progress, towards a
fledged state, but were still naked and help-
less. From whence we may conclude that
birds whose way of life keeps them perpe-
tually on the wing would not be able to
quit their nest till the end of the month.
Swallows and martins, that have numerous
families, are continually feeding them every
two or three minutes ; while swifts, that

312 NATURAL HISTORY

have but two young to maintain, are much
at their leisure, and do not attend on their
nests for hours together.

Sometimes they pursue and strike at
hawks that come in their way ; but not
with that vehemence and fury that swal-
lows express on the same occasion. They
are out all day long in wet days, feeding
about and disregarding still rain : from
whence two things may be gathered ; first,
that many insects abide high in the air,
even in rain ; and next, that the feathers
of these birds must be well preened to resist
so much wet. Windy, and particularly
windy weather with heavy showers, they
dislike , and on such days withdraw, and
are scarce ever seen.

There is a circumstance respecting the
colour of swifts, which seems not to be un-
worthy our attention. When they arrive
in the Spring they are all over of a glossy,
dark soot colour, except their chins, which
are white ; but by being all day long in the
sun and air, they become quite weather-
beaten and bleached before they depart, and

OF SELBORNE. 313

yet they return glossy again in the Spring.
Now, if they pursue the sun into lower
latitudes, as some suppose, in order to enjoy
a perpetual Summer, why do they not re-
turn bleached ? Do they not rather perhaps
retire to rest for a season, and at that
juncture moult and change their feathers,
since all other birds are known to moult
soon after the season of breeding.

Swifts are very anomalous in many par-
ticulars, dissenting from all their congeners
not only in the number of their young, but
in breeding but once in a Summer ; whereas
all the other British hiriindines breed inva-
riably twice. It is past all doubt that swifts
can. breed but once, since they withdraw
in a short time after the flight of their
young, and some time before their conge-
ners bring out their second broods. We
may here remark, that as swifts breed but
once in a Summer, and only two at a time,
and the other hirundines twice, the latter,
who lay from four to six eggs, increase at
an average five times as fast as the former.

314 NATURAL HISTORY

But ill nothing are swifts more singular
than in their early retreat. They retire,
as to the main body of them, by the tenth
of August, and sometimes a few days sooner :
and every straggler invariably withdraws
by the twentieth, while their congeners, all
of them, stay till the beginning of October;
many of them all through that month, and
some occasionally to the beginning of No-
vember. This early retreat is mysterious
and wonderful, since that time is often the
sweetest season in the year. But, what is
more extraordinary, they begin to retire
still earlier in the most southerly parts of
Audalusia, where they can be no ways in-
fluenced by any defect of heat ; or, as one
might suppose, defect of food. Are they
regulated in their motions with us by a
failure of food, or by a propensity to moult-
ing, or by a disposition to rest after so rapid
a life, or by what ? This is one of those
incidents in natural history that not only
baffles our searches, but almost eludes our
guesses !

OF SELBORNE. 315

These hirundines never perch on trees or
roofs, and so never congregate with their
congeners. They are fearless while haunt-
ing their nesting places, and are not to be
scared with a gun ; and are often beaten
down with poles and cudgels as they stoop
to go under the eaves. Swifts are much
infested with those pests to the genus called
hippohosccB hirundinis ; and often wriggle
and scratch themselves, in their flight, to
get rid of that clinging annoyance.

Swifts are no songsters, and have only
one harsh screaming note : yet there are
ears to which it is not displeasing, from an
agreeable association of ideas, since that
note never occurs but in the most lovely
Summer weather.

They never settle on the ground but
through accident ; and when down can
hardly rise, on account of the shortness of
their legs and the length of their wings :
neither can they walk, but only crawl; but
they have a strong grasp with their feet, by
which they cling to walls. Their bodies
being flat they can enter a very narrow

<")

l6 NATURAL IIlSTOJiY

crevice ; and where they cannot pass on
their bellies they will turn ii]) edgewise.

The particular formation of the foot dis-
criminates the swift from all the British
hirundincs ; and ijideed from all other
known birds, the hirundo mciba, or great
white-bellied swift of Gibraltar, excepted ;
for it is so disposed as to carry " omncs
quatuor digitos anticos,' all its four toes for-
ward ; besides the least toe, wdiich should
be the back-toe, consists of one bone alone,
and the other three only of two apiece. A
construction most rare and peculiar, but
nicely adapted to the purposes in which
their feet are employed. This, and some
peculiarities attending the nostrils and
under mandible, have induced a discern-
ing naturalist* to suppose that this species
might constitute a genus per se.

In London a party of swifts frequents the
Tower, playing and feeding over the river
just below the bridge : others haunt some
of the churches of the Borough next the
fields ; but do not venture, like the housc-

' John Antony Scopoli, of Camiola, M. D.

OF SELBOHNE. 31?

martin, into the close crowded part of the
town.

The Swedes have bestowed a very perti-
nent name on this swallow, calling it r//?«--
sicala, from the perpetual rijigs or circles
that it takes round the scene of its nidifi-
cation.

Swifts feed on coleoptera, or small beetles
with hard cases over their wings, as well
as on the softer insects ; but it does not
appear how they can procure gravel to
grind their food, as swallows do, since they
never settle on the ground. Young ones,
over-run with hippobosc^, are sometimes
found, under their nests, fallen to the
ground ; the number of vermin rendering
their abode insupportable any longer. They
frequent in this village several abject cot-
tages: yet a succession still haunts the same
unlikely roofs : a good proof this that the
same birds return to the same spots. As
they must stoop very low to get up under
these humble eaves, cats lie in wait, and
sometimes catch them on the wing.

On the fifth of Jult/, 1775, I again un-

318 NATURAL HISTORY

tiled part of a roof over the nest of a swift.
The dam sat in the nest ; but so strongly
was she affected by natural c-To^yv for her
brood, which she supposed to be in danger,
that, regardless of her own safety, she would
not stir, but lay sullenly by them, permit-
ting herself to be taken in hand. The
squab young we brought down and placed
on the grass-plot. Where they tumbled
about, and were as helpless as a new-born
child. While we contemplated their naked
bodies, their unwieldy disproportioned ab-
domina, and their heads, too heavy for
their necks to support, we could not but
wonder when we reflected that these shift-
less beings in a little more than a fortnight
would be able to dash through the air
almost with the inconceivable swiftness of
a meteor; and, perhaps, in their emigration,
must traverse vast continents and oceans
as distant as the equator. So soon does
Nature advance small birds to their ^xmia,,
or state of perfection ; while the progressive
growth of men and large quadrupeds is
slow and tedious ! I am. Sec.

r

OF SELBOllNE. 319

LETTER XXII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborxe, Sept. 13, 1774.

By means of a straight cottage-chimney
I had an opportunitj^ this Summer of
remarking, at my leisure, how swallows
ascend and descend through the shaft ; but
my pleasure in contemplating the address
with which this feat was performed to a
considerable depth in the chimney, was
somewhat interrupted by apprehensions
lest my eyes might undergo the same fate
with those of Tobit.*

Perhaps it may be some amusement to
you to hear at what times the different
species of hirundines arrived this Spring in
three very distant counties of this kingdom.
With us the swallow was seen first on Aprii

* Tobit ii. 10.

320 NATURAL HISTORY

the 4th, the swift on April the 24th, the
bank-martin on April the 12th, and the
house-martin not till April the 30th. At
South Zelcy Devonshire, swallows did not
arrive till April the 25th ; swifts, in plenty,
on J^Iay the 1st ; and house-martins not till
the middle of May. At Blackburn in Lan-
cashire, swifts were seen April the 28th,
swallows April the 29th, house-martins,
Mat/ the 1st. Do these different dates in
such distant districts, prove any thing for
or against migration ?

A farmer, near Wci/hill, fallows his land
with two teams of asses ; one of which
works till noon, and the other in the after-
noon. When these animals have done their
work, tliey are penned all night, like sheep,
on the fallow. In the Winter they are con-
fined and foddered in a yard, and make
plenty of dung.

Linnccus says, that hawks " paciscuntur
inducias cum arihns, (piamdiu cucfilus cucu-
Idl ; " but it appears to me that, during that
period, many little birds are taken and
destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen

OP SELBOllNE. 321

by their feathers left in lanes and under
hedges.

The missel-thrush is, while breeding,
fierce and pugnacious, driving such birds
as approach its nest, with great fury, to a
distance. The Welch call it pen y llwyyiy
the head or master of the coppice. He
suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to
enter the garden where he haunts ; and is,
for the time, a good guard to the new-sown
legumens. In general he is very successful
in the defence of his family : but once I
observed in my garden, that several mag-
pies came determined to storm the nest of
a missel-thrush : the dams defended their
mansion with great vigour, and fought
resolutely pro aris &;• focis ; but numbers at
last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces,
and swallowed the young alive.

In the season of nidification the wildest*
birds are comparatively tame. Thus the
ring-dove breeds in my fields, though they
are continually frequented ; and the missel-
thrush, though most shy and wild in the
Autumn and Winter, builds in my garden

VOL. I. Y

322 NATURAL HISTORY

close to a walk where people are passing
all day long.

Wall-fruit abounds with me this year ;
but my grapes, that used to be forward
and good, are at present backward beyond
all precedent : and this is not the worst of
the story ; for the same ungenial weather,
the same black cold solstice, has injured
the more necessary fruits of the earth, and
discoloured and blighted our wheat. The
crop of hops promises to be very large.

Frequent returns of deafness incommode
me sadly, and half disqualify me for a
naturalist ; for, when those fits are upon
me I lose all the pleasing notice and little
intimations arising from rural sounds ; and
Mat/ is to me as silent and mute with re-
spect to the notes of birds, &c. as August.
My eyesight is, thank God, quick and
good ; but with respect to the other sense,
I am, at times, disabled :

" And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."

OF SELBORNE. 323

LETTER XXIII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, June S, 1775.

On September the 21st, 1741, being then
on a visit, and intent on field-diversions, I
rose before day-break : when I came into
the enclosures, I found the stubbles and
clover-grounds matted all over with a thick
coat of cobweb, in the meshes of which a
copious and heavy dew hung so plentifully
that the whole face of the country seemed,
as it were, covered with two or three set-
tinof-nets drawn one over another. When
the dogs attempted to hunt, their eyes were
so blinded and hoodwinked that they could
not proceed, but were obliged to lie down
and scrape the incumbrances from their
faces with their fore feet, so that, finding
my sport interrupted, I returned home

Y 2

324 >iAlURAL HISTORY

musing in my mind on the oddness of the
occurrence.

As the morning advanced the sun be-
came bright and warm, and the day turned
out one of those ijiost lovely ones which
no season but the Autumn produces ; cloud-
less, calm, serene, and worthy of the South
of France itself.

About nine an appearance very unusual
began to demand our attention, a shower
of cobwebs falling from very elevated
regions, and continuing, without any in-
terruption till the close of the day. These
webs were not single filmy threads, floating
in the air in all directions, but perfect
flakes or rags ; some near an inch broad,
and five or six long, which fell with a degree
of velocity, that showed they were con-
siderably heavier than the atmosphere.

On every side as the observer turned his
eyes he might behold a continual succes-
sion of fresh flakes falling into his sight,
and twinkling like stars as they turned
their sides towards the sun.

OF SELBORNE. 325

How far this wonderful shower extended
would be difficult to say : but we know that
it reached Bradley, Selborne, and Aires-
ford, three places which lie in a sort of a
triangle, the shortest of whose sides is about
eight miles in extent.

At the second of those places there was
a gentleman (for whose veracity and intel-
ligent turn we have the greatest veneration)
who observed it the moment he got abroad;
but concluded that, as soon as he came
upon the hill above his house, where he
took his morning rides, he should be higher
than this meteor, which he imagined might
have been blown, like Thistle-down, from
the common above : but, to his great asto-
nishment, when he rode to the most ele-
vated part of the down, 300 feet above his
fields, he found the webs in appearance
still as much above him as before ; still
descending into sight in a constant succes-
sion, and twinkling in the sun, so as to
draw the attention of the most incurious.

Neither before nor after was any such
fall observed ; but on this day the flakes

3'2() NATURAL HISTORY

hung in the trees and hedges so thick,
that a diligent person sent out might have
gathered baskets full.

The remark that 1 shall make on these
cobweb-like appearances, called gossamery
is, that, strange and superstitious as the
notions about them were formerly, nobody
in these days doubts but that they are the
real production of small spiders, which
swarm in the fields in fine weather in
Autumn, and have a power of shooting out
webs from their tails so as to render them-
selves buoyant, and lighter than air. But
why these apterous insects should t/tat day
take such a wonderful aerial excursion, and
why their webs should at once become so
gross and material as to be considerably
more weighty than air, and to descend with
precipitation, is a matter beyond my skill.
If I might be allowed to hazard a supposi-
tion, 1 should imagine that those filmy
threads, when first shot, might be entang-
led in the rising dew, and so drawn up,
spiders and all, by a brisk evaporation into
the regions where clouds arc formed : and

OF SELBORNE. 327

if the spiders have a power of coiling and
thickening their webs in the air, as Dr.
Lister says they have [see his Letters to
Mr. Rai/], then, when they were become
heavier than the air, they must fall.

Every day in fine weather, in Autumn
chiefly, do I see those spiders shooting out
their webs and mounting aloft : they will
go off from your finger if you will take
them into your hand. Last Summer one
alighted on my book as I was reading in
the parlour ; and, running to the top of the
page, and shooting out a web, took its
departure from thence. But what I most
wondered at was, that it went off with con-
siderable velocity in a place where no air
was stirring ; and I am sure that I did not
assist it with my breath. So that these
little crawlers seem to have, while mount-
ing, some loco-motive power without the
use of wings, and to move in the air faster
than the air itself.

328 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER XXIV.

TO TII-E SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Aug. 15, 1775.

There is a wonderful spirit of sociality in
the brute creation, independent of sexual
attachment : the congregating of grega-
rious birds in the Winter is a remarkable
instance.

Many horses, though quiet with com-
pany, will not stay one minute in a field
by themselves : the strongest fences cannot
restrain them. My neighbour's horse will
not only not stay by himself abroad, but he
will not bear to be left alone in a strange
stable without discovering the utmost im-
patience, and endeavouring to break the
rack and manger with his fore feet. He
has been known to leap out at a stable-
window, through which dung was thrown,
after company ; and yet in other respects is

OF SELBORNE. 329

remarkably quiet. Oxen and cows will not
fatten by themselv es ; but will neglect the
finest pasture that is not recommended by
society. It would be needless to instance
in sheep, which constantly flock together.
But this propensity seems not to be con-
fined to animals of the same species ; for
we know a doe, still alive, that was brought
up from a little fawn with a dairy of cows ;
with them it goes a-field, and with them it
returns to the yard. The dogs of the house
take no notice of this deer, being used to
her ; but, if strange dogs come by, a chase
ensues ; while the master smiles to see his
favourite securely leading her pursuers over
hedge, or gate, or stile, till she returns to
the cows, who, with fierce lowings and
menacing horns, drive the assailants quite
out of the pasture.

Even great disparity of kind and size
does not always prevent social advances
and mutual fellowship. For a very intelli-
gent and observant person has assured me
that in the former part of his life, keeping
but one horse, he happened also on a time

330 NATURAL IIJSTORV

to have but one solitary hen. These two
incongruous animals spent much of their
time together in a lonely orchard, where
they saw no creature but each other. By
degrees an apparejit regard began to take
})lace between these two sequestered indi-
viduals. The fowl would approach the
quadruped with notes of complacency,
rubbing herself gently against his legs ;
while the horse would look down with
satisfaction, and move with the greatest
caution and circumspection, lest he should
trample on his diminutive companion.
Thus by mutual good offices, each seemed
to console the vacant hours of the other :
so that JSlilton when he puts the following
sentiment in the mouth of Adam, seems to
be somewhat mistaken :

" Much less can hird with beasl, or fish with fowl,
" So well converse, nor with the ox the ape."

I am, &c.

OF SELBORNE. 331

LETTER XXV.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Oct. 2, 1775.

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 Stan-
ley/, 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 diwdi 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

332 NATURAL IIISTOTJV

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 mu-
tilated remains of their native language
might still be discovered.

With regard to those peculiar people, the
gypsies, one thing is very remarkable, and
especially as they came from warmer cli-
mates ; and that is, that while other beg-
gars lodge in barns, stables, and cow-
houses, these sturdy savages seem to pride
themselves in braving the severities of Win-
ter, and in living sub dio the whole year
round. Last September was as wet a month
as ever was known ; and yet during those
deluges did a young gypsy-girl lie in in
the midst of one of our hop-gardens, on
the cold ground, with nothing over her but
a piece of a blanket extended on a few

OF SELBORXE. 333

hazel rods bent hoop fashion, and stuck
into the earth at each end, in circum-
stances too trying for a cow in the same
condition : yet within this garden there
was a large hop-kiln, into the chambers of
which she might have retired had she
thought shelter an object worthy her
attention.

Europe itself, it seems, cannot set bounds
to the rovings of these vagabonds ; for Mr.
Bell, in his return from Peking, met a gang
of these people on the confines of Tarlary,
who were endeavouring to penetrate those
deserts and trv their fortune in China*

Gypsies are called in French, Bohemians,
in Italian and modern Greeks Zingani.

I am, &c.

* See Bell's Travels in China.

3^4 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER XXVI.

TO TllF, SAME.

DEAR SIR ; Selborne, Nov. 1, 1775.

" Hic ■ tiEtls pingucs, hie plurimus ignis

" Semper, ct assidu^ postes fuligine nigri."

I SHALL make no apology for troubling
you with the detail of a very simple piece
, of domestic ceconomy, being satisfied that
you think nothing beneath your attention
that tends to utility : the matter alluded to
is the use onrushes instead of candles, which
I am well aware prevails in many districts
besides this ; but as 1 know there are coun-
tries 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 pur-
pose seems to be the ju7icits conglomeratus,

OF SELBORNE. 335

or common soft rush, which is to be found
in most moist pastures, by the sides of
streams, and under hedges. These rushes
are in best condition in the height of Sum-
mer ; but may be gathered, so as to serve
the purpose well, quite on to Autumn. It
would be needless to add that the largest
and longest are best. Decayed labourers,
women, and children, make it their busi-
ness to procure and prepare them. As
soon as they are cut they must be flung
into water, and kept there ; for otherwise
they will dry and shrink, and the peel will
not run. At first a person would find it
no easy matter to divest a rush of its peel
or rind, so as to leave one regular, narrow,
even rib from top to bottom that may sup-
port the pith : but this, like other feats,
soon becomes familiar even to children ;
and we have seen an old woman stone-
blind, performing this business with great
dispatch, and seldom failing to strip them
with the nicest regularity. When these
junci are thus far prepared, they must lie
out on the grass to be bleached, and take

336 NATURAL HISTORY

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 tQ be attained by practice.
The careful wife of an industrious Hamp-
shire labourer obtains all her fat for no-
thing ; for she saves the scummings of her
bacon-pot for this use ; and if the grease
abounds with salt, she causes the salt to
precipitate to the bottom, by setting the
scunmiings in a warm oven. Where hogs
are not much in use, and especially by the
sea-side, the coarser animal-oils will come
very cheap. A pound of common grease
may be procured for four pence ; and about
six pounds of grease will dip a pound of
rushes ; and one pound of rushes may be
bought for one shilling ; so that a pound
of rushes, medicated and ready for use, will
cost three shillings. If men that keep bees
will mix a little wax with the grease, it will
give it a consistency, and render it more
cleanly and make the rushes burn longer:
mutton-suet would have the same effect.

OF SELBORNE. 337

A good rush, which measured m length
two feet four mches and an half, being
minuted, burnt only three minutes short
of an hour : and a rush of still greater
length has been known to burn one hour
and a quarter.

These rushes give a good clear light.
Watch-lights (coated with tallow), it is
true, shed a dismal one, *' darkness visible;''
but then the 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 im-
pede the progress of the flame and make
the candle last.

In a pound of dry rushes, avoirdupois,
which I caused to be weighed and num-
bered, 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 ex-
ceeding thirty-three entire days, for three
shillings. According to this account each
rush, before dipping, costs -^'^ of a farthing,

VOL. I. Z

338 NATURAL HISTORY

and t't afterwards. Thus a poor family
will enjoy 5 V hours of comfortable light for
a farthing. An experienced old house-
keeper assures me that one pound and an
half of rushes completely supplies his fa-
mily 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 oeconomists, and
therefore must continue very poor, buy an
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 oeconomy,
it may not be improper to mention a pretty
implement of housewifery that we have
seen no where else ; that is, little neat
besoms which our foresters make from the
stalk of the polytricum commune, or great
froldfn maukn-liuir, which they call silk-

OF SELBORNE. 339

wood, and find plenty in the bogs. When
this moss is well-combed and dressed, and
divested of its outer skin, it becomes of a
beautiful bright-chesnut colour; and, being
soft and pliant, is very proper for the dust-
ing of beds, curtains, carpets, hangings, &c.
If these besoms were known to the brush-
makers in town, it is probable they might
come much in use for the purpose above-
mentioned.* I am, &c.

LETTER XXVII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Dec, 12, 1775.

We had in this village more than twenty
years ago an idiot-boy, whom I well remem-
ber, who, from a child, showed a strong
propensity to bees ; they were his food, his

* A besom of tKis sort is to be seen in Sir Ashton
Lever's Museum.

z 2 •

340 NATURAL HlSTORi

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 Win-
ter he dosed aw^y his time, within his
father's house, by the fire-side, 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 appre-
hensions from their stings, but would seize
them nudis munibus^ and at once disarm
them of their weapons, and suck their bodies
for the sake of their honey-bags. Some-
times 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 mcrops
apiaster, or hee-hird ; 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 liives, and so take the bees as they

OF SELBORNE. 341

came out. He has been known to overturn
hives for the sake of honey, of which he was
passionately fond. Where metheglin was
making he would linger round the tubs and
vessels, begging a draught of what he called
bee-wine. As he ran about he used to make
a humming noise with his lips, resembling
the buzzing of bees. This lad was lean
and sallow, and of a cadaverous com-
plexion ; and, except in his favourite pur-
suit, in which he was wonderfully adroit,
discovered no manner of understanding.
Had his capacity been better, and directed
to the same object, he had perhaps abated
much of our wonder at the feats of a more
modern exhibiter of bees ; and we may
justly say of him now.

Thou,

" Had thy presiding star propitious shone,
" Should'st 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 man-
hood. I am, &c

342 NATURAL HISTORY

LETTER XXVIII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Jan. 8, 177G-

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 inter-
woven into our very constitutions, that the
strongest good sense is required to disen-
gage ourselves from them. No wonder
therefore that the lower people retain them
their whole lives through, since their minds
are not invigorated by a liberal education,
and therefore not enabled to make any
efforts adequate to the occasion.

Such a preamble seems to be necessary
before we enter on the superstitions of this
district, lest we should be suspected of

OF SELBORNE. 343

exaggeration in a recital of practices too
gross for this enlightened age.

But the people oiTring, m 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 ex-
periments, drowned them in a horse-pond.

In a farm-yard near the middle of this
village stands, at this day, a row of pollard-
ashes, which, by the seams and long cica-
trices 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 in-
firmity. As soon as the operation was over,
the tree in the suffering part was plastered
with loam, and carefully swathed up. If
the parts coalesced and soldered together,

344 NATURAL HISTORY

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 supposed,
would prove ineffectual. Having occasion
to enlarge my garden not long since, I cut
down two or three such trees, one of which
did not grow together.

We have several persons now living in
the village, who, in their childhood, were
supposed to be healed by this superstitious
ceremony, derived down, perhaps, from
our Saxon ancestors, who practised it be-
fore their conversion to Christianity.

At the south corner of the Plcstor, or
area, near the church, there stood, about
twenty years ago, a very old grotesque hol-
low 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 ap-
plied to the limbs of cattle, will immedi-
ately relieve the pains which a beast suffers
from the running of a shretc-monse over the
part affected : for it is supposed that a

OF SELBORNE. 345

shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleteri-
ous a nature, that wherever it creeps over
a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the
suffering animal is afflicted with cruel an-
guish, and threatened with the loss of the
use of the limb. Against this accident, to
which they were continually liable, our
provident fore-fathers always kept a shrew-
ash at hand, which, when once medicated,
would maintain its virtue for ever. A
shrew-ash was made thus :* — Into the body
of the tree a deep hole was bored with an
auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was
thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt,
with several quaint incantations long since
forgotten. As the ceremonies necessary
for such a consecration are no longer un-
derstood, all succession is at an end, and
no such tree is known to subsist in the
manor or hundred.

As to that on the Plestor,

" The late vicar stubb'd and burnt it."

when he was way-warden, regardless of

* For a similar practice, see Pht's- Staffordshire,

346 NATURAL IIISTOIiY

the remonstrances of the by-standers, who
interceded in vain for its preservation,
urging its power and efficacy and alleging
that it had been

" Religione patrum iiiyltos servata per annos."

I am, See.

LETTER XXIX.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR; Selborne, Feb. 7, 1776.

In heavy fogs, on elevated situations espe-
cially, 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 New ton- lane, in October,
177o, 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.

OF SELBORNEi 34?

In .some of our smaller islands in the
West-Indies, if I mistake not, there are no
springs or rivers : but the people are sup-
plied 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
moisture ; and so render those districts
habitable by condensation alone.

Trees in leaf have such a vast proportion
more of surface than those that are naked,
that, in theory, their condensations should
greatly exceed those that are stripped of
their leaves : but, as the former imbibe also
a great quantity of moisture, it is difficult
to say which drip most : but this I know,
that deciduous trees that are entwined with
much ivy seem to distil the greatest quan-
tity. Ivy leaves are smooth, and thick and
cold, and therefore condense very fast;
and besides ever-greens imbibe very little.
These facts may furnish the intelligent with
hints concerning what sorts of trees they

.348 NATURAL HISTORY

should plant round small ponds that they
would wish to be perennial : and show
them how advantageous some trees are in
preference to others.

Trees perspire profusely, condense large-
ly, and check evaporation so much, that
woods are always moist : no wonder there-
fore 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
})odies of water are much diminished ; so
that some streams, that were very consi-
derable a century ago, will not now drive a
common mill.* Besides, most woodlands,
forests, and chases, with us abound with
pools and morasses ; no doubt for the rea-
son 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

* Vide Kabn's Travels to North-Amerka.

OF SELBORNE. 349

droughts of Summer. On chalk-hills I spy,
because in many rocky and gravelly soils
springs usually break out pretty high on
the sides of elevated grounds and moun-
tains ; but no person acquainted with
chalky districts will allow that they ever
saw springs in such a soil but in vallies and
bottoms, since the waters of so pervious a
stratum as chalk all lie on one dead level,
as well-diq-ofers have assured me a^ain and

'oo'

agam.

Now we have many such little round
ponds in this district ; and one in particular
on our sheep-down, three hundred feet
above my house ; which though never
above three feet deep in the middle, and
not more than thirty feet in diameter, and
containing perhaps not more than two or
three hundred hogsheads of water, yet
never is known to fail, though it aflPords
drink for three hundred or four hundred
sheep, and for at least twenty head of large
cattle beside. This pond, it is true, is over-
hung with two moderate beeches, that,
doubtless, at times, afford it much supply ;

350 NATURAL HISTORY

but then we have others as small, that,
without the aid of trees, and in spite of
evaporation from sun and wind, and perpe-
tual 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 Mai/ 1775, it appears that " the
" small and even considerable ponds in the
" vales are now dried up, while the small
'* ponds on the very tops of hills are but
** little affected.'' Can this difference be
accounted for from evaporation alone, which
certainly is more prevalent in bottoms ? or
rather have not those elevated pools some
unnoticed recruits, which in the night time
counterbalance the waste of the day; with-
out which the cattle alone must soon ex-
haust them ? And here it will be necessary
to enter more minutely into the cause. Dr.
Haies, in his vegetable Statics, advances,
from experiment, that " the moister the
" earth is, the more dew falls on it in a
** night : and more than a double quantity
" of dew falls on a surface of water than

OF SELBORNE. 351

" 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 con-
densation : and that the air, when loaded
with fogs and vapours, and even with co-
pious dews, can alone advance a consider-
able 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 hot-
test parts of Summer ; and how much the
surfaces of things are drenched by those
swimming vapours, though, to the senses,
all the while, little moisture seems to fall.

I am, &c.

END OF VOL. I.

T. C. HAXSARD, Pater-noster-row Press.

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