The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1

By Gilbert White

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Title: The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1

Author: Gilbert White

Editor: Henry Morley

Release Date: March 29, 2007 [eBook #20933]
[Most recently updated: October 10, 2021]

Language: English


Produced by: Les Bowler

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, VOL. 1 ***




                       CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.





                                   THE
                            NATURAL HISTORY
                                   OF
                                SELBORNE


                                    BY
                       THE REV. GILBERT WHITE A.M.

                                 VOL. I.

                       CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
                _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
                                   1887




INTRODUCTION.


Gilbert White was born in the village of Selborne on the 18th of July, in
the year 1720.  His father was a gentleman of good means, with a house at
Selborne and some acres of land.  Gilbert had his school training at
Basingstoke, from Thomas Warton, the father of the poet of that name, who
was born at Basingstoke in 1728, six years younger than his brother
Joseph, who had been born at Dunsford, in Surrey.  Thomas Warton, their
father, was the youngest of three sons of a rector of Breamore, in the
New Forest, and the only son of the three who was not deaf and dumb.
This Thomas, the elder, was an able man, who obtained a fellowship at
Magdalen College, Oxford, became vicar of Basingstoke, in Hampshire, and
was there headmaster of the school to which young Gilbert White was sent.
He was referred to in Amhurst's "Terrae Filius" as "a reverend poetical
gentleman;" he knew Pope, and had credit enough for his verse to hold the
office of Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1718 to 1728.  His genius
for writing middling verse passed on to his more famous sons, Joseph and
Thomas, and they both became in due time Oxford Professors of Poetry.

Gilbert White passed on from school to Oxford, where he entered Oriel
College in 1739.  He became a Fellow of Oriel, graduated M.A. in 1746, at
the age of six-and-twenty, and six years afterwards he served as one of
the Senior Proctors of the University.  His love of nature grew with him
from boyhood, and was associated with his earliest years of home.  His
heart abided with his native village.  When he had taken holy orders he
could have obtained college livings, but he cared only to go back to his
native village, and the house in which he was born, paying a yearly visit
to Oxford, and in that house, after a happy life that extended a few
years over the threescore and ten, he died on the 26th of June, 1793.

Gilbert White never married, but lived in peaceful performance of light
clerical duties and enjoyment of those observations of nature which his
book records.  His brothers, who shared his love of nature, aided instead
of thwarting him in his studies of the natural history of Selborne, and
as their lives were less secluded and they did not remain unmarried, they
provided him with a family of young people to care about, for he lived to
register the births of sixty-three nephews and nieces.

It was one of his brothers, who was a member of the Royal Society, by
whom Gilbert White was persuaded, towards the close of his life, to
gather his notes into a book.  It was first published in a quarto volume
in the year of the outbreak of the French Revolution with the fall of the
Bastile.  He was more concerned with the course of events in a martin's
nest than with the crash of empires, and no man ever made more evident
the latent power of enjoyment that is left dead by those who live
uneventful lives surrounded by a world of life and change and growth
which they want eyes to see.  Gilbert White was in his seventieth year
when his book appeared, four years before his death.  It was compiled
from letters addressed to Thomas Pennant and the Hon. Daines Barrington.

Thomas Pennant was a naturalist six years younger than Gilbert White.  He
was born at Downing, in Flintshire, in 1726, and died in 1798, like
White, in the house in which he had been born.  His love of Natural
History made him a traveller at home and abroad.  He counted Buffon among
his friends.  He had written many books before the date of the
publication of White's "Selborne."  Pennant's "British Zoology," his
"History of Quadrupeds" and "Arctic Zoology," had a high reputation.  He
wrote also a Tour in Wales and a History of London.

Daines Barrington, fourth son of the first Viscount Barrington, was a
year younger than Pennant, and died in 1800.  He became Secretary to
Greenwich Hospital, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and President
of the Royal Society.  His "Miscellanies," published in 4to in 1781, deal
with questions of Natural History, and of Antiquities, including a paper
first published in 1775 asserting the possibility of approaching the
North Pole.  His most valued book was one of "Observations on the more
Ancient Statutes."

                                                                      H.M.




LETTERS ADDRESSED TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.


LETTER I.


The parish of Selborne lies in the extreme eastern corner of the county
of Hampshire, bordering on the county of Sussex, and not far from the
county of Surrey; is about fifty miles south-west of London, in latitude
fifty-one, and near mid-way between the towns of Alton and Petersfield.
Being very large and extensive, it abuts on twelve parishes, two of which
are in Sussex, viz., Trotton and Rogate.  If you begin from the south and
proceed westward, the adjacent parishes are Emshot, Newton Valence,
Faringdon, Hartley Mauduit, Great Ward le Ham, Kingsley, Hadleigh,
Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lyffe, and Greatham.  The soils of this
district are almost as various and diversified as the views and aspects.
The high part of the south-west consists of a vast hill of chalk, rising
three hundred feet above the village, and is divided into a sheep-down,
the high wood and a long hanging wood, called The Hanger.  The covert of
this eminence is altogether _beech_, the most lovely of all forest trees,
whether we consider its smooth rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or
graceful pendulous boughs.  The down, or sheep-walk, is a pleasing,
park-like spot, of about one mile by half that space, jutting out on the
verge of the hill-country, where it begins to break down into the plains,
and commanding a very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale,
wood-lands, heath, and water.  The prospect is bounded to the south-east
and east by the vast range of mountains  called the Sussex Downs, by
Guild-down near Guildford, and by the Downs round Dorking, and Ryegate in
Surrey, to the north-east, which altogether, with the country beyond
Alton and Farnham, form a noble and extensive outline.

At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the uplands, lies the
village, which consists of one single straggling street, three-quarters
of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running parallel with the
Hanger.  The houses are divided from the hill by a vein of stiff clay
(good wheat land), yet stand on a rock of white stone, little in
appearance removed from chalk; but seems so far from being calcareous,
that it endures extreme heat.  Yet that the freestone still preserves
somewhat that is analogous to chalk, is plain from the beeches, which
descend as low as those rocks extend, and no farther, and thrive as well
on them, where the ground is steep, as on the chalks.

The cart-way of the village divides, in a remarkable manner, two very
incongruous soils.  To the south-west is a rank clay, that requires the
labour of years to render it mellow; while the gardens to the north-east,
and small enclosures behind, consist of a warm, forward, crumbling mould,
called black malm, which seems highly saturated with vegetable and animal
manure; and these may perhaps have been the original site of the town;
while the woods and coverts might extend down to the opposite bank.

At each end of the village, which runs from south-east to north-west,
arises a small rivulet: that at the north-west end frequently fails; but
the other is a fine perennial spring, little influenced by drought or wet
seasons, called Well-head.  This breaks out of some high grounds joining
to Nore Hill, a noble chalk promontory, remarkable for sending forth two
streams into two different seas.  The one to the south becomes a branch
of the Arun, running to Arundel, and so sailing into the British Channel:
the other to the north.  The Selborne stream makes one branch of the Wey;
and, meeting the Black-down stream at Hadleigh, and the Alton and Farnham
stream at Tilford-bridge, swells into a considerable river, navigable at
Godalming; from whence it passes to Guildford, and so into the Thames at
Weybridge; and thus at the Nore into the German Ocean.

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

To the north-west, north and east of the village, is a range of fair
enclosures, consisting of what is called a white malm, a sort of rotten
or rubble stone, which, when turned up to the frost and rain, moulders to
pieces, and becomes manure to itself.

Still on to the north-east, and a step lower, is a kind of white land,
neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough, yet
kindly for hops, which root deep in the freestone, and have their poles
and wood for charcoal growing just at hand.  The white soil produces the
brightest hops.

As the parish still inclines down towards Wolmer Forest, at the juncture
of the clays and sand the soil becomes a wet, sandy loam, remarkable for
timber, and infamous for roads.  The oaks of Temple and Black-moor stand
high in the estimation of purveyors, and have furnished much naval
timber; while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen
call shaky, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing.  Beyond
the sandy loam the soil becomes a hungry, lean sand, till it mingles with
the forest; and will produce little without the assistance of lime and
turnips.



LETTER II.


In the court of Norton farmhouse, a manor farm to the north-west of the
village, on the white malms, stood within these twenty years a
broad-leaved elm, or wych hazel, _ulmus folio latissimo scabro_ of Ray,
which, though it had lost a considerable leading bough in the great storm
in the year 1703, equal to a moderate tree, yet, when felled, contained
eight loads of timber; and, being too bulky for a carriage, was sawn off
at seven feet above the butt, where it measured near eight feet in the
diameter.  This elm I mention to show to what a bulk planted elms may
attain; as this tree must certainly have been such from its situation.

In the centre of the village, and near the church, is a square piece of
ground surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called "The Plestor."  In the
midst of this spot stood, in old times, a vast oak, with a short squat
body, and huge horizontal arms extending almost to the extremity of the
area.  This venerable tree, surrounded with stone steps, and seats above
them, was the delight of old and young, and a place of much resort in
summer evenings; where the former sat in grave debate, while the latter
frolicked and danced before them.  Long might it have stood, had not the
amazing tempest in 1703 overturned it at once, to the infinite regret of
the inhabitants, and the vicar, who bestowed several pounds in setting it
in its place again: but all his care could not avail; the tree sprouted
for a time, then withered and died.  This oak I mention to show to what a
bulk planted oaks also may arrive: and planted this tree must certainly
have been, as will appear from what will be said farther concerning this
area, when we enter on the antiquities of Selborne.

On the Blackmoor estate there is a small wood called Losel's, of a few
acres, that was lately furnished with a set of oaks of a peculiar growth
and great value; they were tall and taper-like firs, but standing near
together had very small heads, only a little brush without any large
limbs.  About twenty years ago the bridge at the Toy, near Hampton Court,
being much decayed, some trees were wanted for the repairs that were
fifty feet long without bough, and would measure twelve inches diameter
at the little end.  Twenty such trees did a purveyor find in this little
wood, with this advantage, that many of them answered the description at
sixty feet.  These trees were sold for twenty pounds apiece.

In the centre of this grove there stood an oak, which, though shapely and
tall on the whole, bulged out into a large excrescence about the middle
of the stem.  On this a pair of ravens had fixed their residence for such
a series of years, that the oak was distinguished by the title of the
Raven Tree.  Many were the attempts of the neighbouring youths to get at
this eyry: the difficulty whetted their inclinations, and each was
ambitious of surmounting the arduous task.  But when they arrived at the
swelling, it jutted out so in their way, and was so far beyond their
grasp, that the most daring lads were awed, and acknowledged the
undertaking to be too hazardous: so the ravens built on, nest upon nest,
in perfect security, till the fatal day arrived in which the wood was to
be levelled.  It was in the month of February, when these birds usually
sit.  The saw was applied to the butt, the wedges were inserted into the
opening, the woods echoed to the heavy blow of the beetle or mall or
mallet, the tree nodded to its fall; but still the dam sat on.  At last,
when it gave way, the bird was flung from her nest, and, though her
parental affection deserved a better fate, was whipped down by the twigs
which brought her dead to the ground.



LETTER III.


The fossil-shells of this district, and sorts of stone, such as have
fallen within my observation, must not be passed over in silence.  And
first I must mention, as a great curiosity, a specimen that was ploughed
up in the chalky fields, near the side of the Down, and given to me for
the singularity of its appearance, which, to an incurious eye, seems like
a petrified fish of about four inches long, the cardo passing for a head
and mouth.  It is in reality a bivalve of the Linnaean Genus of Mytilus,
and the species of Crista Galli; called by Lister, _Rastellum_; by
Rumphius, _Ostreum plicatum minus_; by D'Argenville, _Auris Porci_, s.
_Crista Galli_; and by those who make collections, Cock's Comb.  Though I
applied to several such in London, I never could meet with an entire
specimen; nor could I ever find in books any engraving from a perfect
one.  In the superb museum at Leicester House, permission was given me to
examine for this article; and, though I was disappointed as to the
fossil, I was highly gratified with the sight of several of the shells
themselves in high preservation.  This bivalve is only known to inhabit
the Indian Ocean, where it fixes itself to a zoophyte, known by the name
Gorgonia.  The curious foldings of the suture the one into the other, the
alternate flutings or grooves, and the curved form of my specimen, are
much easier expressed by the pencil than by words.

_Cornua Ammonis_ are very common about this village.  As we were cutting
an inclining path up the Hanger, the labourers found them frequently on
that steep, just under the soil, in the chalk, and of a considerable
size.  In the lane above Wall-head, in the way to Emshot, they abound in
the bank in a darkish sort of marl, and are usually very small and soft;
but in Clay's Pond, a little farther on, at the end of the pit, where the
soil is dug out for manure, I have occasionally observed them of large
dimensions, perhaps fourteen or sixteen inches in diameter.  But as these
did not consist of firm stone, but were formed of a kind of terra
lapidosa, or hardened clay, as soon as they were exposed to the rains and
frost they mouldered away.  These seemed as if they were a very recent
production.  In the chalk-pit, at the north-west end of the Hanger, large
nautili are sometimes observed.

In the very thickest strata of our freestone, and at considerable depths,
well-diggers often find large scallops or pectines, having both shells
deeply striated, and ridged and furrowed alternately.  They are highly
impregnated with, if not wholly composed of, the stone of the quarry.



LETTER IV.


As in a former letter the freestone of this place has been only mentioned
incidentally, I shall here become more particular.

This stone is in great request for hearth-stones, and the beds of ovens;
and in lining of lime-kilns it turns to good account, for the workmen use
sandy loam instead of mortar, the sand of which fluxes, and runs by the
intense heat, and so cases over the whole face of the kiln with a strong
vitrified coat-like glass, that it is well preserved from injuries of
weather, and endures thirty or forty years.  When chiseled smooth, it
makes elegant fronts for houses, equal in colour and grain to Bath stone;
and superior in one respect, that, when seasoned, it does not scale.
Decent chimney-pieces are worked from it of much closer and finer grain
than Portland, and rooms are floored with it, but it proves rather too
soft for this purpose.  It is a freestone cutting in all directions, yet
has something of a grain parallel with the horizon, and therefore should
not be surbedded, but laid in the same position that it grows in the
quarry.  On the ground abroad this firestone will not succeed for
pavements, because, probably some degrees of saltness prevailing within
it, the rain tears the slabs to pieces.  Though this stone is too hard to
be acted on by vinegar, yet both the white part, and even the blue rag,
ferments strongly in mineral acids.  Though the white stone will not bear
wet, yet in every quarry at intervals there are thin strata of blue rag,
which resist rain and frost, and are excellent for pitching of stables,
paths, and courts, and for building of dry walls against banks, a
valuable species of fencing much in use in this village, and for mending
of roads.  This rag is rugged and stubborn, and will not hew to a smooth
face, but is very durable; yet, as these strata are shallow and lie deep,
large quantities cannot be procured but at considerable expense.  Among
the blue rags turn up some blocks tinged with a stain of yellow or rust
colour, which seem to be nearly as lasting as the blue; and every now and
then balls of a friable substance, like rust of iron, called rust balls.

In Wolmer Forest I see but one sort of stone, called by the workmen sand,
or forest-stone.  This is generally of the colour of rusty iron, and
might probably be worked as iron ore, is very hard and heavy, and of a
firm, compact texture, and composed of a small roundish crystalline grit,
cemented together by a brown, terrene, ferruginous matter; will not cut
without difficulty, nor easily strike fire with steel.  Being often found
in broad flat pieces, it makes good pavement for paths about houses,
never becoming slippery in frost or rain, is excellent for dry walls, and
is sometimes used in buildings.  In many parts of that waste it lies
scattered on the surface of the ground, but is dug on Weaver's Down, a
vast hill on the eastern verge of that forest, where the pits are shallow
and the stratum thin.  This stone is imperishable.

From a notion of rendering their work the more elegant, and giving it a
finish, masons chip this stone into small fragments about the size of the
head of a large nail, and then stick the pieces into the wet mortar along
the joints of their freestone walls.  This embellishment carries an odd
appearance, and has occasioned strangers sometimes to ask us pleasantly,
"whether we fastened our walls together with tenpenny nails."



LETTER V.


Among the singularities of this place the two rocky, hollow lanes, the
one to Alton, and the other to the forest, deserve our attention.  These
roads, running through the malm lands, are, by the traffic of ages, and
the fretting of water, worn down through the first stratum of our
freestone, and partly through the second; so that they look more like
water-courses than roads; and are bedded with naked rag for furlongs
together.  In many places they are reduced sixteen or eighteen feet
beneath the level of the fields; and after floods, and in frosts, exhibit
very grotesque and wild appearances, from the tangled roots that are
twisted among the strata, and from the torrents rushing down their broken
sides; and especially when those cascades are frozen into icicles,
hanging in all the fanciful shapes of frost-work.  These rugged, gloomy
scenes affright the ladies when they peep down into them from the paths
above, and make timid horsemen shudder while they ride along them; but
delight the naturalist with their various botany, and particularly with
their curious filices with which they abound.

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

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

The village stands in a sheltered spot, secured by the Hanger from the
strong westerly winds.  The air is soft, but rather moist from the
effluvia of so many trees; yet perfectly healthy and free from agues.

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

                        Inch.                   Hund.
From May 1, 1779, to    28                      37!
the end of the year,
there fell
   Jan. 1, 1780, to     27                      32
Jan. 1, 1781
   Jan. 1, 1781, to     30                      71
Jan. 1, 1782
   Jan. 1, 1782, to     50                      26!
Jan. 1, 1783
   Jan. 1, 1783, to     33                      71
Jan. 1, 1784
   Jan. 1, 1784, to     33                      80
Jan. 1, 1785
   Jan. 1, 1785, to     31                      55
Jan. 1, 1786
   Jan. 1, 1786, to     39                      57
Jan. 1, 1787

The village of Selborne, and large hamlet of Oakhanger, with the single
farms, and many scattered houses along the verge of the forest, contain
upwards of six hundred and seventy inhabitants.

We abound with poor, many of whom are sober and industrious, and live
comfortably 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-gardens, of which we have
many, and fell and bark timber.  In the spring and summer the women weed
the corn, and enjoy a second harvest in September by hop-picking.
Formerly, in the dead months they availed themselves greatly by spinning
wool, for making of barragons, a genteel corded stuff, much in vogue at
that time for summer wear, and chiefly manufactured at Alton, a
neighbouring town, by some of the people called Quakers; but from
circumstances this trade is at an end.  The inhabitants enjoy a good
share of health and longevity; and the parish swarms with children.



LETTER VI.


Should I omit to describe with some exactness the forest of Wolmer, of
which three-fifths perhaps lie in this parish, my account of Selborne
would be very imperfect, as it is a district abounding with many curious
productions, both animal and vegetable, and has often afforded me much
entertainment both as a sportsman and as a naturalist.

The royal forest of Wolmer is a tract of land of about seven miles in
length, by two and a half in breadth, running nearly from north to south,
and is abutted on, to begin to the south, and so to proceed eastward, by
the parishes of Greatham, Lysse, Rogate, and Trotton, in the county of
Sussex; by Bramshot, Hadleigh, and Kingsley.  This royalty consists
entirely of sand covered with heath and fern, but is somewhat diversified
with hills and dales, without having one standing tree in the whole
extent.  In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which
formerly abounded with subterraneous trees, though Dr. Plot says
positively, that "there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses
of the southern counties."  But he was mistaken: for I myself have seen
cottages on the verge of this wild district, whose timbers consisted of a
black hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners assured me they
procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or some such
instruments: but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so
well examined, that none has been found of late.  Besides the oak, I have
also been shown pieces of fossil wood of a paler colour, and softer
nature, which the inhabitants called fir: but, upon a nice examination,
and trial by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them, and
therefore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow or alder, or
some such aquatic tree.

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

But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now extinct, which
I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting flying became
so common, and that was the heath-cock, black-game, or grouse.  When I
was a little boy I recollect one coming now and then to my father's
table.  The last pack remembered was killed about thirty-five years ago;
and within these ten years one solitary greyhen was sprung by some
beagles in beating for a hare.  The sportsmen cried out, "A hen
pheasant!" but a gentleman present, who had often seen grouse in the
north of England, assured me that it was a greyhen.

Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the Fauna
Selborniensis; for another beautiful link in the chain of beings is
wanting.  I mean the red deer, which toward the beginning of this century
amounted to about five hundred head, and made a stately appearance.
There is an old keeper, now alive, named Adams, whose great grandfather
(mentioned in a perambulation taken in 1635), grandfather, father, and
self, enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer Forest in succession for more
than a hundred years.  This person assures me, that his father has often
told him that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the Portsmouth road,
did not think the forest of Wolmer beneath her royal regard.  For she
came out of the great road at Lippock, which is just by, and, reposing
herself on a bank smoothed for that purpose, lying about half a mile to
the east of Wolmer Pond, and still called Queen's Bank, saw with great
complacency and satisfaction the whole herd of red deer brought by the
keepers along the vale before her, consisting then of about five hundred
head.  A sight this, worthy the attention of the greatest sovereign!  But
he farther adds that, by means of the Waltham blacks, or, to use his own
expression, as soon as they began blacking, they were reduced to about
fifty head, and so continued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of
Cumberland.  It is now more than thirty years ago that His Highness sent
down a huntsman, and six yeoman-prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with
gold, attended by the staghounds, ordering them to take every deer in
this forest alive, and to convey them in carts to Windsor.  In the course
of the summer they caught every stag, some of which showed 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 afterwards.  I saw myself one of the
yeoman-prickers single out a stag from the herd, and must confess that it
was the most curious feat of activity I ever beheld, superior to anything
in Mr. Astley's riding-school.  The exertions made by the horse and deer
much exceeded all my expectations, though the former greatly excelled the
latter in speed.  When the devoted deer was separated from his
companions, they gave him, by their watches, law, as they called it, for
twenty minutes; when, sounding their horns, the stop-dogs were permitted
to pursue, and a most gallant scene ensued.



LETTER VII.


Though large herds of deer do much harm to the neighbourhood, yet the
injury to the morals of the people is of more moment than the loss of
their crops.  The temptation is irresistible; for most men are sportsmen
by constitution: and there is such an inherent spirit for hunting in
human nature, as scarce any inhibitions can restrain.  Hence, towards the
beginning of this century all this country was wild about deer-stealing.
Unless he was a hunter, as they affected to call themselves, no young
person was allowed to be possessed of manhood or gallantry.  The Waltham
blacks at length committed such enormities, that Government was forced to
interfere with that severe and sanguinary act called the "Black Act,"
which now comprehends more felonies than any law that ever was framed
before.  And, therefore, a late Bishop of Winchester, when urged to
re-stock Waltham Chase, refused, from a motive worthy of a prelate,
replying "that it had done mischief enough already."

Our old race of deer-stealers is 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 watching the pregnant hind to her lair, and, when
the calf was dropped, paring its feet with a penknife to the quick to
prevent its escape, till it was large and fat enough to be killed; the
shooting at one of their neighbours with a bullet in a turnip-field by
moonshine, mistaking him for a deer; and the losing a dog in the
following extraordinary manner: Some fellows, suspecting that a calf
new-fallen was deposited in a certain spot of thick fern, went, with a
lurcher, to surprise it; when the parent-hind rushed out of the brake,
and, taking a vast spring with all her feet close together, pitched upon
the neck of the dog, and broke it short in two.

Another temptation to idleness and sporting was a number of rabbits,
which possessed all the hillocks and dry places: but these being
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 allurements to irregularities are
removed, are of considerable service to neighbourhoods that verge upon
them, by furnishing them with peat and turf for their firing; with fuel
for the burning their lime; and with ashes for their grasses; and by
maintaining their geese and their stock of young cattle at little or no
expense.

The manor farm of the parish of Greatham has an admitted claim, I see (by
an old record taken from the Tower of London) of turning all live stock
on the forest, at proper seasons, "bidentibus exceptis."  The reason, I
presume, why sheep 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,
between Candlemas and Midsummer, any grig, ling, heath and furze, goss or
fern, is punishable with whipping and confinement in the house of
correction;" yet, in this forest, about March or April, according to the
dryness of the season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up, that they
often get to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes
been communicated to the underwoods, woods, and coppices, where great
damage has ensued.  The plea for these burnings is that, when the old
coat of heath, etc., is consumed, young will sprout up, and afford much
tender browze for cattle; but, where there is large old furze, the fire,
following the roots, consumes the very ground; so that for hundreds of
acres nothing is to be seen but smother and desolation, the whole circuit
round looking like the cinders of a volcano; and, the soil being quite
exhausted, no traces of vegetation are to be found for years.  These
conflagrations, as they take place usually with a north-east or east
wind, much annoy this village with their smoke, and often alarm the
country; and, once in particular, I remember that a gentleman, who lives
beyond Andover, coming to my house, when he got on the downs between that
town and Winchester, at twenty-five miles' distance, was surprised much
with smoke and a hot smell of fire, and concluded that Alresford was in
flames; but, when he came to that town, he then had apprehensions for the
next village, and so on to the end of his journey.

On two of the most conspicuous eminences of this forest stand two arbours
or bowers, made of the boughs of oak; the one called Waldon Lodge, the
other Brimstone Lodge: these the keepers renew annually on the feast of
St. Barnabas, taking the old materials for a perquisite.  The farm called
Blackmoor, in this parish, is obliged to find the posts and brush-wood
for the former; while the farms at Greatham, in rotation, furnish for the
latter, and are all enjoined to cut and deliver the materials at the
spot.  This custom I mention, because I look upon it to be of very remote
antiquity.



LETTER VIII.


On the verge of the forest, as it is now circumscribed, are three
considerable lakes, two in Oakhanger, of which I have nothing particular
to say; and one called Bin's, or Bean's Pond, which is worthy the
attention of a naturalist or a sportsman.  For, being crowded at the
upper end with willows, and with the carex cespitosa, it affords such a
safe and pleasing shelter to wild ducks, teals, snipes, etc., that they
breed there.  In the winter this covert is also frequented by foxes, and
sometimes by pheasants; and the bogs produce many curious plants.  (For
which consult Letter XLI. to Mr. Barrington.)

By a perambulation of Wolmer Forest and the Holt, made in 1635, and the
eleventh year of Charles I. (which now lies before me), it appears that
the limits of the former are much circumscribed.  For, to say nothing of
the farther side, with which I am not so well acquainted, the bounds on
this side, in old times, came into Binswood, and extended to the ditch of
Ward le Ham Park, in which stands the curious mount called King John's
Hill, and Lodge Hill; and to the verge of Hartley Mauduit, called Mauduit
Hatch; comprehending also Short Heath, Oakhanger, and Oakwoods--a large
district, now private property, though once belonging to the royal
domain.

It is remarkable that the term purlieu is never once mentioned in this
long roll of parchment.  It contains, besides the perambulation, a rough
estimate of the value of the timbers, which were considerable, growing at
that time in the district of the Holt, and enumerates the officers,
superior and inferior, of those joint forests, for the time being, and
their ostensible fees and perquisites.  In those days, as at present,
there were hardly any trees in Wolmer Forest.

Within the present limits of the forest are three considerable lakes,
Hogmer, Cranmer, and Wolmer, all of which are stocked with carp, tench,
eels, and perch: but the fish do not thrive well, because the water is
hungry, and the bottoms are a naked sand.

A circumstance respecting these ponds, though by no means peculiar to
them, I cannot pass over in silence; and that is, that instinct by which
in summer all the kine, whether oxen, cows, calves, or heifers, retire
constantly to the water during the hotter hours; where, being more exempt
from flies, and inhaling the coolness of that element, some belly deep,
and some only to mid-leg, they ruminate and solace themselves from about
ten in the morning till four in the afternoon, and then return to their
feeding.  During this great proportion of the day they drop much dung, in
which insects nestle, and so supply food for the fish, which would be
poorly subsisted but from this contingency.  Thus Nature, who is a great
economist, converts the recreation of one animal to the support of
another!  Thomson, who was a nice observer of natural occurrences, did
not let this pleasing circumstance escape him.  He says, in his "Summer,"

    "A various group the herds and flocks compose;
    . . . on the grassy bank
    Some ruminating lie; while others stand
    Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip
    The circling surface."

Wolmer Pond, so called, I suppose, for eminence sake, is a vast lake for
this part of the world, containing, in its whole circumference, 2,646
yards, or very near a mile and a half.  The length of the north-west and
opposite side is about 704 yards, and the breadth of the south-west end
about 456 yards.  This measurement, which I caused to be made with good
exactness, gives an area of about sixty-six acres, exclusive of a large
irregular arm at the north-east corner, which we did not take into the
reckoning.

On the face of this expanse of waters, and perfectly secure from fowlers,
lie all day long, in the winter season, vast flocks of ducks, teals, and
widgeons, of various denominations, where they preen and solace, and rest
themselves, till towards sunset, when they issue forth in little parties
(for in their natural state they are all birds of the night) to feed in
the brooks and meadows, returning again with the dawn of the morning.
Had this lake an arm or two more, and were it planted round with thick
covert (for now it is perfectly naked), it might make a valuable decoy.

Yet neither its extent, nor the clearness of its water, nor the resort of
various and curious fowls, nor its picturesque groups of cattle, can
render this mere so remarkable as the great quantity of coins that were
found in its bed about forty years ago.  But, as such discoveries more
properly belong to the antiquities of this place, I shall suppress all
particulars for the present, till I enter professedly on my series of
letters respecting the more remote history of this village and district.



LETTER IX.


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

The grantees that the author remembers are Brigadier-General Emanuel
Scroope Howe, and his lady, Ruperta, who was a natural daughter of Prince
Rupert by Margaret Hughes; a Mr. Mordaunt, of the Peterborough family,
who married a dowager Lady Pembroke; Henry Bilson Legge and lady; and now
Lord Stawell, their son.

The lady of General Howe lived to an advanced age, long surviving her
husband, and, at her death, left behind her many curious pieces of
mechanism of her father's constructing, who was a distinguished mechanic
and artist, as well as warrior; and among the rest, a very complicated
clock, lately in possession of Mr. Elmer, the celebrated game painter, at
Farnham, in the county of Surrey.

Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow range of enclosures,
yet no two soils can be more 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 Binsted, is
about two miles in extent from north to south, and near as much from east
to west, and contains within it many woodlands and lawns, and the great
lodge where the grantees reside, and a smaller lodge called Goose Green;
and is abutted on by the parishes of Kingsley, Frinsham, Farnham, and
Bentley; all of which have right of common.

One thing is remarkable, that though the Holt has been of old well
stocked with fallow-deer, unrestrained by any pales or fences more than a
common hedge, yet they were never seen within the limits of Wolmer; nor
were the red deer of Wolmer ever known to haunt the thickets or glades of
the Holt.

At present the deer of the Holt are much thinned and reduced by the night
hunters, who perpetually harass them in spite of the efforts of numerous
keepers, and the severe penalties that have been put in force against
them as often as they have been detected, and rendered liable to the lash
of the law.  Neither fines nor imprisonments can deter them, so
impossible is it to extinguish the spirit of sporting which seems to be
inherent in human nature.

General Howe turned out some German wild boars and sows in his forests,
to the great terror of the neighbourhood, and, at one time, a wild bull
or buffalo; but the country rose upon them and destroyed 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 Stawell.  He lays claim also to
the lop and top; but the poor of the parishes of Binsted and Frinsham,
Bentley and Kingsley, assert that it belongs to them, and assembling in a
riotous manner, have actually taken it all away.  One man, who keeps a
team, has carried home for his share forty stacks of wood.  Forty-five of
these people his lordship has served with actions.  These trees, which
were very sound and in high perfection, were winter-cut, viz., in
February and March, before the bark would run.  In old times the Holt was
estimated to be eighteen miles, computed measure from water-carriage,
viz., from the town of Chertsey, on the Thames; but now it is not half
that distance, since the Wey is made navigable up to the town of
Godalming, in the county of Surrey.



LETTER X.


                                                       _August 4th_, 1767.

It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose studies
have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge; so that, for want
of a companion to quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, I have
made but slender progress in a kind of information to which I have been
attached from my childhood.

As to swallows (_hirundines rusticae_) being found in a torpid state
during the winter in the Isle of Wight or any part of this country, I
never heard any such account worth attending to.  But a clergyman, of an
inquisitive turn, assures me, that when he was a great boy, some workmen,
in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring,
found two or three swifts (_hirundines apodes_) among the rubbish, which
were at first appearance dead, but on being carried towards the fire
revived.  He told me, that out of his great care to preserve them, he put
them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were
suffocated.

Another intelligent person has informed me, that while he was a schoolboy
at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the chalk cliff fell
down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people found swallows
among the rubbish; but on my questioning him whether he saw any of those
birds himself, to my no small disappointment, he answered me in the
negative; but that others assured him they did.

Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July 11th, and
young martins (_hirundines urbicae_) were then fledged in their nests.
Both species will breed again once.  For I see by my fauna of last year,
that young broods came forth so late as September 18th.  Are not these
late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration?  Nay, some young
martins remained in their nests last year so late as September 29th; and
yet they totally disappeared with us by the 5th October.

How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly the same
life with the swallow and house-martin, should leave us before the middle
of August invariably! while the latter stay often till the middle of
October; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the 7th November.
The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in sight together, an
uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds!

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

I perceive there are more than one species of the _motacilla trochilus_.
Mr. Derham supposes, in "Ray's Philos. Letters," that he has discovered
three.  In these there is again an instance of some very common birds
that have as yet no English name.

Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the blackcap (_motacilla
atricapilla_) be a bird of passage or not: I think there is no doubt of
it: for, in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping, all at
once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter.  They are
delicate songsters.

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

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

I suspect much there may be two species of water-rats.  Ray says, and
Linnaeus after him, that the water-rat is web-footed behind.  Now I have
discovered a rat on the banks of our little stream that is not
web-footed, and yet is an excellent swimmer and diver: it answers exactly
to the _mus amphibius_ of Linnaeus (see _Syst. Nat_.), which he says
"_natat in fossis et urinatur_."  I should be glad to procure one
"_plantis palmatis_."  Linnaeus seems to be in a puzzle about his _mus
amphibius_, and to doubt whether it differs from his _mus terrestris_;
which if it be, as he allows, the "_mus agrestis capite grandi
brachyuros_," of Ray, is widely different from the water-rat, both in
size, make, and manner of life.

As to the _falco_, which I mentioned in town, I shall take the liberty to
send it down to you into Wales; presuming on your candour that you will
excuse me if it should appear as familiar to you as it is strange to me.
Though mutilated "_qualem dices . . . ante hac fuisse tales cum sint
reliquiae_!"

It haunted a marshy piece of ground in quest of wild-ducks and snipes;
but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was tearing
in pieces.  I cannot make it answer to any of our English hawks; neither
could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed birds in
Spring Gardens.  I found it nailed up at the end of a barn, which is the
countryman's museum.

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



LETTER XI.


                                          SELBORNE, _September 9th_, 1767.

It will not be without impatience that I shall wait for your thoughts
with regard to the _falco_; as to its weight, breadth, etc., I wish I had
set them down at the time; but, to the best of my remembrance, it weighed
two pounds and eight ounces, and measured, from wing to wing,
thirty-eight inches.  Its cere and feet were yellow, and the circle of
its eyelids a bright yellow.  As it had been killed some days, and the
eyes were sunk, I could make no good observation on the colour of the
pupils and the irides.

The most unusual birds I ever observed in these parts were a pair of
hoopoes (_upupa_), which came several years ago in the summer, and
frequented an ornamented piece of ground, which joins to my garden, for
some weeks.  They used to march about in a stately manner, feeding in the
walks, many times in the day; and seemed disposed to breed in my outlet;
but were frighted and persecuted by idle boys, who would never let them
be at rest.

Three grossbeaks (_loxia coccothraustes_) 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 crossbill (_loxia curvirostra_) was killed last year in this
neighbourhood.

Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the village,
yield nothing but the bull's head or miller's thumb (_gobius fluviatilis
capitatus_), the trout (_trutta fluviatilis_), the eel (_anguilla_), the
lampern (_lampoetra parva et fluviatilis_), and the stickleback
(_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 teems of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed; and
multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard weather frequent our lakes in
the forest.

Having some acquaintance with the tame brown owl, I find that it casts up
the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner
of hawks: when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot eat.

The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a constant
supply of fresh mice; whereas the young of the brown owl will eat
indiscriminately all that is brought: snails, rats, kittens, puppies,
magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.

The house-martins have eggs still, and squab young.  The last swift I
observed was about the 21st August; it was a straggler.

Red-starts, fly-catchers, white-throats, and _reguli non cristati_, still
appear; but I have seen no black-caps lately.

I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College quadrangle
in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house-martin flying about, and
settling on the parapet, so late as the 20th November.

At present I know only two species of bats, the common _vespertilio
murinus_ and the _vespertilio auribus_.

I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take
flies out of a person's hand.  If you gave it anything to eat, it brought
its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head in the
manner of birds of prey when they feed.  The adroitness it showed in
shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was
worthy of observation, and pleased me much.  Insects seemed to be most
acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the
notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no
improbable story.  While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I
saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon
a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease
from the floor.  It ran, I observed, with more despatch than I was aware
of, but in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner.

Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface as they
play over pools and streams.  They love to frequent waters, not only for
the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which are found over
them in the greatest plenty.  As I was going some years ago, pretty late,
in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on a warm summer's evening, I think I
saw myriads of bats between the two places.  The air swarmed with them
all along the Thames, so that hundreds were in sight at a time.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER XII.


                                                     _November 4th_, 1767.

Sir,--It gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the _falco_ turned
out an uncommon one.  I must confess I should have been better pleased to
have heard that I had sent you a bird that you had never seen before; but
that, I find, would be a difficult task.

I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters, a young
one and a female with young, both of which I have preserved in brandy.
From the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no doubt but
that the species is nondescript.  They are much smaller, and more
slender, than the _mus domesticus medius_ of Ray, and have more of the
squirrel or dormouse colour; their belly is white, a straight line along
their sides divides the shades of their back and belly.  They never enter
into houses; are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves, abound in
harvest; and build their nests amidst the straws of 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 autumn, most artificially platted, and
composed of the blades of wheat, perfectly round, and about the size of a
cricket ball, with the aperture so 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
contained eight little mice that were naked and blind.  As this nest was
perfectly full, how could the dam come at her litter respectively, so as
to administer a teat to each?  Perhaps she opens different places for
that purpose, adjusting them again when the business is over; but she
could not possibly be contained herself in the ball with her young, which
moreover would be daily increasing in bulk.  This wonderful procreant
cradle, an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a
wheat-field suspended in the head of a thistle.

A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his servant had shot
one last January, in that severe weather, which he believed would puzzle
me.  I called to see it this summer, not knowing what to expect, but the
moment I took it in hand I pronounced it the male _garrulus bohemicus_ or
German silk-tail, from the five peculiar crimson tags or points which it
carries at the ends of five of the short remiges.  It cannot, I suppose,
with any propriety, be called an English bird, and yet I see, by Ray's
"Philosophical Letters," that great flocks of them, feeding on haws,
appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685.

The mention of haws puts me in mind that there is a total failure of that
wild fruit, so conducive to the support of many of the winged nation.
For the same severe weather, late in the spring, which cut off all the
produce of the more tender and curious trees, destroyed also that of the
more hardy and common.

Some birds, haunting with the missel-thrushes, and feeding on the berries
of the yew tree, which answered to the description of the _merula
torquata_, or ring-ouzel, were lately seen in this neighbourhood.  I
employed some people to procure me a specimen, but without success.  (See
Letter VIII.)

_Query_.--Might not canary birds be naturalised to this climate, provided
their eggs were put, in the spring, into the nests of some of their
congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, etc?  Before winter perhaps they
might be hardened, and able to shift for themselves.

About ten years ago I used to spend some weeks yearly at Sunbury, which
is one of those pleasant villages lying on the Thames, near Hampton
Court.  In the autumn, I could not help being much amused with those
myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in those parts.  But what
struck me most was, that, from the time they began to congregate,
forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted every night in the
osier-beds of the aits of that river.  Now, this resorting towards that
element, at that season of the year, seems to give some countenance to
the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water.  A
Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks, in
his calendar of Flora, as familiarly of the swallows going under water in
the beginning of September, as he would of his poultry going to roost a
little before sunset.

An observing gentleman in London writes me word that he saw a
house-martin, on the twenty-third of last October, flying in and out of
its nest in the Borough.  And I myself, on the twenty-ninth of last
October (as I was travelling through Oxford), saw four or five swallows
hovering round and settling on the roof of the county hospital.

Now is it likely that these poor little birds (which perhaps had not been
hatched but a few weeks) should, at that late season of the year, and
from so midland a county, attempt a voyage to Goree or Senegal, almost as
far as the equator?

I acquiesce entirely in your opinion--that, though most of the swallow
kind may migrate, yet that some do stay behind and hide with us during
the winter.

As to the short-winged, soft-billed birds, which come trooping in such
numbers in the spring, I am at a loss even what to suspect about them.  I
watched them narrowly this year, and saw them abound till about
Michaelmas, when they appeared no longer.  Subsist they cannot openly
among us, and yet elude the eyes of the inquisitive; and, as to their
hiding, no man pretends to have found any of them in a torpid 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 Africa!



LETTER XIII.


                                              SELBORNE, _Jan. 22nd_, 1768.

Sir,--As in one of your former letters you expressed the more
satisfaction from my correspondence on account of my living in the most
southerly county, so now I may return the compliment, and expect to have
my curiosity gratified by your living much more to the North.

For many years past I have observed that towards Christmas vast flocks of
chaffinches have appeared in the fields; many more, I used to think, than
could be hatched in any one 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 mostly females--at least fifty to one.  This
extraordinary occurrence brought to my mind the remark of Linnaeus, that
"before winter all their hen chaffinches migrate through Holland into
Italy."  Now I want to know, from some curious person in the north,
whether there are any large flocks of these finches with them in the
winter, and of which sex they mostly consist?  For from such
intelligence, one might be able to judge whether our female flocks
migrate from the other end of the island, or whether they come over to us
from the continent.  We have, in the winter, vast flocks of the common
linnets; more, I think, than can be bred in any one district.  These, I
observe, when the spring advances, assemble on some tree in the 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.

You may depend on it that the bunting, _Emberiza miliaria_, does not
leave this county in the winter.  In January, 1767, I saw several dozen
of them, in the midst of a severe frost, among the bushes on the downs
near Andover: in our woodland-enclosed district it is a rare bird.

Wagtails, both white and yellow, are with us all the winter.  Quails
crowd to our southern coast, and are often killed in numbers by people
that go on purpose.

Mr. Stillingfleet, in his Tracts, says that "if the wheatear (_oenanthe_)
does not quit England, it certainly shifts places; for about harvest they
are not to be found, where there was before great plenty of them."  This
well accounts for the vast 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 never saw (and I am well acquainted with those parts) above
two or three at a time, for they are never gregarious.  They may perhaps
migrate in general, and, for that purpose, draw towards the coast of
Sussex in autumn: but that they do not all withdraw I am sure, because 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 written 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 Andalusia are so mild, that, in all likelihood, the soft-billed birds
that leave us at that season may find insects sufficient to support them
there.

Some young man, possessed of fortune, health, and leisure, should make an
autumnal voyage into that kingdom, and should spend a year there,
investigating the natural history of that vast country.  Mr. Willughby
passed through that kingdom on such an errand; but he seems to have
skirted along in a superficial manner and an ill-humour, being much
disgusted at the rude dissolute manners of the people.

I have no friend left now at Sunbury to apply to about the swallows
roosting on the aits of the Thames: nor can I hear any more about those
birds which I suspected were _Meruloe torquatoe_.

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: but their grand rendezvous seems to
be in corn-ricks, into which they are carried at harvest.  A neighbour
housed an oat-rick lately, under the thatch of which were assembled
nearly a 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 domesticus_ 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 severe 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 covered with snow, else vegetation in general must have suffered
prodigiously.  There is reason to believe that some days were more severe
than any since the year 1739-40.

                                                          I am, etc., etc.



LETTER XIV.


                                             SELBORNE, _March 12th_, 1768.

Dear Sir,--If some curious gentleman would procure the head of a
fallow-deer, and have it dissected, he would find it furnished with two
spiracula, or breathing places, besides the nostrils; probably analogous
to the _puncta lachrymalia_ in the human head.  When deer are thirsty
they plunge their noses, like some horses, very deep under water, while
in the act of drinking, and continue them in that situation for a
considerable time: but, to obviate any inconveniency, they can open two
vents, one at the inner corner of each eye, having a communication with
the nose.  Here seems to be an extraordinary provision of nature worthy
our attention, and which has not, that I know of, been noticed by any
naturalist.  For it looks as if these creatures would not be suffocated,
though both their mouths and nostrils were stopped.  This curious
formation of the head may be of singular service to beasts of chase, by
affording them free respiration: and no doubt these additional nostrils
are thrown open when they are hard run.  Mr. Ray observed that at Malta
the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses as were hard worked: for
they, being naturally straight or small, did not admit air sufficient 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 following line, seems to have had some
notion that stags have four spiracula:

    "Τετράδυμοι ῥινὲς, πίσυρες πνοίῃσι δίαυλοι.."

    "Quadrifidae nares, quadruplices ad respirationem 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: "Ἀλκμαίων
γὰρ οὐκ ἀληθῆ λέγει, φάμενος ἀναπνεῖν τὰς αἶγας κατὰ τὰ ὠτά." "Alcmaeon
does not advance what is true, when he avers that goats breathe through
their ears."--"History of Animals." Book I., chap xi.




LETTER XV.


                                             SELBORNE, _March 30th_, 1768.

Dear Sir,--Some intelligent country people have a notion that we have in
these parts a species of the _genus mustelinum_, besides the weasel,
stoat, ferret, and polecat; a little reddish beast, not much bigger than
a field-mouse, but much longer, which they call a _cane_.  This piece of
intelligence can be little depended 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, 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 _Emberiza nivalis_, the snow-flake of the
Brit. Zool.?  No doubt they were.

A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had been caught
in the fields after it was come to its full colours.  In about a year it
began to look dingy; and, blackening every succeeding year, it became
coal-black at the end of four.  Its chief food was hempseed.  Such
influence has food on the colour of animals!  The pied and mottled
colours of domesticated animals are supposed to be owing to high,
various, and unusual food.

I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint (_arum_) was
frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe
snowy weather.  After observing, with some exactness, myself, and getting
others to do the same, we found it was the thrush kind that searched it
out.  The root of the _arum_ is remarkably warm and pungent.

Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us.  The
blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by that fierce weather
in January.

In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a little bird
that raised my curiosity: it was of that yellow-green colour that belongs
to the _salicaria_ kind, and, I think, was soft-billed.  It was no
_parus_; and was too long and too big for the golden-crowned wren,
appearing most like the largest willow-wren.  It hung sometimes with its
back downwards, but never continuing one moment in the same place.  I
shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim.

I wonder that the stone-curlew, _Charadrius oedicnemus_, should be
mentioned by the writers as a rare bird: it abounds in all the champaign
parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer,
having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn.  Already they begin
clamouring in the evening.  They cannot, I think, with any propriety, be
called, as they are by Mr. Ray, "_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.  Linnaeus perhaps
would call the species _Mus minimus_.



LETTER XVI.


                                             SELBORNE, _April 18th_, 1768.

Dear Sir,--The 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 field, so that the countryman, in
stirring his fallows, often destroys them.  The young run immediately
from the egg like partridges, etc., and are withdrawn to some flinty
field by the dam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their best
security; for their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our
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 before the pointers
in turnip-fields.

I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow-wrens; two I
know perfectly, but have not been able yet to procure the third.  No two
birds can differ more in their notes, and that constantly, than those two
that I am acquainted with; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note,
the other a harsh, loud chirp.  The former is every way larger, and
three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half, while
the latter weighs but two; so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the
chirper.  The chirper (being the first summer-bird of passage 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 a 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 known that the grasshopper
kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had
been a _locusta_ 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, skulking 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 a hundred yards together,
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
apparently confounds it with the _reguli non cristati_, from which it is
very distinct.  See Ray's "Philos. Letters," p. 108.

The fly-catcher (_stoparola_) has not yet appeared; it usually breeds in
my vine.  The redstart begins to sing, its note is short and imperfect,
but is continued till about the middle of June.  The willow-wrens (the
smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the peas,
cherries, currants, etc.; 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.

                                    LINNAEI NOMINA.
Smallest willow-wren                _Motacilla trochilus_
Wryneck                             _Jynx torquilla_
House-swallow                       _Hirundo rustica_
Martin                              _Hirundo urbica_
Sand-martin                         _Hirundo riparia_
Cuckoo                              _Cuculus canorus_
Nightingale                         _Motacilla luscinia_
Blackcap                            _Motacilla atricapilla_
Whitethroat                         _Motacilla sylvia_
Middle willow-wren                  _Motacilla trochilus_
Swift                               _Hirundo apus_
Stone-curlew?                       _Charadrius oedicnemus_?
Turtle-dove?                        _Turtur aldrovandi_?
Grasshopper-lark                    _Alauda trivialis_
Landrail                            _Rallus crex_
Largest willow-wren                 _Motacilla trochilus_
Redstart                            _Motacilla phoenicurus_
Goat-sucker, or fern-owl            _Caprimulgus europus_
Fly-catcher                         _Muscicapa grisola_

My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter with its bill
against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it a jar-bird.  I
procured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the _Sitta
europoea_ (the nuthatch).  Mr. Ray says that the less spotted 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 confusion: 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.

                                                         Yours, etc., etc.



LETTER XVII.


                                              SELBORNE, _June 18th_, 1768.

Dear Sir,--On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of June 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, etc.

The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to be very
much in the dark. Some authors say that they are viviparous, and yet
Ray classes them among his oviparous animals, and is silent with regard
to the manner of their bringing forth. Perhaps they may be ἔσω μὲν
ὠοτὸκοι, ἔξω δε ζωοτόκοι, as is known to be the case with the viper.

The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it) is notorious
to everybody, 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 matter 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 undoubted authority, that some ladies
(ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, which
they nourished, summer after summer, for many years, till he grew to a
monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh-flies.  The reptile
used to come forth every evening from a hole under the garden steps, and
was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed.  But at last a tame
raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe
stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye.  After this accident the
creature languished for some time and died.

I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of the excellent
account there is from Mr. Derham, in Ray's "Wisdom of God in the
Creation" (p. 365), concerning the migration of frogs from their breeding
ponds.  In this account he at once subverts that foolish opinion of their
dropping from the clouds in rain, showing that it is from the grateful
coolness and moisture of those showers that they are tempted to set out
on their travels, which they defer till those fall.  Frogs are as yet in
their tadpole state; but, in a few weeks, our lanes, paths, fields, will
swarm for a few days with myriads of those emigrants, no larger than my
little finger nail.  Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the
method and situation in which the male impregnates the spawn of the
female.  How wonderful is the economy of Providence with regard to the
limbs of so vile a reptile!  While it is an aquatic it has a fish-like
tail, and no legs; as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as
useless, and the animal betakes itself to the land!

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

It is to be remembered that the _salamandra aquatica_ of Ray (the
water-newt or eft) will frequently bite at the angler's bait, and is
often caught on his hook.  I used take it for granted that the
_salamandra aquatica_ was hatched, lived, and died, in the water.  But
John Ellis, Esq., F.R.S. (the coralline Ellis), asserts, in a letter to
the Royal Society, dated June 5th, 1766, in his account of the _mud
inguana_, an amphibious biped from South Carolina, that the water-eft, or
newt, is only the larva of the land-eft, as tadpoles are of frogs.  Lest
I should be suspected to misunderstand his meaning, I shall give it in
his own words.  Speaking of the _opercula_ or coverings to the gills of
the _mud inguana_, he proceeds to say that, "The form of these pennated
coverings approaches very near to what I have some time ago observed in
the larva or aquatic state of our  English _lacerta_, known by the name
of eft, or newt, which serve them for coverings to their gills, and for
fins to swim with while in this state; and which they lose, as well as
the fins of their tails, when they change their state and become land
animals, as I have observed, by keeping them alive for some time myself."

Linnaeus, in his "Systema Naturae," hints at what Mr. Ellis advances more
than once.

Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one 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 publications you
will not omit to mention common salad-oil as sovereign remedy against the
bite of the viper.  As to the blind worm (_anguis fragilis_, so-called
because it snaps in sunder with a small blow), I have found, on
examination, that it is perfectly innocuous.  A neighbouring yeoman (to
whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper
about the 27th 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 maturity as to contain any rudiments of young.
Though they are oviparous, yet they are viviparous also, hatching their
young within their bellies, and then bringing them forth.  Whereas snakes
lay chains of eggs every summer in my melon beds, in spite of all that my
people can do to prevent them; which eggs do not hatch till the spring
following, as I have often experienced.  Several intelligent folks assure
me that they have seen the viper open her mouth and admit her helpless
young down her throat on sudden surprises, just as the female opossum
does her brood into the pouch under her belly, upon the like emergencies;
and yet the London viper-catchers insist on it, to Mr. Barrington, that
no such thing ever happens.  The serpent kind eat, I believe, but once in
a year; or rather, but only just at one season of the year.  Country
people talk much of a water-snake, but, I am pretty sure, without any
reason; for the common snake (_coluber natrix_) delights much to sport in
the water, perhaps with a view to procure frogs and other food.

I cannot well guess how you are to make out your twelve species of
reptiles, unless it be by the various species, or rather varieties, of
our _lacerti_, of which Ray enumerates five.  I have not had opportunity
of ascertaining these; but remember well to have seen formerly several
beautiful green _lacerti_ on the sunny sandbanks near Farnham, in Surrey;
and Ray admits there are such in Ireland.



LETTER XVIII.


                                              SELBORNE, _July 27th_, 1768.

Dear Sir,--I received your obliging and communicative letter of June
28th, while I was on a visit at a gentleman's house, where I had neither
books to turn to nor leisure to sit down, to return you an answer to many
queries, which I wanted to resolve in the best manner that I am able.

A person, by my order, has searched our brooks, but could find no such
fish as the _gasterosteus pungitius_; he found the _gasterosteus
aculeatus_ in plenty.  This morning, in a basket, I packed a little
earthen pot full of wet moss, and in it some sticklebacks, male and
female, the females big with spawn; some lamperns; some bull's heads; but
I could procure no minnows.  This basket will be in Fleet Street by eight
this evening; so I hope Mazel will have them fresh and fair to-morrow
morning.  I gave some directions, in a letter, to what particulars the
engraver should be attentive.

Finding, while I was on a visit, that I was within a reasonable distance
of Ambresbury, I sent a servant over to that town, and procured several
living specimens of loaches, which he brought, safe and brisk, in a glass
decanter.  They were taken in the gullies that were cut for watering the
meadows.  From these fishes (which measured from two to four inches in
length) I took the following description: "The loach, in its general
aspect, has a pellucid appearance; its back is mottled with irregular
collections of small black dots, not reaching much below the _linea
lateralis_, as are the back and tail fins; a black line runs from each
eye down to the nose; its belly is of a silvery white; the upper jaw
projects beyond the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on
each side; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller; the fin
behind its anus small; its dorsal-fin large, containing eight spines; its
tail, where it joins to the tail-fin, remarkably broad, without any
taperness, so as to be characteristic of this genus; the tail-fin is
broad, and square at the end.  From the breadth and muscular strength of
the tail it appears to be an active, nimble fish."

In my visit I was not very far from Hungerford, and did not forget to
make some inquiries concerning the wonderful method of curing cancers by
means of toads.  Several intelligent persons, both gentry and clergy, do
I find give a great deal of credit to what is asserted in the papers, and
I myself dined with a clergyman who seemed to be persuaded that what is
related is matter of fact; but, when I came to attend to his account, I
thought I discerned circumstances which did not a little invalidate the
woman's story of the manner in which she came by her skill.  She says of
herself, "that, labouring under a virulent cancer, she went to some
church where there was a vast crowd; on going into a pew, she was
accosted by a strange clergyman, who, after expressing compassion for her
situation, told her that if she would make such an application of living
toads as is mentioned she would be well."  Now is it likely that this
unknown gentleman should express so much tenderness for this single
sufferer, and not feel any for the many thousands that daily languish
under this terrible disorder?  Would he not have made use of this
invaluable nostrum for his own emolument; or at least, by some means of
publication or other, have found a method of making it public for the
good of mankind?  In short, this woman (as it appears to me), having set
up for a cancer-doctress, finds it expedient to amuse the country with
this dark and mysterious relation.

The water-eft has not, that I can discern, the least appearance of any
gills; for want of which it is continually rising to the surface of the
water to take in fresh air.  I opened a big-bellied one indeed, and found
it full of spawn.  Not that this circumstance at all invalidates the
assertion that they are _larvae_, for the _larvae_ of insects are full of
eggs, which they exclude the instant they enter their last state.  The
water-eft is continually climbing over the brims of the vessel, within
which we keep it in water, and wandering away; and people every summer
see numbers crawling out of the pools where they are hatched up the dry
banks.  There are varieties of them, differing in colour; and some have
fins up their tail and back, and some have not.



LETTER XIX.


                                             SELBORNE, _August 17th_, 1768

Dear Sir,--I have now, past dispute, made out three distinct species of
the willow-wrens (_motacillae trochili_) which constantly and invariably
use distinct notes.  But at the same time I am obliged to confess that I
know nothing of your willow-lark.  In my letter of April 18th, I had told
you peremptorily that I knew your willow-lark, but had not seen it then;
but when I came to procure it, it proved in all respects a very
_motacilla trochilus_, only that it is a size larger than the two other,
and the yellow-green of the whole upper part of the body is more vivid,
and the belly of a clearer white.  I have specimens of the three sorts
now lying before me, and can discern that there are three gradations of
sizes, and that the least has black legs, and the other two
flesh-coloured ones.  The yellowest bird is considerably the largest, and
has its quill-feathers and secondary feathers tipped with white, which
the others have not.  This last haunts only the tops of trees in high
beechen woods, and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise, now and then,
at short intervals, shivering a little with its wings when it sings; and
is, I make no doubt now, the _regulus non cristatus_ of Ray, which he
says "_cantat voce stridula locustae_."  Yet this great ornithologist
never suspected that there were three species.



LETTER XX.


                                            SELBORNE, _October 8th_, 1768.

It is I find in zoology as it is in botany; all nature is so full that
that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined.
Several birds, which are said to belong to the north only, are it seems
often in the south.  I have discovered this summer three species of birds
with us, which writers mention as only to be seen in the northern
counties.  The first that was brought me (on the 14th May) was the
sand-piper, _tringa hypoleucus_: it was a cock bird, and haunted the
banks of some ponds near the village; and, as it had a companion,
doubtless intended to have bred near that water.  Besides, the owner has
told me 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 May) was a male red-backed
butcher bird, _lanius collurio_.  My neighbour, who shot it, says that it
might easily have escaped his notice, had not the outcries and chattering
of the whitethroats and other small birds drawn his attention to the bush
where it was; its craw was filled with the legs and wings of beetles.

The next rare birds (which were procured for me last week) were some
ring-ousels, _turdi torquati_.

This week twelve months a gentleman from London, being with us, was
amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told us, on an old yew hedge
where there were berries, some birds like blackbirds, with rings of white
round their necks: a neighbouring farmer also at the same time observed
the same; but, as no specimens were procured, little notice was taken.  I
mentioned this circumstance to you in my letter of November 4th, 1767
(you, however, paid but small regard to what I said, as I had not seen
these birds myself); but last week the aforesaid farmer, seeing a large
flock, twenty or thirty of these birds, shot two cocks and two hens, and
says, on recollection, that he remembers to have observed these birds
again last spring, about Lady-day, as it were on their return to the
north.  Now perhaps these ousels are not the ousels of the north of
England, but belong to the more northern parts of Europe, and may retire
before the excessive rigour of the frosts in those parts, and return to
breed in the spring, when the cold abates.  If this be the case, here is
discovered a new bird of winter passage, concerning whose migrations the
writers are silent; but if these birds should prove the ousels of the
north of England, then here is a migration disclosed within our own
kingdom never before remarked.  It does not yet appear whether they
retire beyond the bounds of our island to the south; but it is most
probable that they usually do, or else one cannot suppose that they would
have continued so long unnoticed in the southern countries.  The ousel is
larger than a blackbird, and feeds on haws; but last autumn (when there
were no haws) it fed on yew-berries: in the spring it feeds on
ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March and April.

I must not omit to tell you (as you have been so lately on the study of
reptiles) that my people, every now and then of late, draw up with a
bucket of water from my well, which is sixty-three feet deep, a large
black warty lizard with a fin-tail and yellow belly.  How they first came
down at that depth, and how they were ever to have got out thence without
help, is more than I am able to say.

My thanks are due to you for your trouble and care in the 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 advance this
extraordinary provision of nature as a new instance of the wisdom of God
in the creation.

As yet I have not quite done with my history of the _oedicnemus_, or
stone-curlew; for I shall desire a gentleman in Sussex (near whose house
these birds congregate in vast flocks in the autumn) to observe nicely
when they leave him (if they do leave him), and when they return again in
the spring: I was with this gentleman lately, and saw several single
birds.



LETTER XXI.


                                              SELBORNE, _Nov. 28th_, 1768.

Dear Sir,--With regard to the _oedicnemus_, or stone-curlew, I intend to
write very soon to my friend near Chichester, in whose neighbourhood
these birds seem most to abound, and shall urge him to take particular
notice when they begin to congregate, and afterwards to watch them most
narrowly whether they do not withdraw themselves during the dead of the
winter.  When I have obtained information with respect to this
circumstance, I shall have finished my history of the stone-curlew, which
I hope will prove to your satisfaction, as it will be, I trust, very near
the truth.  This gentleman, as he occupies a large farm of his own, and
is abroad early and late, will be a very proper spy upon the motions of
these birds; and besides, as I have prevailed on him to buy the
Naturalist's Journal (with which he is much delighted), I shall expect
that he will be very exact in his dates.  It is very extraordinary, as
you observe, that a bird so common with us should never struggle to you.

And here will be the properest place to mention, while I think of it, an
anecdote which the above-mentioned gentleman told me when I was last at
his house; which was that, in a warren joining to his outlet, many daws
(_corvi moneduloe_) build every year in the rabbit-burrows under ground.
The way he and his brothers used to take their nests, while they were
boys, was by listening at the mouths of the holes, and, if they heard the
young ones cry, they twisted the nest out with a forked stick.  Some
water-fowls (viz., the puffins) breed, I know, in that manner; but I
should never have suspected the daws of building in holes on the flat
ground.

Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to breed in,
and that is Stonehenge.  These birds deposit their nests in the
interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing
work of antiquity; which circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height
of the upright stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those
nests from the annoyance of shepherd-boys, who are always idling round
that place.

One of my neighbours last Saturday, November 26th, saw a martin in a
sheltered bottom: the sun shone warm, and the bird was hawking briskly
after flies.  I am now perfectly satisfied that they do not all leave
this island in the winter.

You judge very right, I think, in speaking with reserve and caution
concerning the cures done by toads; for, let people advance what they
will on such subjects, yet there is such a propensity in mankind towards
deceiving and being deceived, that one cannot safely relate anything from
common report, especially in print, without expressing some degree of
doubt and suspicion.

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

I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology.  If fortune had
settled me near the seaside, 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, etc.



LETTER XXII.


                                               SELBORNE, _Jan. 2nd_, 1769.

Dear Sir,--As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us under the
ground in rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon the reason; for, in
reality, there are hardly any towers or steeples in all this county.  And
perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as meanly furnished
with churches as almost any counties in the kingdom.  We have many
livings of two or three hundred pounds a year, whose houses of worship
make little better appearance than dovecots.  When I first saw
Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, and the fens of
Lincolnshire, I was amazed at the number of spires which presented
themselves in every point of view.  As an admirer of prospects, I have
reason to lament this want in my own county; for such objects are very
necessary ingredients in an elegant landscape.

What you mention with respect to reclaimed toads raises my curiosity.  An
ancient author, though no naturalist, has well remarked that "every kind
of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and things in the sea, is
tamed, and hath been tamed, of mankind."

It is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has actually been
procured for you in Devonshire, because it corroborates my discovery,
which I made many years ago, of the same sort, on a sunny sandbank near
Farnham, in Surrey.  I am well acquainted with the South Hams of
Devonshire, and can suppose that district, from its southerly situation,
to be a proper habitation for such animals in their best colours.

Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not forsake
them against winter, our suspicions that those which visit this
neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but driven from the
more northern parts of Europe by 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 regard to the two species of herons,
you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your description of the
heronry at Cressi Hall, which is a curiosity I never could manage to see.
Fourscore nests of such a bird on one tree is a rarity which I would ride
half as many miles to have a sight of.  Pray be sure to tell me in your
next whose seat Cressi Hall is, and near what town it lies.  I have often
thought that those vast extents of fens have never been sufficiently
explored.  If half a dozen gentlemen, furnished with a good strength of
water-spaniels, were to beat them over for a week, they would certainly
find more species.

There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied more than that
of the _caprimulgus_ (the goat-sucker), as it is a wonderful and curious
creature; but I have always found that though sometimes it may chatter as
it flies, as I know it does, yet in general it utters its jarring note
sitting on a bough; and I have for many a half hour watched it as it sat
with its under mandible quivering, and particularly this summer.  It
perches usually on a bare twig, with its head lower than its tail, in an
attitude well expressed by your draughtsman in the folio "British
Zoology."  This bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at
the close of day--so exactly that I have known it strike up more than
once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which we
can hear when the weather is still.  It appears to me past all doubt that
its notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers of the parts of
its windpipe formed for sound, just as cats purr.  You will credit me, I
hope, when I assure you that, as my neighbours were assembled in an
hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink tea, one of these
churn-owls came and settled on the cross of that little straw edifice and
began to chatter, and continued his note for many minutes: and we were
all struck with wonder to find that the organs of that little animal,
when put in motion, gave a sensible vibration to the whole building!
This bird also sometimes makes a small squeak, repeated four or five
times; and I have observed that to happen when the cock has been pursuing
the hen in a toying way through the boughs of a tree.

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

Your account of the Indian grass was entertaining.  I am no angler
myself; but inquiring of those that are, what they supposed that part of
their tackle to be made of?--they replied, "Of the intestines of a
silkworm."

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

The vast rains ceased with us much about the same time as with you, and
since we have had delicate weather.  Mr. Barker, who has measured the
rain for more than thirty years, says, in a late letter, that more has
fallen this year than in any he ever attended to; though from July, 1763,
to January, 1764, more fell than in any seven months of this year.



LETTER XXIII.


                                              SELBORNE, _Feb. 28th_, 1769.

Dear Sir,--It is not improbable that the Guernsey lizard and our green
lizards may be specifically the same; all that I know is, that, when some
years ago many Guernsey lizards were turned loose in Pembroke College
garden, in the University of Oxford, they lived a great while, and seemed
to enjoy themselves very well, but never bred.  Whether this circumstance
will prove anything either way I shall not pretend to say.

I return you thanks for your account of Cressi Hall; but recollect, not
without regret, that in June, 1746, I was visiting for a week together at
Spalding, without ever being told that such a curiosity was just at hand.
Pray send me word in your next what sort of tree it is that contains such
a quantity of herons' nests, and whether the heronry consists of a whole
grove of wood, or only of a few trees.

It gave me satisfaction to find we accorded so well about the
_caprimulgus_; all I contended for was to prove that it often chatters
sitting as well as flying; and therefore the noise was voluntary, and
from organic impulse, and not from the resistance of the air against the
hollow of its mouth and throat.

If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last Michaelmas Day.
I was travelling, and out early in the morning; at first there was a vast
fog, but, by the time that I was got seven or eight miles from home
towards the coast, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day.  We were
then on a large heath or common, and I could discern, as the mist began
to break away, great numbers of swallows (_hirundines rusticae_)
clustering on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted there
all night.  As soon as the air became clear and pleasant they were all on
the wing at once; and, by a placid and easy flight, proceeded on
southward towards the sea; after this I did not see any more flocks, only
now and then a straggler.

I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow kind
disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the bulk of them
seem to withdraw at once; only some stragglers stay behind a long while,
and do never, there is the greatest reason to believe, leave this island.
Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come forth in a warm day, as
bats do continually of a warm evening, after they have disappeared for
weeks.  For a very respectable gentleman assured me that, as he was
walking with some friends under Merton Wall on a remarkably hot noon,
either in the last week in December or the first week in January, he
espied three or four swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of
the windows of that college.  I have frequently remarked that swallows
are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere; is it owing to the vast massy
buildings of that place, to the many waters round it, or to what else?

When I used to rise in the morning last autumn, and see the swallows and
martins clustering on the chimneys and thatch of the neighbouring
cottages, I could not help being touched with a secret delight, mixed
with some degree of mortification; with delight, to observe with how much
ardour and punctuality those poor little birds obeyed the strong impulse
towards migration, or hiding, imprinted on their minds by their great
Creator; and with some degree of mortification when I reflected that,
after all our pains and inquiries, we are yet not quite certain to what
regions they do migrate, and are still farther embarrassed to find that
some do not actually migrate at all.

These reflections made so strong an impression on my imagination, that
they became productive of a composition that may perhaps amuse you for a
quarter of an hour when next I have the honour of writing to you.



LETTER XXIV.


                                               SELBORNE, _May 29th_, 1769.

Dear Sir,--The _scaraboeus fullo_ I know very well, having seen it in
collections, but have never been able to discover one wild in its natural
state.  Mr. Banks told me he thought it might be found on the sea-coast.

On the 13th April I went to the sheep-down, where the _ring-ousels_ have
been observed to make their appearance at spring and fall, in their way
perhaps to the north or south, and was much pleased to see these birds
about the usual spot.  We shot a cock and a hen; they were plump and in
high condition.  The hen had but very small rudiments of eggs within her,
which proves they are late breeders; whereas those species of the thrush
kind that remain with us the whole year have fledged young before that
time.  In their crops was nothing very distinguishable, but somewhat that
seemed like blades of vegetables nearly digested.  In autumn they feed on
haws and yew-berries, and in the spring on ivy-berries.  I dressed one of
these birds, and found it juicy and well-flavoured.  It is 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 southern countries.

One of my neighbours lately brought me a new _salicaria_, which at first
I suspected might have proved your willow-lark, but, on a nicer
examination, it answered much better to the description of that species
which you shot at Revesby, in Lincolnshire.  My bird I describe thus: "It
is a size less than the grasshopper-lark; the head, back, and coverts of
the wings, of a dusky brown, without those dark spots of the
grasshopper-lark; over each eye is a milk-white stroke; the chin and
throat are white; and the under parts of a yellowish white; the rump is
tawny, and the feathers of the tail sharp-pointed; the bill is dusky and
sharp, and the legs are dusky; the hinder claw long and crooked."  The
person that shot it says that it sung so like a reed sparrow that he took
it for one; and that it sings all night: but this account merits farther
inquiry.  For my part I suspect it is a second sort of _locustela_,
hinted at by Dr. Derham in Ray's Letters: 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 me
with wonder.  If one looks into the writers on that subject, little
satisfaction is to be found.  Ingenious men will readily advance
plausible arguments to support whatever theory they shall choose to
maintain; but then the misfortune is, every one's hypothesis is each as
good as another's, since they are all founded on conjecture.  The late
writers of this sort, in whom may be seen all the arguments of those that
have gone before, as I remember, stock America from the western coast of
Africa and the south of Europe, and then break down the Isthmus that
bridged over the Atlantic.  But this is making use of a violent piece of
machinery; it is a difficulty worthy of the interposition of a god!
"_Incredulus odi_."



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.
THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING WALK.


    --equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
    Ingenium.

                                                            VIRG. _Georg_.

When day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the may-fly haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale;
To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;
To see the swallow sweep the dark'ning plain
Belated, to support her infant train;
To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring
Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing:
Amusive birds!--say where your hid retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat;
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led,
When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head:
Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride,
The GOD of NATURE is your secret guide!

While deep'ning shades obscure the face of day,
To yonder bench leaf-shelter'd let us stray,
Till blended objects fail the swimming sight,
And all the fading landscape sinks in night;
To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by
With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricket cry;
To see the feeding bat glance through the wood;
To catch the distant falling of the flood;
While o'er the cliff th' awaken'd churn-owl hung
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song;
While high in air, and poised upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft-enamour'd woodlark sings:
These, NATURE'S works, the curious mind employ,
Inspire a soothing melancholy joy:
As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain
Steals o'er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein!

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

The chilling night-dews fall--away, retire!
For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire!
Thus, ere night's veil had half obscured the sky,
Th' impatient damsel hung her lamp on high:
True to the signal, by love's meteor led,
Leander hasten'd to his Hero's bed.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER XXV.


                                              SELBORNE, _Aug. 30th_, 1769.

Dear Sir,--It gives me satisfaction to find that my account of the _ousel
migration_ pleases you.  You put a very shrewd question when you ask me
how I know that their autumnal migration is southward?  Was not candour
and openness the very life of natural history, I should pass over this
query just as a sly commentator does over a crabbed passage in a classic;
but common ingenuousness obliges me to confess, not without some degree
of shame, that I only reasoned in that case from analogy.  For as all
other autumnal birds migrate from the northward to us, to partake of our
milder winters, and return to the northward again when the rigorous cold
abates, so I concluded that the ring-ousels did the same, as well as
their congeners the fieldfares; and especially as ring-ousels are known
to haunt cold mountainous countries: but I have good reason to suspect,
since, that they may come to us from the westward, because I hear from
very good authority, that they breed on Dartmoor, and that they forsake
that wild district about the time that our visitors appear, and do not
return till late in the spring.

I have taken a great deal of pains about your _salicaria_ and mine, with
a white stroke over its eye and a tawny rump.  I have surveyed it alive
and dead, and have procured several specimens, and am perfectly persuaded
myself (and trust you will soon become convinced of the same) that it is
no more nor less than the _passer arundinaceus minor_ of Ray.  This bird,
by some means or other, seems to be entirely omitted in the British
Zoology; and one reason probably was because it is so strangely classed
in Ray, who ranges it among his _picis affines_.  It ought, no doubt, to
have gone among his _aviculae cauda unicolore_, and among your
slender-billed small birds of the same division.  Linnaeus might with
great propriety have put it into his genus of _motacilla_; and _motacilla
salicaria_ of his _fauna suecica_ seems to come the nearest to it.  It is
no uncommon bird, haunting the sides of ponds and rivers where there is
covert, and the reeds and sedges of moors.  The country people in some
places call it the sedge-bird.  It sings incessantly night and day during
the breeding-time, imitating the note of a sparrow, a swallow, a skylark,
and has a strange hurrying manner in its song.  My specimens correspond
most minutely to the description of your _fen salicaria_ shot near
Revesby.  Mr. Ray has given an excellent characteristic of it when he
says, "_Rostrum et pedes in hac avicula multo majores sunt quam pro
corporis ratione_."  See letter, May 29th, 1769.  (Preceding letter
xxiv.)

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

When I wrote to you last year on reptiles, I wish I had not forgot to
mention the faculty that snakes have of stinking _se defendendo_.  I knew
a gentleman who kept a tame snake, which was in its person as sweet as
any animal while in good humour and unalarmed, but as soon as a stranger,
or a dog or cat, came in, it fell to hissing, and filled the room with
such nauseous effluvia as rendered it hardly supportable.  Thus the
squnck, or stonck, of Ray's "Synop. 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 specimen of the _lanius minor
cinerascens cum macula in scapulis alba_, _Raii_; which is a bird that,
at the time of your publishing your two first volumes of "British
Zoology," I find you had not seen.  You have described it well from
Edwards's drawing.



LETTER XXVI.


                                           SELBORNE, _December 8th_, 1769.

Dear Sir,--I was much gratified by your communicative letter on your
return from Scotland, where you spent some considerable time, and gave
yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of that extensive
kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the highlands.
The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry, because men seldom allot
themselves half the time they should do, but, fixing on a day for their
return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey
that required despatch than as philosophers investigating the works of
nature.  You must have made, no doubt, many discoveries, and laid up a
good fund of materials for a future edition of the "British Zoology;" and
will have no reason to repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a
part of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well examined before.

It has always been matter of wonder to me that fieldfares, which are so
congenerous 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 migrators 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 autumn, appearing, as
before, about the 30th September; but their flocks were larger than
common, and their stay protracted somewhat beyond the usual time.  If
they came to spend the whole winter with us, as some of their congeners
do, and then left us, as they do, in spring, I should not be so much
struck with the occurrence, since it would be similar to that of the
other winter birds of passage; but when I see them for a fortnight at
Michaelmas, and again for about a week in the middle of April, I am
seized with wonder, and long to be informed whence these travellers come,
and whither they go, since they seem to use our hills merely as an inn or
baiting place.

Your account of the greater brambling, or snow-fleck, is very amusing;
and strange it is that such a short-winged bird should delight in such
perilous voyages over the northern ocean.  Some country people in the
winter time have, every now and then, told me that they have seen two or
three white larks on our downs, but, on considering the 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 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 _fen salicaria_ to be the
lesser reed-sparrow of Ray; and I think you may be secure that I am
right, for I took very particular pains to clear up that matter, and had
some fair specimens, but, as they were not well preserved, they are
decayed already.  You will, no doubt, insert it in its proper place in
your next edition.  Your additional plates will much improve your work.

De Buffon, I know, has described the water shrew-mouse; but still I am
pleased to find you have discovered it in Lincolnshire, for the reason I
have given in the article of the white hare.

As a neighbour was lately ploughing a dry, chalky field, far removed from
any water, he turned out a water-rat, that was curiously lain up in a
hybernaculum artificially formed of grass and leaves.  At one end of the
burrow lay above a gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on which it was
to have supported itself for the winter.  But the difficulty with me is
how this _amphibius mus_ came to fix its winter station at such a
distance from the water.  Was it determined in its choice of that place
by the mere accident of finding the potatoes which were planted there, or
is it the constant practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the
neighbourhood of the water in the colder months?

Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, knowing how
fallacious it is with respect to natural history, yet, in the following
instance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may conduce towards
the explanation of a difficulty that I have mentioned before, with
respect to the invariable early retreat of the _hirundo apus_, or swift,
so many weeks before its congeners; and that not only with us, but also
in Andalusia, where they also begin to retire about the beginning of
August.

The great large bat (which, by-the-bye, is at present a nondescript in
England, and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires or
migrates very early in the summer.  It also ranges very high for its
food, feeding in a different region of the air, and that is the reason I
never could procure one.  Now this is exactly the case with the swifts;
for they take their food in a more exalted region than the other species,
and are very seldom seen hawking for flies near the ground, or over the
surface of the water.  From hence I would conclude that these
_hirundines_ and the larger bats are supported by some sorts of
high-flying gnats, scarabs, or _phaloenae_, that are of short
continuance, and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by
the defect of their food.

By my journal it appears that curlews clamoured on to October 31st, since
which I have not seen nor heard any.  Swallows were observed on to
November 3rd.



LETTER XXVII.


                                              SELBORNE, _Feb. 22nd_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--Hedgehogs abound in my gardens and fields.  The manner in
which they eat the roots of the plantain in my grass-walks is very
curious; with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their
lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards,
leaving the tuft of leaves untouched.  In this respect they are
serviceable, as they destroy a very troublesome weed; but they deface the
walks in some measure by digging little round holes.  It appears, by the
dung that they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no inconsiderable
part of their food.  In June last I procured a litter of four or five
young hedgehogs, which appeared to be about five or six days old: they, I
find, like puppies, are born blind, and could not see when they came to
my hands.  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 parturition, but it is plain they soon harden; for
these little pigs had such stiff prickles on their backs and sides as
would easily have fetched blood, had they not been handled with caution.
Their spines are quite white at this age; and they have little hanging
ears, which I do not remember to be discernible in the old ones.  They
can, in part, at this age draw their skin down over their faces, but are
not able to contract themselves into a ball, as they do, for the sake of
defence, when full grown.  The reason, I suppose, is, because the curious
muscle that enables the creature to roll itself up in a ball was not then
arrived at its full tone and firmness.  Hedgehogs make a deep and warm
_hybernaculum_ with leaves and moss, in which they 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 respect to the fieldfare (_turdus
pilaris_) which I think is particular enough; this bird, though it sits
on trees in the daytime, 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 dragging their nets by night, frequently catch them in the
wheat stubbles; while the bat-fowlers, who take many red-wings in the
hedges, never entangle any of this species.  Why these birds, in the
matter of roosting, should differ from all their congeners, and from
themselves also with respect to their proceedings by day, is a fact for
which I am by no means able to account.

I have somewhat to inform you of concerning the _moose-deer_; but in
general foreign animals fall seldom in my way; my little intelligence is
confined to the narrow sphere of my own observations at home.



LETTER XXVIII.


                                                  SELBORNE, _March_, 1770.

On Michaelmas Day, 1768, 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; I found it in an old greenhouse, slung under
the belly and chin by ropes, and in a standing posture; but, though it
had been dead for so short a time, it was in so putrid a state that the
stench was hardly supportable.  The grand 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 _gralloe_ order.  I measured it, as they do a horse, and
found that, from the ground to the withers, it was just five feet four
inches, which height answers exactly to sixteen hands, a growth that few
horses arrive at: but then, with this length of legs, its neck was
remarkably short, no more than twelve inches; so that, by straddling with
one foot forward and the other backward, it grazed on the plain ground,
with the greatest difficulty, between its legs; the ears were vast and
lopping, and as long as the neck; the head was about twenty inches long,
and ass-like, and had such a redundancy of upper lip as I never saw
before, with huge nostrils.  This lip, travellers say, is esteemed a
dainty dish in North America.  It is very reasonable to suppose that this
creature supports itself chiefly by browsing of trees, and by wading
after water plants; towards which way of livelihood the length of legs
and great lip must contribute much.  I have read somewhere that it
delights in eating the _nymphoea_, or water-lily.  From the fore-feet to
the belly behind the shoulder it measured three feet and eight inches:
the length of the legs before and behind consisted a great deal in the
_tibia_, which was strangely long; but in my haste to get out of the
stench, I forgot to measure that joint exactly.  Its scut seemed to be
about an inch long; the colour was a grizzly black; the mane about four
inches long; the fore-hoofs were upright and shapely, the hind flat and
splayed.  The spring before it was only two years old, so that most
probably it was not then come to its growth.  What a vast, tall beast
must a full-grown stag be!  I have been told some arrive at ten feet and
a half!  This poor creature had at first a female companion of the same
species, which died the spring before.  In the same garden was a young
stag, or red deer, between whom and this moose it was hoped that there
might have been a breed; but their inequality of height must have always
been a bar to any commerce of the amorous kind.  I should have been glad
to have examined the teeth, tongue, lips, hoofs, etc., minutely, but the
putrefaction precluded all farther curiosity.  This animal, the keeper
told me, seemed to enjoy itself best in the extreme frost of the former
winter.  In the house they showed me the horn of a male moose, which had
no front antlers, but only a broad palm with some snags on the edge.  The
noble owner of the dead moose proposed to make a skeleton of her bones.

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

                                      I am, with the greatest esteem, etc.



LETTER XXIX.


                                               SELBORNE, _May 12th_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--Last month we had such a series of cold, turbulent weather,
such a constant succession of frost, and snow, and hail, and tempest,
that the regular migration or appearance of the summer birds was much
interrupted.  Some did not show themselves (at least were not heard) till
weeks after their usual time, as the blackcap and whitethroat; and some
have not been heard yet, as the grasshopper-lark and largest willow-wren.
As to the fly-catcher, I have not seen it; it is indeed one of the
latest, but should appear about this time: and yet, amidst all this
meteorous strife and war of the elements, two swallows discovered
themselves, as long ago as April 11th, in frost and snow; but they
withdrew quickly, and were not visible again for many days.
House-martins, which are always more backward than swallows, were not
observed till May came in.

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

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

Another instance I remember of a sportsman, whose zeal for the increase
of his game being greater than his humanity, after pairing-time he always
shot the cock-bird of every couple of partridges upon his grounds;
supposing that the rivalry of many males interrupted the breed: he used
to say, that, though he had widowed the same hen several times, yet he
found she was still provided with a fresh paramour, that did not take her
away from her usual haunt.

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

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

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



LETTER XXX.


                                               SELBORNE, _Aug. 1st_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--The French, I think, in general are strangely prolix in their
natural history.  What Linnaeus says with respect to insects holds good
in every other branch: "_Verbositas praesentis saeculi_, _calamitas
artis_."

Pray how do you approve of Scopoli's new work?  As I admire his
"Entomologia," I long to see it.

I forgot to mention in my last 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 the river St. Lawrence: it was a monstrous beast, he
told me; but he did not take the dimensions.

When I was last in town, our friend Mr. Barrington most obligingly
carried me to see many curious sights.  As you were then writing to him
about horns, he carried me to see many strange and wonderful specimens.
There is, I remember, at Lord Pembroke's at Wilton, a horn room furnished
with more than thirty different pairs; but I have not seen that house
lately.

Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections of stuffed and
living birds from all quarters of the world.  After I had studied over
the latter for a time, I remarked that every species almost that came
from distant regions, such as South America, the coast of Guinea, etc.,
were thick-billed birds of the _loxia_ and _fringilla_ genera; and no
_motacillae_, or _muscicapae_, were to be met with.  When I came to
consider, the reason was obvious enough, for the hard-billed birds
subsist on seeds which are easily carried on board, while the soft-billed
birds, which are supported by worms and insects, or, what is a
_succedaneum_ for them, fresh raw meat, can meet with neither in long and
tedious voyages.  It is from this defect of food that our collections
(curious as they are) are defective, and we are deprived of some of the
most delicate and lively genera.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER XXXI.


                                             SELBORNE, _Sept. 14th_, 1770.

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

An observing Devonshire gentleman tells me that they frequent some parts
of Dartmoor, and breed there, but leave those haunts about the end of
September, or beginning of October, and return again about the end of
March.

Another intelligent person assures me that they breed in great abundance
all over the peak of Derby, and are called there tor-ousels, withdraw in
October and November, and return in spring.  This information seems to
throw some light on my new migration.

Scopoli's new work (which I have just procured) has its merit in
ascertaining many of the birds of the Tirol and Carniola.  Monographers,
come from whence they may, have, I think, fair pretence to challenge some
regard and approbation from the lovers of natural history; for, as no man
can alone investigate the works of nature, these partial writers may,
each in their department, be more accurate in their discoveries, and
freer from errors, than more general writers; and so by degrees may pave
the way to an universal correct natural history.  Not that Scopoli is so
circumstantial and attentive to the life and conversation of his birds as
I could wish: he advances some false facts; as when he says of the
_hirundo urbica_ that "_pullos extra nidum non nutrit_."  This assertion
I know to be wrong from repeated observation this summer; for
house-martins do feed their young flying, though it must be acknowledged
not so commonly as the house-swallow; and the feat is done in so quick a
manner as not to be perceptible to indifferent observers.  He also
advances some (I was going to say) improbable facts; as when he says of
the woodcock that "_pullos rostro portat fugiens ab hoste_."  But candour
forbids me to say absolutely that any fact is false, because I have never
been witness to such a fact.  I have only to remark that the long
unwieldy bill of the woodcock is perhaps the worst adapted of any among
the winged creation for such a feat of natural affection.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER XXXII.


                                           SELBORNE, _October 29th_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--After an ineffectual search in Linnaeus, Brisson, etc., I
begin to suspect that I discern my brother's _hirundo hyberna_ in
Scopoli's new discovered _hirundo rupestris_, p. 167.  His description of
"_Supra murina_, _subtus albida_; _rectrices macula ovali alba in latere
interno_; _pedes nudi_, _nigri_; _rostrum nigrum_; _remiges obscuriores
quam plumae dorsales_; _rectrices remigibus concolores_; _cauda
emarginata_, _nec forcipata_," agrees very well with the bird in
question: but when he comes to advance that it is "_statura hirundinis
urbicae_," and that "_definitio hirundinis ripariae Linnaei huic quoque
conveniit_," he in some measure invalidates all he has said; at least, he
shows at once that he compares them to these species merely from memory:
for I have compared the birds themselves, and find they differ widely in
every circumstance of shape, size, and colour.  However, as you will have
a specimen, I shall be glad to hear what your judgment is in the matter.

Whether my brother is forestalled in his nondescript 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.

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

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

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

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER XXXIII.


                                              SELBORNE, _Nov. 26th_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--I was much pleased to see, among the collection of birds from
Gibraltar, some of those short-winged English summer birds of passage,
concerning whose departure we have made so much inquiry.  Now if these
birds are found in Andalusia to migrate to and from Barbary, it may
easily be supposed that those that come to us may migrate back to the
continent, and spend their winters in some of the warmer parts of Europe.
This is certain, that many soft-billed birds that come to Gibraltar
appear there only in spring and autumn, seeming to advance in pairs
towards the northward for the sake of breeding during the summer months,
and retiring in parties and broods towards the south at the decline of
the year; so that the rock of Gibraltar is the great rendezvous and place
of observation, from whence they take their departure each way towards
Europe or Africa.  It is therefore no mean discovery, I think, to find
that our small short-winged summer birds of passage are to be seen spring
and autumn on the very skirts of Europe; it is presumptive proof of their
emigrations.

Scopoli seems to me to have found the _hirundo melba_, the great
Gibraltar swift, in Tirol, without knowing it.  For what is his _hirundo
alpina_ but the afore-mentioned bird in other words?  Says he, "_Omnia
prioris_" (meaning the swift); "_sed pectus album_; _paulo major
priore_."  I do not suppose this to be a new species.  It is true also of
the _melba_, that "_nidificat in excelsis Alpium rupibus_."  _Vid. Annum
Primum_.

My Sussex friend, a man of observation and good sense, but no naturalist,
to whom 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
seventeenth and eighteenth, which date seems to me rather late.  They
live with us all the spring and summer, and at the beginning of autumn
prepare to take leave by getting together in flocks.  They seem to me a
bird of passage that may travel into some dry, hilly country south of us,
probably Spain, because of the abundance of sheep-walks in that country;
for they spend their summers with us in such districts.  This conjecture
I hazard, as I have never met with any one that has seen them in England
in the winter.  I believe they are not fond of going near the water, but
feed on earth-worms, that are common on sheep-walks and downs.  They
breed on fallows and lay-fields abounding with grey mossy flints, which
much resemble their young in colour, among which they skulk and conceal
themselves.  They make no nest, but lay their eggs on the bare ground,
producing in common but two at a time.  There is reason to think their
young run soon after they are hatched, and that the old ones do not feed
them, but only lead them about at the time of feeding, which, for the
most part, is in the night."  Thus far, my friend.

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

For a long time I have desired my relation to look out for these birds in
Andalusia, and now he writes me word that, for the first time, he saw one
dead in the market on the 3rd September.

When the _oedicnemus_ flies it stretches out its legs straight behind,
like a heron.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER XXXIV.


                                             SELBORNE, _March 30th_, 1771.

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

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

The insect that infests turnips and many crops in the garden (destroying
often whole fields while in their seedling leaves) is an animal that
wants to be better known.  The country people here call it the turnip-fly
and black-dolphin; but I know it to be one of the _coleoptera_; the
"_chrysomela oleracea_, _saltatoria_, _femoribus posticis crassissimis_."
In very hot summers they abound to an amazing degree, and, as you walk in
a field or in a garden, make a pattering like rain, by jumping on the
leaves of the turnips or cabbages.

There is an oestrus, known in these parts to every ploughboy, which,
because it is omitted by Linnaeus, is also passed over by late writers;
and that is the _curvicauda_ of old Mouset, mentioned by Derham in his
"Physico-Theology," p. 250; an insect worthy of remark for depositing its
eggs as it flies in so dextrous 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 wonderful star-tailed maggot
which he mentions afterwards; for more modern entomologists have
discovered that singular production to be derived from the egg of the
_musca chamaeleon_; see Geoffroy, t. xvii.  f. 4.

A full history of noxious insects hurtful in the field, garden, and
house, suggesting all the known and likely means of destroying them,
would be allowed by the public to be a most useful and important work.
What knowledge there is of this sort lies scattered, and wants to be
collected; great improvements would soon follow, of course.  A knowledge
of the properties, economy, propagation, and, in short, of the life and
conversation of these animals, is a necessary step to lead us to some
method of preventing their depredations.

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



LETTER XXXV.


                                                           SELBORNE, 1771.

Dear Sir,--Happening to make a visit to my neighbour's peacocks, I could
not help observing that the trains of those magnificent birds appear by
no means to be their tails, those long feathers growing not from their
_uropygium_, but all up their backs.  A range of short brown stiff
feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the _uropygium_, is the real
tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and
top-heavy, when set on end.  When the train is up, nothing appears of the
bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case were
those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey
cock when in a strutting attitude.  By a strong muscular vibration these
birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords
of a sword-dancer; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run
backwards towards the females.

I should tell you that I have got an uncommon _calculus aegogropila_,
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.



LETTER XXXVI.


                                                            _Sept._, 1771.

Dear Sir,--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, happening in an evening or two to procure the other likewise, I was
somewhat disappointed, when it appeared to be also of the same sex.  This
circumstance, and the great scarcity of this sort, at least in these
parts, occasions some suspicions in my mind whether it is really a
species, or whether it may not be the male part of the more known
species, one of which may supply many females, as is known to be the case
in sheep and some other quadrupeds.  But this doubt can only be cleared
by a farther examination, and some attention to the sex, of more
specimens: all that I know at present is, that my two were amply
furnished with the parts of generation, much resembling those of a boar.

In the extent of their wings they measured fourteen inches and a half,
and four inches and a 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 chestnut colour;
their maws were full of food, but so macerated that the quality could not
be distinguished; their livers, kidneys, and hearts were large, and their
bowels covered with fat.  They weighed each, when entire, full one ounce
and one drachm.  Within the ear there was somewhat of a peculiar
structure that I did not understand perfectly; but refer it to the
observation of the curious anatomist.  These creatures sent forth a very
rancid and offensive smell.



LETTER XXXVII.


                                                           SELBORNE, 1771.

Dear Sir,--On the 12th July I had a fair opportunity of contemplating the
motions of the _caprimulgus_, or fern-owl, as it was playing round a
large oak that swarmed with _scarabaei 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
circumstance that pleased me most was, that I saw it distinctly, more
than once, put out its short leg while on the wing, and, by a bend of the
head, deliver somewhat into its mouth.  If it takes any part of its prey
with its foot, as I have now the greatest reason to suppose it does these
chafers, I no longer wonder at the use of its middle toe, which is
curiously furnished with a serrated claw.

Swallows and martins, the bulk of them I mean, have forsaken us sooner
this year than usual; for on September 22nd they rendezvoused in a
neighbour's walnut-tree, where it seemed probable they had taken up their
lodging for the night.  At the dawn of the day, which was foggy, they
arose all together in infinite numbers, occasioning such a rushing from
the strokes of their wings against the hazy air, as might be heard to a
considerable distance: since that no flock has appeared, only a few
stragglers.

Some swifts stayed late, till the 22nd August--a rare instance! for they
usually withdraw within the first week.

On September 24th 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!



LETTER XXXVIII.


                                             SELBORNE, _March 15th_, 1773.

Dear Sir,--By my journal for last autumn it appears that the
house-martins bred very late, and stayed very late in these parts; for,
on the 1st October, I saw young martins in their nest nearly fledged; and
again, on the 21st October, we had at the next house a nest full of young
martins just ready to fly; and the old ones were hawking for insects with
great alertness.  The next morning the brood forsook their nest, and were
flying round the village.  From this day I never saw one of the swallow
kind till November 3rd, when twenty, or perhaps thirty, house-martins
were playing all day long by the side of the hanging wood, and over my
field.  Did these small weak birds, some of which were nestling twelve
days ago, shift their quarters at this late season of the year to the
other side of the northern tropic?  Or rather, is it not more probable
that the next church, ruin, chalk-cliff, steep covert, or perhaps
sandbank, lake, or pool (as a more northern naturalist would say), may
become their _hybernaculum_, and afford them a ready and obvious retreat?

We now begin to expect our vernal migration of ring-ousels every week.
Persons worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels were seen at
Christmas, 1770, in the forest of Bere, on the southern verge of this
county.  Hence we may conclude that their migrations are only internal,
and not extending to the continent southward, if they do at first come at
all from the northern parts of this island only, and not from the north
of Europe.  Come from whence they will, it is plain, from the fearless
disregard that they show for men or guns, that they have been little
accustomed to places of much resort.  Navigators mention that in the Isle
of Ascension, and other such desolate districts, birds are so little
acquainted with the human form that they settle on men's shoulders, and
have no more dread of a sailor than they would have of a goat that was
grazing.  A young man at Lewes, in Sussex, assured me that about seven
years ago ring-ousels abounded so about that town in the autumn that he
killed sixteen himself in one afternoon; he added further, that some had
appeared since in every autumn, but he could not find that any had been
observed before the season in which he shot so many.  I myself have found
these birds in little parties in the autumn cantoned all along the Sussex
downs, wherever there were shrubs and bushes, from Chichester to Lewes,
particularly in the autumn of 1770.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER XXXIX.


                                               SELBORNE, _Nov. 9th_, 1773.

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

The 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-coloured butcher-bird was shot last winter in Tisted Park,
and a red-backed butcher-bird [shrike] at Selborne: they are _rarae aves_
in this county.

Crows go in pairs all the year round.

Cornish choughs abound, and breed on Beachy Head, and on all the cliffs
of the Sussex coast.

The common wild pigeon, or stock-dove, is a bird of passage in the south
of England, seldom appearing till towards the end of November; is usually
the latest winter-bird of passage.  Before our beechen woods were so much
destroyed we had myriads of them, reaching in strings for a mile together
as they went out in a morning to feed.  They leave us early in spring:
where do they breed?

The people of Hampshire and Sussex call the missel-bird the storm-cock,
because it sings early in the spring in blowing, showery weather; its
song often commences with the year: with us it builds much in orchards.

A gentleman assures me he has taken the nests of ring-ousels on Dartmoor:
they build in banks on the sides of streams.

Titlarks not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also as they
play and toy about on the wing, and particularly while they are
descending, and sometimes they stand on the ground.

Adanson's testimony seems to me to be a very poor evidence that European
swallows migrate during our winter to Senegal: he does not talk at all
like an ornithologist; and probably saw only the swallows of that
country, which I know build within Governor O'Hara's hall against the
roof.  Had he known European swallows, would he not have mentioned the
species?

The house-swallow washes by dropping into the water as it flies: this
species appears commonly about a week before the house-martin, and about
ten or twelve days before the swift.

In 1772 there were young house-martins in their nest till October 23rd.

The swift appears about ten or twelve days later than the house-swallow:
viz., about the 24th or 26th April.

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

Some wheat-ears continue with us the winter through.

Wag-tails, all sorts, remain with us all the winter.  Bullfinches, when
fed on hempseed, often become wholly black.

We have vast flocks of female chaffinches all the winter, with hardly any
males among them.

When you say that in breeding-time the cock snipes make a bleating noise,
and I a drumming (perhaps I should rather have said a 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 motion of
their wings, I cannot say; but this I know, that when this noise happens,
the bird is always descending, and his wings are violently agitated.

Soon after the lapwings have done breeding they congregate, and, leaving
the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs and sheep-walks.

Two years ago last spring the little auk was found alive and unhurt, but
fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from Alresford,
where there is a great lake: it was kept awhile, but died.

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

Speaking of the swift, that page says "its drink the dew;" whereas it
should be "it drinks on the wing;" for all the swallow kind sip their
water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers: like Virgil's bees,
they drink flying; "_flumina summa libant_."  In this method of drinking
perhaps this genus may be peculiar.

Of the sedge-bird, be pleased to say it sings most part of the night; its
notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds;
as the sparrow, swallow, skylark.  When it happens to be silent in the
night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits you
immediately set it a-singing; or, in other words, though it slumbers
sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it reassumes its song.



LETTER XL.


                                              SELBORNE, _Sept. 2nd_, 1774.

Dear Sir,--Before your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had been
remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female swallow, and
this ere any young broods appeared; so that there was no danger of
confounding the dams with their _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
chimneys the one for the other.  From all my observations, it constantly
appeared that each sex has the long feathers in its tail that give it
that forked shape; with this difference, that they are longer in the tail
of the male than in that of the female.

Nightingales, when their young first come abroad and are helpless, make a
plaintive and a jarring noise, and also a snapping or cracking, pursuing
people along the hedges as they walk; these last sounds seem intended for
menace and defiance.

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

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

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

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

There are supposed to be two sorts of eels in the island of Ely.  The
threads sometimes discovered in eels are perhaps their young: the
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 a wagtail, when in 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, woodlark, willow-wren,
etc.; hence August is by much the most mute month, the spring, summer,
and autumn through.  Are birds induced to sing again because the
temperament of autumn resembles that of spring?

Linnaeus ranges plants geographically; palms inhabit the tropics, grasses
the temperate zones, and mosses and lichens the polar circles; no doubt
animals may be classed in the same manner with propriety.

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

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

Redbreasts sing all through the spring, summer, and autumn.  The reason
that they are called autumn songsters is, because in the two first
seasons their voices are drowned and lost in the general chorus; in the
latter their song becomes distinguishable.  Many songsters of the autumn
seem to be the young cock redbreasts of that year: nothwithstanding the
prejudices in their favour, they do much mischief in gardens to the
summer fruits.

The titmouse, which early in February begins to make two quaint notes,
like the whetting of a saw, is the marsh titmouse; the great titmouse
sings with three cheerful, joyous notes, and begins about the same time.

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 _Scaraboeus solstitialis_, or
fern-chafer, commence with the month of July, and cease about the end of
it.  These scarabs are the constant food of _Caprimulgi_, or fern-owls,
through that period.  They abound on the chalky downs and in some sandy
districts, but not in the clays.

In the garden of the Black Bear inn in the town of Reading, is a stream
or canal running under the stables and out into the fields on the other
side of the road.  In this water are many carps, which lie rolling about
in sight, being fed by travellers, who amuse themselves by tossing them
bread; but as soon as the weather grows at all severe these fishes are no
longer seen, because they retire under the stables, where they remain
till the return of spring.  Do they lie in a torpid state?  If they do
not, how are they supported?

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

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

Blackcaps mostly haunt orchards and gardens; while they warble their
throats are wonderfully distended.

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

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

On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with it a quaint
and magisterial air, and is very sententious; but when I recollect that
you requested stricture and anecdote, I hope you will pardon the didactic
manner for the sake of the information it may happen to contain.



LETTER XLI.


It is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of
soft-billed birds that continue with us the winter through subsist during
the dead months.  The imbecility of birds seems not to be the only reason
why they shun the rigour of our winters; for the robust wryneck (so much
resembling the hardy race of woodpeckers) migrates, while the feeble
little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves our severest
frosts without availing himself of houses or villages, to which most of
our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while this keeps aloof in
fields and woods; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often
perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know.

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

Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they
pick up crumbs and other sweepings, and in mild weather they procure
worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see
that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on
any mild winter's night.  Redbreasts and wrens in the winter haunt
outhouses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and flies that
have laid themselves up during the cold season.  But the grand support of
the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aurelia of
the _Lepidoptera ordo_, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their
trunks, to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings, and is found in
every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the ground itself.

Every species of titmouse winters with us; they have what I call a kind
of intermediate bill between the hard and the soft, between the Linnaean
genera of _Fringilla_ and _Motacilla_.  One species alone spends its
whole time in the woods and fields, never retreating for succour in the
severest seasons to houses and neighbourhoods; and that is the delicate
long-tailed titmouse, which is almost as minute as the golden-crowned
wren; but the blue titmouse or nun (_Parus caeruleus_), the cole-mouse
(_Parus ater_), the great black-headed titmouse (_Fringillago_), and the
marsh titmouse (_Parus palustris_), all resort at times to buildings, and
in hard weather particularly.  The great titmouse, driven by stress of
weather, much frequents houses; and, in deep snows, I have seen this
bird, while it hung with its back downwards (to my no small delight and
admiration), draw straws lengthwise from out the eaves of thatched
houses, in order to pull out the flies that were concealed between them,
and that in such numbers that they quite defaced the thatch, and gave it
a ragged appearance.

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

How the wheatear and whinchat support themselves in winter cannot be so
easily ascertained, since they spend their time on wild heaths and
warrens; the former especially, where there are stone quarries: most
probably it is that their maintenance arises from the aureliae of the
_Lepidoptera ordo_, which furnish them with a plentiful table in the
wilderness.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER XLII.


                                              SELBORNE, _March 9th_, 1775.

Dear Sir,--Some future faunist, a man of fortune, will, I hope, extend
his visits to the kingdom of Ireland; a new field and a country little
known to the naturalist.  He will not, it is to be wished, 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 plants little to be expected within the
British dominions.  A person of a thinking turn of mind will draw many
just remarks from the modern improvements of that country, both in arts
and agriculture, where premiums obtained long before they were heard of
with us.  The manners of the wild natives, their superstitions, their
prejudices, their sordid way of life, will extort from him many useful
reflections.  He should also take with him an able draughtsman, for he
must by no means pass over the noble castles and seats, the extensive and
picturesque lakes and waterfalls, and the lofty stupendous mountains, so
little known, and so engaging to the imagination when described and
exhibited in a lively manner; such a work would be well received.

As I have seen no modern map of Scotland, I cannot pretend to say how
accurate or particular any such may be; but this I know, that the best
old maps of that kingdom are very defective.

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

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

The seat of the Earl of Eglingtoun, near Glasgow, is worthy of notice.
The pine plantations of that nobleman are very grand and extensive
indeed.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER XLIII.


A pair of honey-buzzards, _Buteo opivorus_, _sive Vespivorus Raii_, built
them a large shallow nest, composed of twigs and lined with dead beechen
leaves, upon a tall, slender beech near the middle of Selborne Hanger, in
the summer of 1780.  In the middle of the month of June a bold boy
climbed this tree though standing on so steep and dizzy a situation, and
brought down an egg, the only one in the nest, which had been sat on for
some time, and contained the embryo of a young bird.  The egg was
smaller, and not so round as those of the common buzzard; was dotted at
each end with small red spots, and surrounded in the middle with a broad
bloody zone.  The hen bird was shot, and answered exactly to Mr. Ray's
description of that species; had a black cere, short thick legs, and a
long tail.  When on the wing this species may be easily distinguished
from the common buzzard by its hawk-like appearance, small head, wings
not so blunt, and longer tail.  This specimen contained in its craw some
limbs of frogs and many grey snails without shells.  The irides of the
eyes of this bird were of a beautiful bright yellow colour.

About the 10th July in the same summer a pair of sparrow-hawks bred in an
old crow's nest on a low beech in the same hanger; and as their brood,
which was numerous, began to grow up, became so daring and ravenous, that
they were a terror to all the dames in the village that had chickens or
ducklings under their care.  A boy climbed the tree, and found the young
so fledged that they all escaped from him, but discovered that a good
house had been kept: the larder was well-stored with provisions, for he
brought down a young blackbird, jay, and house-martin, all clean picked,
and some half devoured.  The old birds had been observed to make sad
havoc for some days among the new-flown swallows and martins, which,
being but lately out of their nests, had not acquired those powers and
command of wing that enable them, when more mature, to set such enemies
at defiance.



LETTER XLIV.


                                              SELBORNE, _Nov. 30th_, 1780.

Dear Sir,--Every incident that occasions a renewal of our correspondence
will ever be pleasing and agreeable to me.

As to the wild wood-pigeon, the _OEnas_, or _Vinago_, of Ray, I am much
of your mind, and see no reason for making it the origin of the common
house-dove: but suppose those that have advanced that opinion may have
been misled by another appellation, often given to the _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
a 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 February, lives the same wild life with the
ring-dove, _Palumbus torquatus_; frequents coppices and groves, supports
itself chiefly by mast, and delights to roost in the tallest beeches.
Could it be known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be
settled with me at once, provided they construct their nests on trees,
like the ring-dove, as I much suspect they do.

You received, you say, last spring a stock-dove from Sussex, and are
informed that they sometimes breed in that county.  But why did not your
correspondent determine the place of its nidification, whether on rocks,
cliffs, or trees?  If he was not an adroit ornithologist I should doubt
the fact, because people with us perpetually confound the stock-dove with
the ring-dove.

For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing that house-doves
are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon, for many reasons.  In the
first place the wild stock-dove is manifestly larger than the common
house-dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which generally
enlarges the breed.  Again, those two remarkable black spots on the
remiges of each wing of the stock-dove, which are so characteristic of
the species, would not, one should think, be totally lost by its being
reclaimed, but would often break out among its descendants.  But what is
worth a hundred arguments is, the instance you give in Sir Roger Mostyn's
house-doves in Caernarvonshire; which, though tempted by plenty of food
and gentle treatment, can never be prevailed on to inhabit their cote for
any time; but as soon as they begin to breed, betake themselves to the
fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young in safety amidst the
inaccessible caverns and precipices of that stupendous promontory.

    "Naturam expellas 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 wheeling over his head: he moreover adds, which I was not aware of,
that often there were among them little parties of small blue doves,
which he calls rockiers.  The food of these numberless emigrants was
beech-mast and some acorns, and particularly barley, which they collected
in the stubbles.  But of late years, since the vast increase of turnips,
that vegetable has furnished a great part of their support in hard
weather; and the holes they pick in these roots greatly damage the crop.
From this food their flesh has contracted a rancidness which occasions
them to be rejected by nicer judges of eating, who thought them before a
delicate dish.  They were shot not only as they were feeding in the
fields, and especially in snowy weather, but also at the close of the
evening, by men who lay in ambush among the woods and groves to kill them
as they came in to roost.  These are the principal circumstances relating
to this wonderful internal migration, which with us takes place towards
the end of November, and ceases early in the spring.  Last winter we had
in Selborne high wood about a hundred of these doves; but in former times
the flocks were so vast, not only with us but all the district round,
that on mornings and evenings they traversed the air, like rooks, in
strings, reaching for a mile together.  When they thus 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 had
a relation in this neighbourhood who made it a practice, for a time,
whenever he could procure the eggs of a ring-dove, to place them under a
pair of doves that were sitting in his own pigeon-house; hoping thereby,
if he could bring about a coalition, to enlarge his breed, and teach his
own doves to beat out into the woods, and to support themselves by mast;
the plan was plausible, but something always interrupted the success; for
though the birds were usually hatched, and sometimes grew to half their
size, yet none ever arrived at maturity.  I myself have seen these
foundlings in their nest displaying a strange ferocity of nature, so as
scarcely to bear to be looked at, and snapping with their bills by way of
menace.  In short, they always died, perhaps for want of proper
sustenance: but the owner thought that by their fierce and wild demeanour
they frighted their foster mothers, and so were starved.

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 passage: and John Dryden has rendered it so
happily in our language, that without further excuse I shall add his
translation also.

     "Qualis spelunca subito commota Columba,
    Cui domus, et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi,
    Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis,
    Dat tecto ingentem--mox aere lapsa quieto,
    Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas."

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

                                                               I am,  etc.




LETTERS TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.


LETTER I.


                                              SELBORNE, _June 30th_, 1769.

Dear Sir,--When I was in town last month I partly engaged that I would
sometimes do myself the honour to write to you on the subject of natural
history; and I am the more ready to fulfil my promise, because I see you
are a gentleman of great candour, and one that will make allowances,
especially where the writer professes to be an out-door naturalist, one
that takes his observations from the subject itself, and not from the
writings of others.

THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF THE SUMMER BIRDS OF PASSAGE WHICH I HAVE
DISCOVERED IN THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD, RANGED SOMEWHAT IN THE ORDER IN WHICH
THEY APPEAR:--

                               RAII NOMINA.          USUALLY APPEARS ABOUT
1.       Wryneck.              _Jynx_, _sive         The middle of March:
                               Torquilla_.           harsh note.
2.       Smallest              _Regulus non          March 23rd: chirps till
         willow-wren.          cristatus_.           September.
3.       Swallow.              _Hirundo              April 13th.
                               domestica_.
4.       Martin.               _Hirundo rustica_.    Ditto.
5.       Sand-martin.          _Hirundo riparia_.    Ditto.
6.       Blackcap.             _Atricapilla_.        Ditto: a sweet, wild
                                                     note.
7.       Nightingale.          _Luscinia_.           Beginning of April.
8.       Cuckoo.               _Cuculus_.            Middle of April.
9.       Middle willow-wren.   _Regulus non          Ditto: a sweet,
                               cristatus_.           plaintive note.
10.      Whitethroat.          _Ficedulae affinis_   Ditto: mean note; sings
                                                     on till September.
11.      Redstart.             _Ruticilla_.          Ditto: more agreeable
                                                     song.
12.      Stone-curlew.         _OEdicnemus_          End of March: loud
                                                     nocturnal whistle.
13.      Turtle-dove.          _Turtur_.
14.      Grasshopper-lark.     _Alauda minima        Middle April: a small
                               locustae voce_        sibilous note, till the
                                                     end of July.
15.      Swift.                _Hirundo apus_.       About April 27th.
16.      Less reed-sparrow.    _Passer               A sweet polyglot, but
                               arundinaceus          hurrying; it has the
                               minor_.               notes of many birds.
17.      Land-rail.            _Ortygometra_.        A loud, harsh
                                                     note--crex, crex.
18.      Largest willow        _Regulus non          _Cantat voce stridula
         wren.                 cristatus_.           locustae_; end of April,
                                                     on the tops of high
                                                     beeches.
19.      Goat-sucker, or       _Caprimulgus_.        Beginning of May:
         fern-owl.                                   chatters by night with a
                                                     singular noise.
20.      Fly-catcher.          _Stoparola_.          May 12th: a very mute
                                                     bird: this is the latest
                                                     summer bird of passage.

This assemblage of curious and amusing birds belongs to ten several
genera of the Linnaean system, and are all of the _ordo_ of _passeres_
save the _Jynx_ and _Cuculus_, which are _picae_, and the _Charadrius_
(_OEdicnemus_) and _Rallus_ (_Ortygometra_), which are _grallae_.

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

1,                       _Jynx_.          13.              _Columba_.
2,6,7,9,10,11,16,18,     _Motacilla_.     17.              _Rallus_.
3,4,5,15,                _Hirundo_.       19.              _Caprimulgus_.
8,                       _Cuculus_.       14.              _Alauda_.
12,                      _Charadrius_.    20.              _Muscicapa_.

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

                        RAII NOMINA.
Redbreast, Wren,        _Rubecula. Passer       These frequent houses,
                        troglodytes_.           and haunt out-buildings
                                                in the winter: eat
                                                spiders.
Hedge-sparrow,          _Curruca_.              Haunt sinks for crumbs
                                                and other sweepings.
White-wagtail,
Yellow-wagtail,
Grey-wagtail,           _Motacilla alba_.       These frequent shallow
                        _Motacilla flava_.      rivulets near the spring
                        _Motacilla cinerea_.    heads, where they never
                                                freeze: eat the aureliae
                                                of _Phryganea_.  The
                                                smallest birds that walk.
Wheatear,               _OEnanthe_.             Some of these are to be
                                                seen with us the winter
                                                through.
Whinchat,
Stone-chatter,          _OEnanthe secunda_.
                        _OEnanthe tertia_.
Golden-crowned wren,    _Regulus cristatus_.    This is the smallest
                                                British bird: haunts the
                                                tops of tall trees; stays
                                                the winter through.

A LIST OF THE WINTER BIRDS OF PASSAGE ROUND THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD, RANGED
SOMEWHAT IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY APPEAR.

                            RAII NOMINA.
1.    Ring-ousel,           _Merula torquata_.    This is a new migration,
                                                  which I have lately
                                                  discovered about
                                                  Michaelmas week, and
                                                  again about the 14th
                                                  March.
2.    Redwing,              _Turdus iliacus_.     About old Michaelmas.
3.    Fieldfare,            _Turdus pilaris_.     Though a percher by day,
                                                  roosts on the ground.
4.    Royston-crow,         _Cornix cinerea_.     Most frequent on downs.
5.    Woodcock,             _Scolopax_.           Appears about old
                                                  Michaelmas.
6.    Snipe,                _Gallinago minor_.    Some snipes constantly
                                                  breed with us.
7.    Jack-snipe,           _Gallinago minima_.
8.    Wood-pigeon,          _OEnas_.              Seldom appears till
                                                  late; not in such plenty
                                                  as formerly.
9.    Wild-swan,            _Cygnus ferus_.       On some large waters.
10.   Wild-goose,           _Anser ferus_.        )
11.   Wild-duck,            _Anas torquata        )
                            minor_.
12.   Pochard,              _Anas fera fusca_.    )
13.   Wigeon,               _Penelope_.           ) On our lakes and
                                                  streams.
14.   Teal, breeds with     _Querquedula_.        )
      us in Wolmer
      Forest,
15.   Gross-beak,           _Coccothraustes_.     ) These are only
                                                  wanderers that
16.   Cross-bill,           _Loxia_.              ) appear occasionally,
                                                  and are not
17.   Silk-tail,            _Garrulus             ) observant of any
                            bohemicus_.           regular migration.

The birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the following Linnaean
genera:--

1,2,3,          Turdus.               9,10,11,12,13,14,     Anas.
4,              Corvus.               15,16,                Loxia.
5,6,7,          Scolopax.             17,                   Ampelis.
8,              Columba.

Birds that sing in the night are but few.

Nightingale,            _Luscinia_.             "In shadiest covert hid."
                                                MILTON.
Woodlark,               _Alauda arborea_.       Suspended in mid air.
Less reed-sparrow,      _Passer arundinaceus    Among reeds and willows.
                        minor_.

I should now proceed to such birds as continue to sing after Midsummer,
but, as they are rather numerous, they would exceed the bounds of this
paper: besides, as this is now the season for remarking on that subject,
I am willing to repeat my observations on some birds concerning the
continuation of whose song I seem at present to have some doubt.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER II.


                                               SELBORNE, _Nov. 2nd_, 1769.

Dear Sir,--When I did myself the honour to write to you about the end of
last June on the subject of natural history, I sent you a list of the
summer birds of passage which I have observed in this neighbourhood, and
also a list of the winter birds of passage: I  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 proceed to such birds (singing
birds strictly so called) as continue in full song till after Midsummer,
and shall range them somewhat in the order in which they first begin to
open as the spring advances.

                                    RAII NOMINA.
1.                Woodlark,         _Alauda           In January, and
                                    arborea_.         continues to sing
                                                      through all the
                                                      summer and autumn.
2.                Song thrush,      _Turdus           In February, and on
                                    simpliciter       to August;
                                    dictus_.          re-assume their
                                                      song in autumn.
3.                Wren,             _Passer           All the year, hard
                                    troglodytes_.     frost excepted.
4.                Redbreast,        _Rubecula_.       Ditto.
5.                Hedge-sparrow.    _Curruca_.        Early in February
                                                      to July 10th.
6.                Yellow-hammer,    _Emberiza         Early in February,
                                    flava_.           and on through July
                                                      to August 21st.
7.                Skylark,          _Alauda           In February and on
                                    vulgaris_.        to October.
8.                Swallow,          _Hirundo          From April to
                                    domestica_.       September.
9.                Blackcap,         _Atricapilla_.    Beginning of April
                                                      to July 13th.
10.               Titlark,          _Alauda           From middle of
                                    pratorum_.        April to July 16th.
11.               Blackbird,        _Merula           Sometimes in
                                    vulgaris_.        February and March,
                                                      and so on to July
                                                      23rd; re-assumes in
                                                      autumn.
12.               Whitethroat,      _Ficedulae        In April, and on to
                                    affinis_.         July 23rd.
13.               Goldfinch,        _Carduelis_.      April, and through
                                                      to September 16th.
14.               Greenfinch,       _Chloris_.        On to July and
                                                      August 2nd.
15.               Less              _Passer           May, on to
                  reed-sparrow.     arundinaceus      beginning of July.
                                    minor_.
16.               Common linnet,    _Linaria          Breeds and whistles
                                    vulgaris_.        on till August;
                                                      re-assumes 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:--

                                    RAII NOMINA.
17.               Middle            _Regulus non      Middle of June;
                  willow-wren,      cristatus_.       begins in April.
18.               Redstart,         _Ruticilla_.      Ditto; begins in
                                                      May.
19.               Chaffinch,        _Fringilla_.      Beginning of June;
                                                      sings first in
                                                      April.
20.               Nightingale,      _Luscinia_.       Middle of June;
                                                      sings first in
                                                      April.

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

                                    RAII NOMINA.
21.               Missel-bird,      _Turdus           January 2nd, 1770,
                                    viscivorus_.      in February.  Is
                                                      called Hampshire
                                                      and Sussex the
                                                      storm-cock, because
                                                      its song is
                                                      supposed to
                                                      forebode windy wet
                                                      weather: it is the
                                                      largest singing
                                                      bird we have.
22.               Great             _Fringillago_.    In February, March,
                  tit-mouse, or                       April; re-assumes
                  ox-eye.                             for a short time in
                                                      September.

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

                        RAII NOMINA.
23.    Golden-crowned        _Regulus              Its note as minute as
       wren,                 cristatus_.           its person; frequents
                                                   the tops of high oaks
                                                   and firs; the smallest
                                                   British bird.
24.    Marsh tit-mouse,      _Parus palustris_.    Haunts great woods; two
                                                   harsh, sharp notes.
25.    Small willow-wren,    _Regulus non          Sings in March, and on
                             cristatus_.           to September.
26.    Largest ditto,        _Ditto_.              _Cantat voce stridula
                                                   locustae_; from end of
                                                   April to August.
27.    Grasshopper-lark,     _Alauda minima voce   Chirps all night, from
                             locustae_.            the middle of April to
                                                   the end of July.
28.    Martin,               _Hirundo agrestis_.   All the breeding time;
                                                   from May to September.
29.    Bullfinch,            _Pyrrhula_.
30.    Bunting,              _Emberiza alba_.      From the end of January
                                                   to July.

All singing birds, and those that have any pretensions to song, not only
in Britain, but perhaps the world through, come under the Linnaean _ordo_
of _Passeres_.

The above-mentioned birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the
following Linnaean genera:--

1,7,10,27,        _Alauda_          8,28,             _Hirundo_.
2,11,21,          _Turdus_.         13,16,19,         _Fringilla_.
3,4,5,9,12,   )                     22,24,            _Parus_.
15,17,18,20,      _Motacilla_       14,29,            _Loxia_.
)
23,25,26,   )
6,20,             _Emberiza_.

Birds that sing as they fly are but few:--

                   RAII NOMINA.
Skylark,           _Alauda vulgaris_.      Rising, suspended, and
                                           falling.
Titlark,           _Alauda pratorum_.      In its descent; also
                                           sitting on trees, and
                                           walking on the ground.
Woodlark,          _Alauda arborea_.       Suspended; in hot summer
                                           nights all night long.
Blackbird,         _Merula_.               Sometimes from bush to
                                           bush.
Whitethroat,       _Ficedula affinis_.     Uses when singing on the
                                           wing odd jerks and
                                           gesticulations.
Swallow,           _Hirundo domestica_.    In soft sunny weather.
Wren,              _Passer troglodytes_.   Sometimes from bush to
                                           bush.

Birds that breed most early in these parts:--

                   RAII NOMINA.
Raven,             _Corvus_.               Hatches in February and
                                           March.
Song-thrush,       _Turdus_.               In March.
Blackbird,         _Merula_.               In March.
Rook,              _Cornix frugilega_.     Builds the beginning of
                                           March.
Woodlark,          _Alauda arborea_.       Hatches in April.
Ring-dove,         _Palumbus torquatus_.   Lays the beginning of
                                           April.

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

Most kinds of birds seem to me to be wild and shy somewhat in proportion
to their bulk: I mean in this island, where they are much pursued and
annoyed; but in Ascension Island, and many other desolate places,
mariners have found fowls so unacquainted with a human figure, that they
would stand still to be taken, as is the case with boobies, etc.  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 (_Otis_), the largest British land
fowl, does not care to admit a person within so many furlongs.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER III.


                                              SELBORNE, _Jan. 15th_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--It was no small matter of satisfaction to me to find that you
were not displeased with my little _methodus_ of birds.  If there was any
merit in the sketch, it must be owing to its punctuality.  For many
months I carried a list in my pocket of the birds that were to be
remarked, and, as I rode or walked about my business, I noted each day
the continuance or omission of each bird's song, so that I am as sure of
the certainty of my facts as a man can be of any transaction whatsoever.

I shall now proceed to answer the several queries which you put in your
two obliging letters, in the best manner that I am able.  Perhaps
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 incurious observer that they whistle the year round, hard
frost excepted--especially the latter.

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

    "And tune his merry note
    Unto the _wild_ bird's throat."--SHAKESPEARE.

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

It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night; perhaps only
caged birds do so.  I once knew a tame redbreast in a cage that always
sang as long as candles were in the room; but in their wild state no one
supposes they sing in the night.

I should 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 I am that it is far otherwise with respect
to the swallow tribe, which increases prodigiously as the summer
advances: and I saw at the time mentioned many hundreds of young wagtails
on the banks of the Cherwell, which almost covered 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 stomachs of woodcocks and
snipes: but nothing ever occurred that helped to explain to me what their
subsistence might be: all that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among
which lay many pellucid small gravels.

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER IV.


                                              SELBORNE, _Feb. 19th_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--Your observation that "the cuckoo does not deposit its egg
indiscriminately in the nest of the first bird that comes in its way,
but probably looks out a nurse in some degree congenerous with whom to
intrust its young," is perfectly new to me, and struck me so forcibly
that I naturally fell into a train of thought that led me to consider
whether the fact was so, and what reason there was for it. When I came
to recollect and inquire, I could not find that any cuckoo had ever
been seen in these parts, except in the nest of the wagtail, the
hedge-sparrow, the titlark, the white-throat, and the redbreast, all
soft-billed insectivorous birds. The excellent Mr. Willughby mentions
the nest of the _Palumbus_ (ring-dove), and of the _Fringilla_
(chaffinch), birds 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 possible that a soft-billed bird should subsist on the
same food with the hard-billed: for the former have thin membranaceous
stomachs suited to their soft food, while the latter, the granivorous
tribe, have strong muscular gizzards, which, like mills, grind, by the
help of small gravels and pebbles, what is swallowed. This proceeding
of the cuckoo, of dropping its eggs as it were by chance, is such a
monstrous outrage on maternal affection, one of the first great
dictates of nature, and such a violence on instinct, that, had it only
been related of a bird in the Brazils, or Peru, it would never have
merited our belief. But yet, should it further appear that this simple
bird, when divested of that natural στοργὴ that seems to raise the kind
in general above themselves, and inspire them with extraordinary
degrees of cunning and address, may be still endued with a more
enlarged faculty of discerning what species are suitable and
congenerous nursing-mothers for its disregarded eggs and young, and may
deposit them only under their care, this would be adding wonder to
wonder, and instancing, in a fresh manner, that the methods of
Providence are not subjected to any mode or rule, but astonish us in
new lights, and in various and changeable appearances.

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

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

 "Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath He imparted to
her understanding."

_Query_.--Does each female cuckoo lay but one egg in a season, or does
she drop several in different nests according as opportunity offers?

                                                                I am, etc.



LETTER V.


                                             SELBORNE, _April 12th_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--I heard many birds of several species sing last year after
Midsummer, enough to prove that the summer solstice is not the period
that puts a stop to the music of the woods.  The yellow-hammer no doubt
persists with more steadiness than any other: but the woodlark, the wren,
the redbreast, the swallow, the whitethroat, 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 black-cap will be here in two or three days.  I wish it
was in my power to procure you one of those songsters; but I am no
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.

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 of
Ray, the sedge-bird of Mr. Pennant's last publication, p. 16?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 neighbourhood.  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 unsupported and alone to
begin a natural history from his own autopsia!  Though there is endless
room for observation in the field of nature, which is boundless, yet
investigation (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 "Investigations of the Difference
between the Present Temperature of the Air in Italy," etc., have fallen
in my way, and gave me great satisfaction: they have removed the
objections that always arose in my mind whenever 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.



LETTER VI.


                                               SELBORNE, _May 21st_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--The severity and turbulence of last month so interrupted the
regular process of summer migration, that some of the birds do but just
begin to show themselves, and others are apparently thinner than usual;
as the white-throat, the black-cap, the red-start, the fly-catcher.  I
well remember that after the very severe spring in the year 1739-40,
summer birds of passage were very scarce.  They come probably hither with
a south-east wind, or when it blows between those points: but in that
unfavourable 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
11th April amidst 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 a
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 arundinaceus minor Raii_) is a soft-billed bird; and most
probably migrates hence before winter; whereas the bird you kept (_Passer
torquatus Raii_) abides all the year, and is a thick-billed bird.  I
question whether the 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. Pennant 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 different 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.

No doubt the reason why the sex of birds in their first plumage is so
difficult to be distinguished is, as you say, "because they are not to
pair and discharge their parental functions till the ensuing spring."  As
colours seem to be the chief external sexual distinction in many birds,
these colours do not take place till sexual attachments 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, etc., etc., strongly
discriminate the male from the female.  We may instance still farther 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 sagaces falleret hospites
    Discrimen obscurum, solutis
    Crinibus, ambiguoque vultu."

                              HOR. ODES, II. od. 5-21, p. 131, orig. edit.



LETTER VII.


                                   RINGMER _near_ LEWES, _Oct. 8th_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--I am glad to hear that Kuckalm is to furnish you with the
birds of Jamaica; a sight of the _hirundines_ of that hot and distant
island would be a great entertainment to me.

The Anni of Scopoli are now in my possession; and I have read the _Annus
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 undertake only one district are much more likely to advance natural
knowledge than those that grasp at more than they can possibly be
acquainted with: every kingdom, every province, should have its own
monographer.

The reason perhaps why he mentions nothing of Ray's Ornithology may be
the extreme poverty and distance of his country into which the works of
our great naturalist may have never yet found their way.  You have
doubts, I know, whether this Ornithology is genuine, and really the work
of Scopoli; 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 Genera are many of them new, expressive,
and masterly.  He has ventured to alter some of the Linnaean 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 _gallinoe_ order, as cocks and hens,
partridges, and pheasants, etc., are _pulveratrices_, 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 pulveratrices, being frequently seen grovelling
and wallowing in dusty roads; and yet they are great washers.  Does not
the skylark dust?

_Query_.--Might not Mahomet and his followers take one method of
purification from these pulveratrices? because I find from travellers 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 sand or dust.

A countryman told me he had found a young fern-owl 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 cuckoo
hatched in the nest of a titlark; it was become vastly too big for its
nest, appearing

    ". . . . . in tenui re
    Majores pennas nido extendisse . . "

and was very fierce and pugnacious, pursuing my finger as I teased it,
for many feet from the nest, and sparring and buffeting 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 _Libellulae_ or
dragon-flies; some of which they caught as they settled on the weeds, and
some as they were on the wing.  Notwithstanding what Linnaeus 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
Selborne.  In the first place considerable flocks of cross-beaks (_Loxiae
curvirostrae_) have appeared this summer in the pine-groves belonging to
this house; the water-ouzel is said to haunt the mouth of the Lewes
river, near Newhaven; and the Cornish chough builds, I know, all along
the chalky cliffs of the Sussex shore.

I was greatly pleased to see little parties of ring-ouzels (my newly
discovered migrators) 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 cantoned 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 remarkable that they are very tame, and seem to
have no manner of apprehensions of danger from a person with a gun.
There are bustards on the wide downs near Brighthelmstone.  No doubt you
are acquainted with the Sussex downs; the prospects and rides round Lewes
are most lovely!

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 red-start, white-throat, black-cap, uncrested wren, fly-catcher, etc.
And I remember 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 wheatears, titlarks, etc.  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 belonging 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 inclination 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 supposed to be
a hundred years old.  An instance of vast longevity in such a poor
reptile!



LETTER VIII


                                              SELBORNE, _Dec. 20th_, 1770.

Dear Sir,--The birds that I took for aberdavines were reed-sparrows
(_Passeres torquati_).

There are doubtless many home internal migrations within this kingdom
that want to be better understood: witness those vast flocks of
hen-chaffinches that appear with us in the winter without hardly any
cocks among them.  Now was there a due proportion 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 conclude that the _Fringilloe coelebes_, for
some good purposes, have a peculiar migration of their own in which the
sexes part.  Nor should it seem so wonderful that the intercourse of
sexes in this species of bird 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. 58, and "Systema Naturae," p. 318.  I see every winter vast
flights of hen-chaffinches, but none of cocks.

Your method of accounting for the periodical motions of the British
singing birds, or birds of flight, is a very probable one; 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 acquiesce 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
congregating is quite at an end from the conclusion 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 husbandman 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 purpose of breeding.  That the former pair before
they retire, and that the hens are 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 all always mentioned
as rarities, and somewhat out of the common course of things: but as to
redwings and fieldfares, no sportsman or naturalist has ever yet, that I
could hear, pretended 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 their congeners, the
black-birds and thrushes, did they choose to stay the summer through.
From hence it appears that it is not food alone which determines some
species of birds with regard to their stay or departure.  Fieldfares or
redwings disappear sooner or later according as the warm weather comes on
earlier or later.  For I well remember, after that dreadful winter
1739-40, that cold north-east winds continued to blow on through April
and May, and that these kind of birds (what few remained of them) did not
depart as usual, but were seen lingering about till the beginning of
June.

The best authority that we can have for the nidification of the birds
above-mentioned in any district, is the testimony of faunists that have
written professedly the natural history of particular countries.  Now as
to the fieldfare, Linnaeus, in his "Fauna Suecica," says of it, that
"_maximis in arboribus nidificat_;" and of the redwing he says, in the
same place, that "_nidificat in mediis arbusculis_, _sive sepibus_; _ova
sex coeruleo-viridia maculis nigris variis_."  Hence we may be assured
that fieldfares and redwings build in Sweden.  Scopoli says, in his
"Annus Primus," of the woodcock, that "_nupta ad nos venit circa
oequinoctium vernale_;" meaning in Tyrol, of which he is a native.  And
afterwards he adds "_nidificat in paludibus alpinis: ova ponit_ 3-5."  It
does not appear from Kramer that woodcocks breed at all in Austria; but
he says, "_Avis hoec septentrionalium provinciarum oestivo tempore incola
est_; _ubi plerumque nidificat_.  _Appropinquante hyeme australiores
provincias petit_; _hinc circa plenilunium mensis Octobris plerumque
Austriam transmigrat_.  _Tunc rursus circa plenilunium potissimum mensis
Martii per Austriam matrimonio juncta ad septentrionales provincias
redit_."  For the whole passage (which I have abridged) see "Elenchus,"
etc., 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 Rutland, in three weeks of this present
very wet weather, seven inches and a half of rain, which is more than has
fallen in any three weeks for these thirty years past in that part of the
world.  A mean quantity in that county for one year is twenty inches and
a half.



LETTER IX.


                                 FYFIELD, near ANDOVER, _Feb. 12th_, 1772.

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

But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general; because
migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my brother in
Andalusia has fully informed me.  Of the motions of these birds he has
ocular demonstration, for many weeks together, both spring and fall;
during which periods myriads of the swallow kind traverse the straits
from north to south, and from south to north, according to the season.
And these vast migrations consist not only of hirundines but of
bee-birds, hoopoes, _Oro pendolos_, or golden thrushes, etc., etc., and
also of many of our soft-billed summer birds of passage; and moreover of
birds which never leave us, such as all the various sorts of hawks and
kites.  Old Belon, two hundred years ago, gives a curious account of the
incredible armies of hawks and kites which he saw in the spring-time
traversing the Thracian Bosphorus from Asia to Europe.  Besides the above
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
impatient of a sultry climate; but then I cannot help wondering why kites
and hawks, and such hardy birds as are known to defy all the severity of
England, and even of Sweden and all north Europe, should want to migrate
from the south of Europe, and be dissatisfied with the winters of
Andalusia.

It does not appear to me that much stress may be laid on the difficulty
and hazard that birds must run in their migrations, by reason of vast
oceans, cross winds, etc.; because, if we reflect, a bird may travel from
England to the Equator without launching out and exposing itself to
boundless seas, and that by crossing the water at Dover, and again at
Gibraltar.  And I with the more confidence advance this obvious remark,
because my brother has always found that some of his birds, and
particularly the swallow kind, are very sparing of their pains in
crossing the Mediterranean; for when arrived at Gibraltar they do not

    . . . "Rang'd in figure wedge their way,
    . . . . And set forth
    Their airy caravan high over seas
    Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
    Easing their flight:" . . . . --MILTON.

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

In former letters we have considered whether it was probable that
woodcocks in moonshiny nights cross the German ocean from Scandinavia.
As a proof that birds of less speed may pass that sea, considerable as it
is, I shall relate the following incident, which, though mentioned to
have happened so many years ago, was strictly matter of fact:--As some
people were shooting in the parish of Trotton, in the county of Sussex,
they killed a duck in that dreadful winter, 1708-9, with a silver collar
about its neck, on which were engraven the arms of the king of Denmark.
This anecdote the rector of Trotton at that time has often told to a near
relation of mine; and to the best of my remembrance, the collar was in
the possession of the rector.

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

Nightingales not only never reach Northumberland and Scotland, but also,
as I have been always told, Devonshire and Cornwall.  In those two last
counties we cannot attribute the failure of them to the want of warmth;
the defect in the west is rather a presumptive argument that these birds
come over to us from the continent at the narrowest passage, and do not
stroll so far westward.

Let me hear from your own observation whether skylarks do not dust.  I
think they do; and if they do, whether they wash also.

The _Alauda pratensis_ of Ray was the poor dupe that was educating the
booby of a cuckoo mentioned in my letter of October last.

Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring-ouzel for Mr. Tunstal
during their autumnal visit; but I will endeavour to get him one when
they call on us again in April.  I am glad that you and that gentleman
saw my Andalusian birds; I hope they answered your expectation.  Royston,
or grey crows, are winter birds that come much about the same time with
the woodcock; they, like the fieldfare and redwing, have no apparent
reason for migration; for as they fare in the winter like their
congeners, so might they in all appearance in the summer.  Was not
Tenant, when a boy, mistaken? did he not find a missel-thrush's nest, and
take it for the nest of a fieldfare?

The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon, _OEnas Raii_, is the last winter bird of
passage which appears with us; it is not seen till towards the end of
November: about twenty years ago they abounded in the district of
Selborne; and strings of them were seen morning and evening that reached
a mile or more; but since the beechen woods have been greatly thinned
they are much decreased in number.  The ring-dove, _Palumbus_ _Raii_,
stays with us the whole year, and breeds several times through the
summer.

Before I received your letter of October last I had just remarked in my
journal that the trees were unusually green.  This uncommon verdure
lasted on late into November; and may be accounted for from a late
spring, a cool and moist summer; but more particularly from vast armies
of chafers, or tree-beetles, which, in many places, reduced whole woods
to a leafless naked state.  These trees shot again at Midsummer, and then
retained their foliage till very late in the year.

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

                                                          I am, etc., etc.



LETTER X.


                                              SELBORNE, _Aug. 1st._, 177l.

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

A neighbour of mine, who is said to have a nice ear, remarks that the
owls 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 different species, or only from various individuals?  The
same person finds upon trial that the note of the cuckoo (of which we
have but one species) varies in different individuals; for, about
Selborne wood, he found they were mostly in D: he heard two sing
together, the one in D, the other in D sharp, who made a disagreeable
concert: he afterwards heard one in D sharp, and about Wolmer Forest some
in C.  As to nightingales, he says that their notes are so short, and
their transitions so rapid, that he cannot well ascertain their key.
Perhaps in a cage, and in a room, their notes may be more
distinguishable.  This person has tried to settle the notes of a swift,
and of several other small birds, but cannot bring them to any criterion.

As I have often remarked that redwings are some of the first birds that
suffer with us in severe weather, it is no wonder at all that they
retreat from Scandinavian winters: and much more the _ordo_ of _gralloe_,
who, all to a bird, forsake the northern parts of Europe at the approach
of winter.  "_Grallae tanquam conjuratae_, _unanimiter in fugam se
cojiciunt_; _ne earum unicam quidem inter nos habitantem invenire
possimus_; _ut enim aestate in australibus degere nequeunt ob defectum
lumbricorum_, _terramque siccam_; _ita nec in frigidis ob eandem
causam_," says Ekmarck the Swede, in his ingenious little treatise called
"Migrationes Avium," which by all means you ought to read while your
thoughts run on the subject of migration.  See "Amoenitates Academicae,"
vol. iv., p. 565.

Birds may be so circumstanced as to be obliged to migrate in one country,
and not in another: but the _grallae_ (which procure their food from
marshes and boggy grounds), must in winter forsake the more northerly
parts of Europe, or perish for want of food.

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

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

Foreign systematics are, I observe, much too vague in their specific
differences, which are almost universally constituted by one or two
particular marks, the rest of the description running in general terms.
But our countryman, the excellent Mr. Ray, is the only describer that
conveys some precise idea in every term or word, maintaining his
superiority over his followers and imitators in spite of the advantage of
fresh discoveries and modern information.

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

                                                          I am, etc., etc.



LETTER XI.


                                               SELBORNE, _Feb. 8th_, 1772.

Dear Sir,--When I ride about in the winter, and see such prodigious
flocks of various kinds of birds, I cannot help admiring at these
congregations, and wishing that it was in my power to account for those
appearances almost peculiar to the season.  The two great motives which
regulate the proceedings of the brute creation are love and hunger; the
former incites animals to perpetuate their kind; the latter induces them
to preserve individuals: whether either of these should seem to be the
ruling passion in the matter of congregating is to be considered.  As to
love, that is out of the question at a time of the year when that soft
passion is not indulged: besides, during the amorous season, such a
jealousy prevails between the male birds that they can hardly bear to be
together in the same hedge or field.  Most of the singing and elation of
spirits of that time seem to me to be the effect of rivalry and
emulation: and it is to this spirit of jealousy that I chiefly attribute
the equal dispersion of birds in the spring over the face of the country.

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

If I admire when I see how much congenerous birds love to 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 attended by a train
of daws, yet it is strange that the former should so frequently have a
flight of starlings for their satellites.  Is it because rooks have a
more discerning scent than their attendants, and can lead them to spots
more productive of food?  Anatomists say that rooks, by reason of two
large nerves which run down between the eyes into the upper mandible,
have a more delicate feeling in their beaks than other round-billed
birds, and can grope for their meat when out of sight.  Perhaps, then,
their associates attend them on the motive of interest, as greyhounds
wait on the motions of their finders, and as lions are said to do on the
yelpings of jackals.  Lapwings and starlings sometimes associate.



LETTER XII.


                                                        _March 9th_, 1772.

Dear Sir,--As a gentleman and myself were walking on the 4th of last
November, round the sea-banks at Newhaven, near the mouth of the Lewes
river, in pursuit of natural knowledge, we were surprised to see three
house-swallows gliding very swiftly by us.  That morning was rather
chilly, with the wind at north-west; but the tenor of the weather for
some time before had been delicate, and the noons remarkably warm.  From
this incident, and from repeated accounts which I meet with, I am more
and more induced to believe that many of the swallow kind do not depart
from this island, but lay themselves up in holes and caverns, and do,
insect-like and bat-like, come forth at mild times, and then retire again
to their _latebroe_.  Nor make I the least doubt but that, if I lived at
Newhaven, Seaford, Brighthelmstone, or any of those towns near the chalk
cliffs of the Sussex coast, by proper observations, I should see swallows
stirring at periods of the winter, when the noons were soft and inviting,
and the sun warm and invigorating.  And I am the more of this opinion
from what I have remarked during some of our late springs, that though
some swallows did make their appearance about the usual time, viz., the
13th or 14th April, yet meeting with a harsh reception, and blustering
cold north-east winds, they immediately withdrew, absconding for several
days, till the weather gave them better encouragement.



LETTER XIII.


                                                       _April 12th_, 1772.

Dear Sir,--While I was in Sussex last autumn, my residence was at the
village near Lewes, from whence I had formerly the pleasure of writing to
you.  On the 1st November I remarked that the old tortoise, formerly
mentioned, began first to dig the ground in order to the forming its
hybernaculum, which it had fixed on just beside a great tuft of
hepaticas.  It scrapes out the ground with its fore-feet, and throws it
up over its back with its hind; but the motion of its legs is
ridiculously slow, little exceeding the hour-hand of a clock, and
suitable to the composure of an animal said to be a whole month in
performing one feat of copulation.  Nothing can be more assiduous than
this creature night and day in scooping the earth, and forcing its great
body into the cavity; but, as the noons of that season proved unusually
warm and sunny, it was continually interrupted, and called forth by the
heat in the middle of the day; and though I continued there till the 13th
November, yet the work remained unfinished.  Harsher weather, and frosty
mornings, would have quickened its operations.  No part of its behaviour
ever struck me more than the extreme timidity it always expresses with
regard to rain; for though it has a shell that would secure it against
the wheel of a loaded cart, yet does it discover as much solicitude about
rain as a lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the
first sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner.  If attended to,
it becomes an excellent weather-glass, for as sure as it walks elate, and
as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great earnestness in a morning, so
sure will it rain before night.  It is totally a diurnal animal, and
never pretends to stir after it becomes dark.  The tortoise, like other
reptiles, has an arbitrary stomach as well as lungs; and can 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 benefactress with awkward alacrity, but remains
inattentive to strangers.  Thus, not only "the ox knoweth his owner, and
the ass his master's crib," but the most abject reptile and torpid of
beings distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched with the
feelings of gratitude!

                                                          I am, etc., etc.

P.S.--In about three days after I left Sussex, the tortoise retired into
the ground under the hepatica.



LETTER XIV.


                                             SELBORNE, _March 26th_, 1773.

Dear Sir,--The more I reflect on the στοργὴ of animals, the more I am
astonished at its effects. Nor is the violence of this affection more
wonderful than the shortness of its duration. Thus every hen is in her
turn the virago of the yard, in proportion to the helplessness of her
brood, and will fly in the face of a dog or a sow in defence of those
chickens, which in a few weeks she will drive before her with
relentless cruelty.

This affection sublimes the passions, quickens the invention, and
sharpens the sagacity of the brute creation.  Thus a hen, just become a
mother, is no longer that placid bird she used to be, but with feathers
standing on end, wings hovering, and clucking note, she runs about like
one possessed.  Dams will throw themselves in the way of the greatest
danger in order to avert it from their progeny.  Thus a partridge 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 a hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves that
district.  A very exact observer has often remarked that a pair of ravens
nesting in the rock of Gibraltar, would suffer no vulture or eagle to
rest near their station, but would drive them from the hill with an
amazing fury; even the blue thrush at the season of breeding would dart
out from the clefts of the rocks to chase away the kestril, or the
sparrow-hawk.  If you stand near the nest of a bird that has young, she
will not be induced to betray them by an inadvertent fondness, but will
wait about at a distance with meat in her mouth for an hour together.

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

The fly-catcher of the "Zoology" (the _Stoparola_ of Ray), builds every
year in the vines that grow on the walls of my house.  A pair of these
little birds had one year inadvertently placed their nest on a naked
bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the inconvenience that
followed.  But a hot sunny season coming on before the brood was half
fledged, the reflection of the wall became insupportable, and must
inevitably have destroyed the tender young, had not affection suggested
an expedient, and prompted the parent birds to hover over the nest all
the hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths gaping for
breath, they screened off the heat from their suffering offspring.

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

A still more remarkable mixture of sagacity and instinct occurred to me
one day as my people were pulling off the lining of a hot-bed, in order
to add some fresh dung.  From out of the side of this bed leaped an
animal with great agility, that made a most grotesque figure; nor was it
without great difficulty that it could be taken, when it proved to be a
large white-bellied field-mouse with three or four young clinging to her
teats by their mouths and feet.  It was amazing that the desultory and
rapid motions of this dam should not oblige her litter to quit their
hold, especially when it appeared that they were so young as to be both
naked and blind!

To these instances of tender attachment, many more of which might be
daily discovered by those that are studious of nature, may be opposed
that rage of affection, that monstrous perversion of the στοργὴ, which
induces some females of the brute creation to devour their young
because their owners have handled them too freely, or removed them from
place to place! Swine, and sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and
cats, are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear
now and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am
not so much amazed, since reason perverted, and the bad passions let
loose, are capable of any enormity; but why the parental feelings of
brutes, that usually flow in one most uniform tenor should sometimes be
so extravagantly diverted, I leave to abler philosophers than myself to
determine.

                                                                I am, etc.

                              END OF VOL. I.

  Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.




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