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Title: The Natural History of Selborne
Author: Gilbert White
Release Date: July, 1998 [eBook #1408]
[Most recently updated: October 24, 2021]
Language: English
Produced by: Tokuya Matsumoto
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE ***
The Natural History of Selborne
by Gilbert White
INVITATION TO SELBORNE.
See, Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round
The varied valley, and the mountain ground,
Wildly majestic ! What is all the pride,
Of flats, with loads of ornaments supplied ?—
Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense,
Compared with Nature’s rude magnificenee.
Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste;
The unfinish’d farm awaits your forming taste:
Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true;
Through the high arch call in the length’ning view;
Expand the forest sloping up the hill;
Swell to a lake the scant, penurious rill;
Extend the vista; raise the castle mound
In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown’d:
O’er the gay lawn the flow’ry shrub dispread,
Or with the blending garden mix the mead;
Bid China’s pale, fantastic fence delight;
Or with the mimic statue trap the sight.
Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still,
The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill,
To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour,
Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower;
Or where the hermit hangs the straw-clad cell,
Emerging gently from the leafy dell,
By fancy plann’d; as once th’ inventive maid
Met the hoar sage amid the secret shade:
Romantic spot ! from whence in prospect lies
Whate’er of landscape charms our feasting eyes’—
The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture plain,
The russet fallow, or the golden grain,
The breezy lake that sheds a gleaming light,
Till all the fading picture fail the sight.
Each to his task; all different ways retire:
Cull the dry stick; call forth the seeds of fire;
Deep fix the kettle’s props, a forky row,
Or give with fanning hat the breeze to blow.
Whence is this taste, the furnish’d hall forgot,
To feast in gardens, or th’ unhandy grot ?
Or novelty with some new charms surprises,
Or from our very shifts some joy arises.
Hark, while below the village bells ring round,
Echo, sweet nymph, returns the soften’d sound;
But if gusts rise, the rushing forests roar,
Like the tide tumbling on the pebbly shore.
Adown the vale, in lone, sequester’d nook,
Where skirting woods imbrown the dimpling brook,
The ruin’d convent lies: here wont to dwell
The lazy canon midst his cloister’d cell,
While Papal darkness brooded o’er the land,
Ere Reformation made her glorious stand:
Still oft at eve belated shepherd swains
See the cowl’d spectre skim the folded plains.
To the high Temple would my stranger go,
The mountain-brow commands the woods below:
In Jewry first this order found a name,
When madding Croisades set the world in flame;
When western climes, urged on by pope and priest
Pour’d forth their minions o’er the deluged East:
Luxurious knights, ill suited to defy
To mortal fight Turcestan chivalry.
Nor be the parsonage by the Muse forgot —
The partial bard admires his native spot;
Smit with its beauties, loved, as yet a child,
Unconscious why, its capes, grotesque and wild.
High on a mound th’ exalted gardens stand,
Beneath, deep valleys, scoop’d by Nature’s hand.
A Cobham here, exulting in his art,
Might blend the general’s with the gardener’s part;
Might fortify with all the martial trade
Of rampart, bastion, fosse, and palisade;
Might plant the mortar with wide threat’ning bore,
Or bid the mimic cannon seem to roar:
Now climb the steep, drop now your eye belong
Where round the blooming village orchards grow;
There, like a picture, lies my lowly seat,
A rural, shelter’d, unobserved retreat.
Me far above the rest Selbornian scenes,
The pendent forests, and the mountain greens,
Strike with delight; there spreads the distant view,
That gradual fades till sunk in misty blue:
Here Nature hangs her slopy woods to sight,
Rills purl between and dart a quivering light.
SELBORNE HANGER.
A WINTER PIECE, TO THE MISS B*****S
The bard, who sang so late in blithest strain
Selbornian prospects, and the rural reign,
Now suits his plaintive pipe to sadden’d tone,
While the blank swains the changeful year bemoan.
How fallen the glories of these fading scenes !
The dusky beech resigns his vernal greens;
The yellow maple mourns in sickly hue,
And russet woodlands crowd the dark’ning view.
Dim, clust’ring fogs involve the country round,
The valley and the blended mountain ground
Sink in confusion; but with tempest-wing
Should Boreas from his northern barrier spring,
The rushing woods with deaf’ning clamour roar,
Like the sea tumbling on the pebbly shore.
When spouting rains descend in torrent tides,
See the torn zigzag weep its channel’d sides:
Winter exerts its rage; heavy and slow,
From the keen east rolls on the treasured snow;
Sunk with its weight the bending boughs are seen,
And one bright deluge whelms the works of men.
Amidst this savage landscape, bleak and bare,
Hangs the chill hermitage in middle air;
Its haunts forsaken, and its feasts forgot,
A leaf-strown, lonely, desolated cot !
Is this the scene that late with rapture rang,
Where Delphy danced, and gentle Anna sang ?
With fairy step where Harriet tripp’d so late,
And, on her stump reclined, the musing Kitty sate ?
Return, dear nymphs; prevent the purple spring,
Ere the soft nightingale essays to sing;
Ere the first swallow sweeps the fresh’ning plain,
Ere love-sick turtles breathe their amorous pain;
Let festive glee th’ enliven’d village raise,
Pan’s blameless reign, and patriarchal days;
With pastoral dance the smitten swain surprise,
And bring all Arcady before our eyes.
Return, blithe maidens; with you bring along
Free, native humour; all the charms of song;
The feeling heart, and unaffected ease;
Each nameless grace, and ev’ry power to please.
_Nov_. 1, 1763.
ON THE RAINBOW.
“Look upon the Rainbow, and praise him that made it: very beautiful is
it in the brightness thereof.”—_Eccles_., xliii. 11.
On morning or on evening cloud impress’d,
Bent in vast curve, the watery meteor shines
Delightfully, to th’ levell’d sun opposed:
Lovely refraction ! while the vivid brede
In listed colours glows, th’ unconscious swain,
With vacant eye, gazes on the divine
Phenomenon, gleaming o’er the illumined fields,
Or runs to catch the treasures which it sheds.
Not so the sage: inspired with pious awe,
He hails the federal arch ; and looking up,
Adores that God, whose fingers form’d this bow
Magnificent, compassing heaven about
With a resplendent verge, “Thou mad’st the cloud,
“Maker omnipotent, and thou the bow;
“And by that covenant graciously hast sworn
“Never to drown the world again: henceforth,
“Till time shall be no more, in ceaseless round,
“Season shall follow season: day to night,
“Summer to winter, harvest to seed time,
“Heat shall to cold in regular array
“Succeed.”—Heav’n taught, so sang the Hebrew bard.
A HARVEST SCENE.
Waked by the gentle gleamings of the morn,
Soon clad, the reaper, provident of want,
Hies cheerful-hearted to the ripen’d field:
Nor hastes alone: attendant by his side
His faithful wife, sole partner of his cares,
Bears on her breast the sleeping babe; behind,
With steps unequal, trips her infant train;
Thrice happy pair, in love and labour join’d !
All day they ply their task; with mutual chat,
Beguiling each the sultry, tedious hours.
Around them falls in rows the sever’d corn,
Or the shocks rise in regular array.
But when high noon invites to short repast,
Beneath the shade of sheltering thorn they sit,
Divide the simple meal, and drain the cask:
The swinging cradle lulls the whimpering babe
Meantime; while growling round, if at the tread
Of hasty passenger alarm’d, as of their store
Protective, stalks the cur with bristling back,
To guard the scanty scrip and russet frock.
ON THE DARK, STILL, DRY, WARM WEATHER.
OCCASIONALLY HAPPENING IN THE WINTER MONTHS.
Th’ imprison’d winds slumber within their caves,
Fast bound: the fickle vane, emblem of change,
Wavers no more, long settling to a point.
All Nature nodding seems composed: thick steams,
From land, from flood up-drawn, dimming the day,
“Like a dark ceiling stand:” slow through the air
Gossamer floats, or, stretch’d from blade to blade,
The wavy net-work whitens all the field.
Push’d by the weightier atmosphere, up springs
The ponderous mercury, from scale to scale
Mounting, amidst the Torricellian tube.
While high in air, and poised upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft, enamour’d woodlark runs
Through all his maze of melody; the brake,
Loud with the blackbird’s bolder note, resounds.
Sooth’d by the genial warmth, the cawing rook
Anticipates the spring, selects her mate,
Haunts her tall nest-trees, and with sedulous care
Repairs her wicker eyrie, tempest-torn.
The ploughman inly smiles to see upturn
His mellow globe, best pledge of future crop:
With glee the gardener eyes his smoking beds;
E’en pining sickness feels a short relief
The happy schoolboy brings transported forth
His long-forgotten scourge, and giddy gig:
O’er the white paths he whirls the rolling hoop,
Or triumphs in the dusty fields of taw.
Not so the museful sage:—abroad he walks
Contemplative, if haply he may find
What cause controls the tempest’s rage, or whence,
Amidst the savage season, Winter smiles.
For days, for weeks, prevails the placid calm.
At length some drops prelude a change: the sun
With ray refracted, bursts the parting gloom,
When all the chequer’d sky is one bright glare.
Mutters the wind at eve; th’ horizon round
With angry aspect scowls: down rush the showers,
And float the deluged paths, and miry fields.
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE
In a series of letters addressed to
THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.
and
The Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON
ADVERTISEMENT
The Author of the following Letters takes the liberty, with all proper
deference, of laying before the public his idea of parochial history,
which, he thinks, ought to consist of natural productions and
occurrences as well as antiquities. He is also of opinion that if
stationary men would pay some attention to the districts on which they
reside, and would publish their thoughts respecting the objects that
surround them, from such materials might be drawn the most complete
county-histories, which are still wanting in several parts of this
kingdom, and in particular in the county of Southampton.
And here he seizes the first opportunity, though a late one, of
returning his most grateful acknowledgments to the reverend the
President and the reverend and worthy the Fellows of Magdalen College
in the University of Oxford, for their liberal behaviour in permitting
their archives to be searched by a member of their own society, so far
as the evidences therein contained might respect the parish and priory
of Selborne. To that gentleman also, and his assistant, whose labours
and attention could only be equalled by the very kind manner in which
they were bestowed, many and great obligations are also due.
Of the authenticity of the documents above-mentioned there can be no
doubt, since they consist of the identical deeds and records that were
removed to the College from the Priory at the time of its dissolution;
and, being carefully copied on the spot, may be depended on as genuine;
and, never having been made public before, may gratify the curiosity of
the antiquary, as well as establish the credit of the history.
If the writer should at all appear to have induced any of his readers
to pay a more ready attention to the wonders of the Creation, too
frequently overlooked as common occurrences; or if he should by any
means, through his researches, have lent an helping hand towards the
enlargement of the boundaries of historical and topographical
knowledge; or if he should have thrown some small light upon ancient
customs and manners, and especially on those that were monastic, his
purpose will be fully answered. But if he should not have been
successful in any of these his intentions, yet there remains this
consolation behind—that these his pursuits, by keeping the body and
mind employed, have, under Providence, contributed to much health and
cheerfulness of spirits, even to old age:—and, what still adds to his
happiness, have led him to the knowledge of a circle of gentlemen whose
intelligent communications, as they have afforded him much pleasing
information, so, could he flatter himself with a continuation of them,
would they ever be deemed a matter of singular satisfaction and
improvement.
GIL. WHITE.
Selborne,
January 1st, 1788.
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE
LETTERS to THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.
Letter I
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
The parish of Selborne lies in the extreme eastern corner of the county
of Hampshire, bordering on the county of Sussex, and not far from the
county of Surrey; is about fifty miles south-west of London, in
latitude 51, and near midway between the towns of Alton and
Petersfield. Being very large and 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, Harteley Mauduit, Great Ward le Ham,
Kingsley, Hedleigh, Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lysse, and Greatham. The
soils of this district are almost as various and diversified as the
views and aspects. The high part to the south-west consists of a vast
hill of chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village; and is
divided into a sheep down, the high wood, and a long hanging wood
called the Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech, the
most lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or
bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The down, or
sheep-walk, is a pleasing park-like spot, of about one mile by half
that space, jutting out on the verge of the hill-country, where it
begins to break down into the plains, and commanding a very engaging
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 Susses-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 wood 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 Core 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 falling 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 Hedleigh, 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.
* This spring produced, September 14, 1781, after a severe hot summer,
and a preceding dry spring and winter, nine gallons of water in a
minute, which is five hundred and forty in an hour, and twelve thousand
nine hundred and sixty, or two hundred and sixteen hogsheads, in
twenty-four hours, or one natural day. At this time many of the wells
failed, and all the ponds in the vales were dry.
Our wells, at an average, run to about sixty-three feet, and when sunk
to that depth seldom fail; but produce a fine limpid water, soft to the
taste, and much commended by those who drink the pure element, but
which does not lather well with soap.
To the north-west, north and east of the village, is a range of fair
enclosures, consisting of what is called a white malm, a sort of rotten
or rubble stone, which, when turned up to the frost and rain, moulders
to pieces, and becomes manure to itself.*
* This soil produces good wheat and clover.
Still on to the north-east, and a step lower, is a kind of white land,
neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough, yet
kindly for hops, which root deep into the freestone, and have their
poles and wood for charcoal growing just at hand. This white soil
produces the brightest hops.
As the parish still inclines down towards Wolmer-forest, at the
juncture of the clays and sand the soil becomes a wet, sandy loam,
remarkable for timber, and infamous for roads. The oaks of Temple and
Blackmoor stand high in the estimation of purveyors, and have furnished
much naval timber; while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are
what workmen call shakey, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in
sawing. Beyond the sandy loam the soil becomes an hungry lean sand,
till it mingles with the forest; and will produce little without the
assistance of lime and turnips.
Letter II
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
In the court of Norton-farmhouse, a manor farm to the north-west of the
village, on the white maims, 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 those birds
usually sit. The saw was applied to the butt, the wedges were inserted
into the opening, the woods echoed to the heavy blows of the beetle or
mallet, the tree nodded to its fall; but still the dam sat on. At last,
when it gave way, the bird was flung from her nest; and, though her
parental affection deserved a better fate, was whipped down by the
twigs, which brought her dead to the ground.
Letter III
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
The fossil-shells of this district, and sorts of stone, such as have
fallen within my observation, must not be passed over in silence. And
first I must mention, as a great curiosity, a specimen that was
ploughed up in the chalky fields, near the side of the down, and given
to me for the singularity of its appearance, which, to an incurious
eye, seems like a petrified fish of about four inches long, the cardo
passing for an head and mouth. It is in reality a bivalve of the
Linnaean genus of Mytilus, 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
could never 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 being much
easier expressed by the pencil than by words, I have caused it to be
drawn and engraved.
Cornua Ammonis are very common about this village. As we were cutting
an inclining path up the Hanger, the labourers found them frequently on
that steep, just under the soil, in the chalk, and of a considerable
size. In the lane above Well-head, in the way to Emshot, they abound in
the bank, in a darkish sort of marl; and are usually very small and
soft: but in Clay’s Pond, a little farther on, at the end of the pit,
where the soil is dug out for manure, I have occasionally observed them
of large dimensions, perhaps fourteen or sixteen inches in diameter.
But as these did not consist of firm stone, but were formed of a kind
of terra lapidosa, or hardened clay, as soon as they were exposed to
the rains and frost they mouldered away. These seemed as if they were 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
As in a former letter the freestone of this place has been only
mentioned incidentally, I shall here become more particular.
This stone is in great request for hearth-stones and the beds of ovens:
and in lining of lime-kilns it turns to good account; for the workmen
use sandy loam instead of mortar; the sand of which fluxes* and runs by
the intense heat, and so cases over the whole face of the kiln with a
strong vitrified coat like glass, that it is well preserved from
injuries of weather, and endures thirty or forty years. When chiseled
smooth, it makes elegant fronts for houses, equal in colour and grain
to the Bath stone; and superior in one respect, that, when seasoned, it
does not scale. Decent chimney-pieces are worked from it of much closer
and finer grain than Portland; and rooms are floored with it; but it
proves rather too soft for this purpose. It is a freestone, cutting in
all directions; yet has something of a grain parallel with the horizon,
and therefore should not be surbedded, but laid in the same position as
it grows in the quarry.** On the ground abroad this firestone will not
succeed for pavements, because, probably, some degree of saltness
prevailing within it, the rain tears the slabs to pieces.*** Though
this stone is too hard to be acted on by vinegar, yet both the white
part, and even the blue rag, ferments strongly in mineral acids. Though
the white stone will not bear wet, yet in every quarry at intervals
there are thin strata of blue rag, which resist rain and frost; and are
excellent for pitching of stables, paths, and courts, and for building
of dry walls against banks, a valuable species of fencing, much in use
in this village, and for mending of roads. This rag is rugged and
stubborn, and will not hew to a smooth face; but is very durable: yet,
as these strata are shallow and lie deep, large quantities cannot be
procured but at considerable expense. Among the blue rags turn up some
blocks tinged with a stain of yellow or rust colour, which seem to be
nearly as lasting as the blue; and every now and then balls of a
friable substance, like rust of iron, called rust balls.
* There may probably be also in the chalk itself that is burnt for lime
a proportion of sand: for few chalks are so pure as to have none.
** To surbed stone is to set it edgewise, contrary to the posture it
had in the quarry, says Dr. Plot, Oxfordsh., p. 77. But surbedding does
not succeed in our dry walls; neither do we use it so in ovens, though
he says it is best for Teynton stone.
*** ‘Firestone is full of salts, and has no sulphur: must be close
grained, and have no interstices. Nothing supports fire like salts;
saltstone perishes exposed to wet and frost.’ Plot’s Staff., p. 152.
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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
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 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 in
measuring the water is but of short date, I am not qualified to give
the mean quantity.* I only know that:
Inch. Hund.
From May 1, 1779, to the end of the year, there fell 28 37!
From Jan. 1, 1780, to Jan. 1, 1781, there fell 27 32
From Jan. 1, 1781, to Jan. 1, 1782, there fell 30 71
From Jan. 1, 1782, to Jan. 1, 1783, there fell 50 26!
From Jan. 1, 1783, to Jan. 1, 1784, there fell 33 71
From Jan. 1, 1784, to Jan. 1, 1785, there fell 33 80
From Jan. 1, 1785, to Jan. 1, 1786, there fell 31 55
From Jan. 1, 1786, to Jan. 1, 1787, there fell 39 57
* A very intelligent gentleman assures me (and he speaks from upwards
of forty years’ experience) that the mean rain of any plate cannot be
ascertained till a person has measured it for a very long period. ‘If I
had only measured the rain,’ says he, ‘for the four first years from
1740 to 1743, I should have said the mean rain at Lyndon was 16 and a
half inches for the year, if from 1740 to 1750, 18 and a half inches.
The mean rain before 1763 was 20 and a quarter, from 1763 and since, 25
and a half; from 1770 to 1780, 26. If only 1773, 1774 and 1775 had been
measured, Lyndon mean rain would have been called 32 inches.’
The village of Selborne, and large hamlet of Oak-hanger, 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.
* A state of the parish of Selborne, taken October 4, 1783.
The number of tenements or families, 136.
The number of inhabitants in the street is … 313
In the rest of the parish … 363
Total, 676; near five inhabitants to each tenement.
In the time of the Rev. Gilbert White, vicar, who died in 1727–8, the
number of inhabitants was computed at about 500.)
Average of baptisms for 60 years.
From 1720 to 1729, both years inclusive Males 6,9 Females
6,0 12,9
From 1730 to 1739, both years inclusive Males 8,2 Females
7,1 15,3
From 1740 to 1749, inclusive Males 9,2 Females 6,6 15,8
From 1750 to 1759, inclusive Males 7,6 Females 8,1 15,7
From 1760 to 1769, inclusive Males 9,1 Females 8,9 18,0
From 1770 to 1779, inclusive Males 10,5 Females 9,8 20
3
Total baptisms of Males 515
Females 465 980
Total of baptisms from 1720 to 1779, both inclusive, 60 years
980.
Average of burials for 60 years.
From 1720 to 1729, both years inclusive Males 4,8 Females
5,1 9,9
From 1730 to 1739, both years inclusive Males 4,8 Females
5,8 10,6
From 1740 to 1749, inclusive Males 4,6 Females 3,8 8,4
From 1750 to 1759, inclusive Males 4,9 Females 5,1 10,0
From 1760 to 1769, inclusive Males 6,9 Females 6,5 13,4
From 1770 to 1779, inclusive Males 5,5 Females 6,2 11,7
Total of burials of Males 315
Females 325 640
Total of burials from 1720 to 1779 both inclusive, 60 years 640.
Baptisms exceed burials by more them one-third.
Baptisms of Males exceed Females by one-tenth, or one in ten.
Burials of Females exceed Males by one in thirty.
It appears that a child, born and bred in this parish, has an equal
chance to live above forty years.
Twins thirteen times, many of whom dying young have lessened the chance
for life.
Chances for life in men and women appear to be equal.
A TABLE of the Baptisms, Burials, and Marriages, from January 2, 1761,
to December 25, 1780, in the Parish of Selborne.
Baptisms.
1761 Males 8 Females 10 Total 18 1762 7 8
15 1763 8 10 18 1764 11 9 20 1765 12 6
18 1766 9 13 22 1767 14 5 19 1768 7 6
13 1769 9 14 23 1770 10 13 23 1771 10 6
16 1772 11 10 21 1773 8 5 13 1774 6 13
19 1775 20 7 27 1776 11 10 21 1777 8 13
21 1778 7 13 20 1779 14 8 22 1780 8 9
17 198 188 386
Burials.
1761 Males 2 Females 4 Total 6 1762 10 10
20 1763 3 4 7 1764 10 8 18 1765 9 7
16 1766 10 6 16 1767 6 5 11 1768 2 5
7 1769 6 5 11 1770 4 7 11 1771 3 4 7
1772 6 10 16 1773 7 5 12 1774 2 8 10
1775 13 8 21 1776 4 6 10 1777 7 2
9 1778 3 9 12 1779 5 6 11 1780 11 4
15 123 123 246
Marriages.
1761 3 1762 6 1763 7 1764 6 1765 6 1766 4 1767
2 1768 6 1769 2 1770 3 1771 4 1772 3 1773 3
1774 1 1775 6 1776 6 1777 4 1778 5 1779 0 1780
3 83
During this period of twenty years the births of Males exceeded those
of Females 10.
The burials of each sex were equal.
And the births exceeded the deaths 140.
** Since the passage above was written, I am happy in being able to say
that the spinning employment is a little revived, to the no small
comfort of the industrious housewife.
Letter VI
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
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, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty
consists entirely of sand covered with heath and fern; but is somewhat
diversified with hills and dales, without having one standing tree in
the whole extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many
bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees; though Dr. Plot
says positively,* that ‘there never were any fallen trees hidden in the
mosses of the southern counties.’ But he was mistaken: for I myself
have seen cottages on the verge of this wild 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.
* See his Hist. of Staffordshire.
** Old people have assured me, that on a winter’s morning they have
discovered these trees in the bogs, by the hoar frost, which lay longer
over the space where they were concealed, than on the surrounding
morass. Nor does this seem to be a fanciful notion, but consistent with
true philosophy. Dr. Hales saith, ‘That the warmth of the earth, at
some depth under ground, has an influence in promoting a thaw, as well
as the change of the weather from a freezing to a thawing state, is
manifest, from this observation, viz. Nov. 29, 1731, a little snow
having fallen in the night, it was, by eleven the next morning, mostly
melted away on the surface of the earth, except in several places in
Bushy Park, where there were drains dug and covered with earth, on
which the snow continued to lie, whether those drains were full of
water or dry; as also where elm-pipes lay under ground: a plain proof
this, that those drains intercepted the warmth of the earth from
ascending from greater depths below them: for the snow lay where the
drain had more than four feet depth of earth over it. It continued also
to lie on thatch, tiles, and the tops of walls.’ See Hales’s
Haemastatics, p. 360. Quaere.— Might not such observations be reduced
to domestic use, by promoting the discovery of old obliterated drains
and wells about houses; and in Roman stations and camps lead to the
finding of pavements, baths and graves, and other hidden relics of
curious antiquity?
This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts of wild
fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but breed there in the
summer; such as lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered
within these few years, teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in
good seasons on the verge of this forest, into which they love to make
excursions: and in particular, in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, and
some years after, they swarmed to such a degree, that parties of
unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a
day.
But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now extinct,
which I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting flying
became so common, and that was the heath-cock, black-game, or grouse.
When I was a little boy I recollect one coming now and then to my
father’s table. The last pack remembered was killed about thirty-five
years ago; and within these ten years one solitary greyhen was sprung
by some beagles in beating for a hare. The sportsmen cried out, ‘A hen
pheasant’; but a gentleman present, who had often seen grouse in the
north of England, assured me that it was a greyhen.
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 an hundred years. This person
assures me, that his father has often told him, that Queen Anne, as she
was journeying on the Portsmouth road, did not think the forest of
Wolmer beneath her royal regard. For she came out of the great road at
Lippock, which is just by, and reposing herself on a bank smoothed for
that purpose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer-pond, and
still called Queen’s-bank, saw with great complacency and satisfaction
the whole herd of red deer brought by the keepers along the vale before
her, consisting then of about five hundred head. A sight this, worthy
the attention of the greatest sovereign! But he further 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 an
huntsman, and six yeoman-prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with gold,
attended by the stag-hounds; ordering them to take every deer in this
forest alive, and 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
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.’
* Statute 9 Geo. I. c. 22.
** This chase remains unstocked to this day; the bishop was Dr. Hoadly.
Our old race of deer-stealers are hardly extinct yet: it was but a
little while ago that, over their ale, they used to recount the
exploits of their youth; such as 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.
* For the privilege the owner of that estate used to pay to the king
annually seven bushels of oats.
** In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept up till
lately, no sheep are admitted to this day.
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 browse for cattle; but, where there is large old
furze, the fire, following the roots, consumes the very ground; so that
for hundreds of acres nothing is to be seen but smother and desolation,
the whole circuit round 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 oaks; the one called
Waldon-lodge, the other Brimstone-lodge: these the keepers renew
annually on the feast of St. Barnabas, taking the old materials for a
perquisite. The farm called Blackmoor, in this parish, is obliged to
find the posts and brush-wood for the former; while the farms at
Greatham, in rotation, furnish for the latter; and are all enjoined to
cut and deliver the materials at the spot. This custom I mention,
because I look upon it to be of very remote antiquity.
Letter VIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
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.]
* I mean that sort which, rising into tall hassocks, is called by the
foresters torrets, a corruption, I suppose, of turrets. Note. In the
beginning of the summer 1787 the royal forests of Wolmer and Holt were
measured by persons set down by government.
By a perambulation of Wolmer-forest and the Holt, made in 1635, and in
the eleventh year of Charles the First (which now lies before me), it
appears that the limits of the former are much circumscribed. For, to
say nothing on 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 Halt; 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 meer so remarkable as the great quantity of coins that were
found in its bed about forty years ago. But, as such discoveries more
properly belong to the antiquities of this place, I shall suppress all
particulars for the present, till I enter professedly on my series of
letters respecting the more remote history of this village and
district.
Letter IX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
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.
* In ‘Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest. in Scaccar.,’ 36, Ed. 3, it is
called Aisholt. In the same, ‘Tit. Woolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. Dominus
Rex habet unam capellam in haia sua de Kingesle.’ ‘Haia, sepes,
sepimentum, parcus: a Gall. haie and haye.’—Spelman’s Glossary.
The grantees that the author remembers are Brigadier-General Emanuel
Scroope Howe, and his lady, Ruperta, who was a natural daughter of
Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughs; a Mr. Mordaunt, of the Peterborough
family, who married a dowager Lady Pembroke; Henry Bilson Legge and
lady; and now Lord Stawel, their son.
The lady of General Howe lived to an advanced age, long surviving her
husband; and, at her death, left behind her many curious pieces of
mechanism of her father’s constructing, who was a distinguished
mechanic and artist,** as well as warrior; and, among the rest, a very
complicated clock, lately in possession of Mr. Elmer, the celebrated
game-painter at Farnham, in the county of Surrey.
** This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto.
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 imprisonment 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 Stawel. He lays claim
also to the lop and top: but the poor of the parishes of Binsted and
Frinsham, Bentley and Kingsley, assert that it belongs to them; and,
assembling in a riotous manner, have actually taken it all away. One
man, who keeps a team, has carried home, for his share, forty stacks of
wood. Forty-five of these people his lordship has served with actions.
These trees, which were very sound and in high perfection, were
winter-cut, viz., in February and March, before the bark would run. In
old times the Holt was estimated to be eighteen miles, computed
measure, from water-carriage, viz., from the town of Chertsey, on the
Thames; but now it is not half that distance, since the Wey is made
navigable up to the town of Godalming in the county of Surrey.
Letter X
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
August 4, 1767.
It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose
studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge; so
that, for want of a 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
toward the fire, revived. He told me that, out of his great care to
preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen
fire, where they were suffocated.
Another intelligent person has informed me that, while he was a
schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great 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 the
eleventh, 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 come forth so late as September the
eighteenth. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than
migration? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so
late as September the twenty-ninth; and yet they totally disappeared
with us by the fifth of October.
How strange is it 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
seventh of November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in
sight together; an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds.
A little 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,
that 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 black-cap (motacilla
atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not: I think there is no doubt of
it: for, in April, in the very 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 urinator.’ 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.. . antehac fuisse, tales cum
sint religuiae!’
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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, September 9, 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 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 frightened and persecuted by idle boys, who would
never let them be at rest.
Three gross-beaks (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 cross-bill (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 (lampaetra parka et fluviatilis), and the stickle-back
(pisciculus aculeatus).
We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many from a great
river, and therefore see but little of sea-birds. As to wild fowls, we
have a few teams of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed; and
multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard weather frequent our lakes in
the forest.
Having some acquaintance with a tame brown owl, I find that it casts up
the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner
of hawks: when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot eat.
The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a
constant supply of fresh mice: whereas the young of the brown owl will
eat indiscriminately all that is brought; snails, rats, kittens,
puppies, magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.
The house-martins have eggs still, and squab young. The last swift I
observed was about the twenty-first of August; it was a straggler.
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 twentieth of
November.
At present I know only two species of bats, the common vespertilio
murinus and the vespertilio auritus.
I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take
flies out of a person’s hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it
brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head
in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed
in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was
worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seem 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
on a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great
ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I was
aware of; but in a most 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
November 4, 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.
* This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus; a variety.
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 end 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 Philosoph. Letters, that great flocks of them,
feeding upon haws, appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685.
The mention of haws put 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 missal-thrushes, and feeding on the
berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the description of the
merula torquata, or ring-ousel, were lately seen in this neighbourhood.
I employed some people to procure me a specimen, but without success.
See Letter XX.
Query…..Might not canary birds be naturalized to this climate, provided
their eggs were put in the spring, into the nests of some of their
congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, 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?*
* See Adamson’s Voyage to Senegal.
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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Jan. 22, 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 be
almost all hens. I communicated my suspicions to some intelligent
neighbours, who, after taking pains about the matter, declared that
they also thought them all mostly females; 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 country 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.
* See Ray’s Travels, p. 466.
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 merulae torquatae.
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 near an hundred, most of which were taken; and some I saw. I
measured them; and found that, from nose to tail, they were just two
inches and a quarter, and their tails just two inches long. Two of them
in a scale, weighed down just one copper halfpenny, which is about a
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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, March 12, 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, beside the nostrils; probably analogous to the puncta
lachrymalia in the human head. When the 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 inconvenience, 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 strait or small, did not admit air
sufficient 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.
* In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent me the following curious
and pertinent reply:—‘I was much surprised to find in the antelope
something analogous to what you mention as so remarkable in deer. This
animal has a long slit beneath each eye, which can be opened and shut
at pleasure. On holding an orange to one, the creature made as much use
of those orifices as of his nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and
seeming to smell it through them.’
Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had some
notion that stags have four spiracula:
Τετράδυμοι ῥινὲς, πίσυρες πνοίῃσι δίαυλοι.
Quadrifidæ 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Mark 30, 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 had 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 hemp-seed. 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, April 18, 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 their 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 constancy, 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 an hundred yards distance;
and, when close at your ear, is scarce any louder than when a great way
off. Had I not been a little acquainted with insects, and 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 Philosophical 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 pease,
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:
Linnæi Nomina
Smallest willow-wren, _Motacilla trochilus._
Wryneck, _Lynx torquilla._
House-swallow, _Hirundo rustica._
Martin, _Hirundo urbica._
Sand-martin, _Hirundo riparia._
Cuckoo, _Cuculus canorus._
Nightingale, _Motacilla luscinia._
Black-cap, _Motacilla atricapilla._
White-throat, _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 phœnicurus._
Goat-sucker, or fern-owl, _Caprimulgus europæus._
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
europaea (the nut-hatch). 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 a 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 lice a titmouse, with its back
downwards.
Yours, etc., etc.
Letter XVII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, June 18, 1768.
Dear Sir,
On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of June the 10th. It
gives me great satisfaction to find that you pursue these studies still
with such vigour, and are in such forwardness with regard to reptiles
and fishes.
The reptiles, few as they are, I am not acquainted with, so well as I
could wish, with regard to their natural history. There is a degree of
dubiousness and obscurity attending the propagation of this class of
animals, sometimes analogous to that of the cryptogamia in the sexual
system of plants: and the case is the same as regards some of the
fishes: as the eel, etc.
The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to me 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; for
Swammerdam proves that the male has no penis intrans) is notorious to
everybody: because we see them sticking upon each other’s backs for a
month together in spring: and yet I never saw, or read, of toads being
observed in the same situation. It is strange that the matter with
regard to the venom of toads has not yet been settled. That they are
not noxious to some animals is plain: for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone
curlews, and snakes, eat them, to my knowledge, with impunity. And I
well remember the time, but was not eye-witness to the fact (though
numbers of persons were), when a quack, at this village, ate a toad to
make the country people stare; afterwards he drank oil.
I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that some ladies
(ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, which
they nourished summer after summer, for many years, till he grew to a
monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh flies. The reptile
used to come forth every evening from an 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 these
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 oeconomy of
Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile! While it is
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 to take it for granted that the
salamandra aquatica was hatched, lived, and died in the water. But John
Ellis, Esq., F.R.S. (the coralline Ellis), asserts, in a letter to the
Royal Society, dated June 5th, 1766, in his account of the mud inguana,
an amphibious bides, 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 covering to the gills of the
mud inguana, he proceeds to say that ‘The forms of these pennated
coverings approach very near to what I have some time ago observed in
the larva or aquatic state of our English lacerta, known by the name of
eft, or newt; which serve them for coverings to their gills, and for
fins to swim with while in this state; and which they lose, as well as
the fins of their tails, when they change their state, and become land
animals, as I have observed, by keeping them alive for some time
myself:’
Linnaeus, in his Systema Naturae, hints at what Mr. Ellis advances more
than once.
Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one 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 a
sovereign remedy against the bite of the viper. As to the blind worm
(anguis fragilis, so called because it snaps in sunder with a small
blow), I have found, on examination, that it is perfectly innocuous. A
neighbouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed
and opened a female viper about the twenty-seventh of May: he found her
filled with a chain of eleven eggs, about the size of those of a
blackbird; but none of them were advanced so far towards a state of
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 an
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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, July 27, 1768.
Dear Sir,
I received your obliging and communicative letter of June the 28th,
while I was on a visit at a gentleman’s house, where I had neither
books to turn to, nor leisure to sit down, to return you an answer to
many queries, which I wanted to resolve in the best manner that I am
able.
A person, by my order, has searched our brooks, but could find no such
fish as the gasterosteus pungitius: he found the gasterosteus aculeatus
in plenty. This morning, in a basket, I packed a little earthen pot
full of wet moss, and in it some sticklebacks, male and female; the
females big with spawn: some lamperns; some bull’s heads; but I could
produce 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 diving 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 was asserted in the
papers: and I myself dined with a clergyman who seemed to be persuaded
that what is related is matter of fact; but, when I came to attend to
his account, I thought I discerned circumstances which did not a little
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 chat 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 colour; and some
have fins up their tail and back, and some have not.
Letter XIX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Aug. 17, 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 the 18th, I
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.
* Brit. Zool. edit. 1776, octavo, p. 381.
Letter XX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, October 8, 1768.
It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany: all nature is so full,
that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most
examined. Several birds, which are said to belong to the north only,
are, it seems, often in the south. I have discovered this summer three
species of birds with us, which writers mention as only to be seen in
the northern counties. The first that was brought me (on the 14th of
May) was the sandpiper, tringa hypoleucus: it was a 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 of May) was a male
red-backed butcher bird, lanius collurio. My neighbour, who shot it,
says that it might easily have escaped his notice, had not the outcries
and chattering of the white-throats and other small 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
the 4th, 1767 (you, however, paid but small regard to what I said, as I
had not seen these birds myself); but last week, the aforesaid farmer,
seeing a large flock, twenty or thirty of these birds, shot two cocks
and two hens: and says, on recollection, that he remembers to have
observed these birds again last spring, about Lady-day, as it were, on
their return to the north. Now perhaps these ousels are not the ousels
of the north of England, but belong to the more northern parts of
Europe; and may retire before the excessive rigour of the frosts in
those parts; and return to breed in the spring, when the cold abates.
If this be the case, here is discovered a new bird of winter passage,
concerning whose migrations the writers are silent: but if these birds
should prove the ousels of the north of England, then here is a
migration disclosed within our own kingdom never before remarked. It
does not yet appear whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island
to the south; but it is most probable that they usually do, or else one
cannot suppose that they would have continued so long unnoticed in the
southern counties. 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 63 feet deep, a large black
warty lizard with a fin-tail and yellow belly. How they first came down
at that depth, and how they were ever to have got out thence without
help, is more than I am able to say.
My thanks are due to you for your trouble and care in the examination
of a buck’s head. As far as your discoveries reach at present, they
seem much to corroborate my suspicions; and I hope Mr. … 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Nov. 28, 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 straggle to
you.
And here will be the properest place to mention, while I think of it,
an anecdote which the above-mentioned gentleman told me when I was last
at his house; which was that, in a warren joining to his outlet, many
daws (corvi monedulae) 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 the 26th, saw a martin in
a sheltered bottom: the sun shone warm, and the bird was hawking
briskly after flies. I am now perfectly satisfied that they do not all
leave this island in the winter.
You judge very right, I think, in speaking with reserve and caution
concerning the cures done by toads: for, let people advance what they
will on such subjects, yet there is such a propensity in mankind
towards deceiving and being deceived, that one cannot safely relate any
thing from common report, especially in print, without expressing some
degree of doubt and suspicion.
Your approbation, with regard to my new discovery of the migration of
the ring-ousel, gives me satisfaction; and I find you concur with me in
suspecting that they are foreign birds which visit us. You will be
sure, I hope, not to omit to make inquiry whether your ring-ousels
leave your rocks in the autumn. What puzzles me most, is the very short
stay they make with us; for in about three weeks they are all gone. I
shall be very curious to remark whether they will call on us at their
return in the spring, as they did last year.
I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. If fortune had
settled me near the sea-side, or near some great river, my natural
propensity would soon have urged me to have made myself acquainted 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, July 2, 1769.
Dear Sir,
As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us under the ground in
rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon the reason; for, in
reality, there are hardly any towers or steeples in all this country.
And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as meanly
furnished with churches as almost any counties in the 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 country; for such objects are very
necessary ingredients in an elegant landscape.
What you mention with respect to reclaimed toads raises my curiosity.
An ancient author, though no naturalist, has well remarked that ‘Every
kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the
sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed, of mankind.’*
* James, chap. iii. 7.
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 could never 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.
* Cressi-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire.
There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied more than
that of the caplimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it is a wonderful and
curious creature: but I have always found that though sometimes it may
chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in general it utters its
jarring note sitting on a bough; and I have for many an half hour
watched it as it sat with its under mandible quivering, and
particularly this summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, with its
head lower than its tail, in an attitude well expressed by your
draughtsman in the folio British Zoology. This bird is most punctual in
beginning its song exactly at the close of day; so exactly that I have
known it strike up more than once or twice just at the report of the
Portsmouth evening gun, which we can hear when the weather is still. It
appears to me past all doubt that its notes are formed by organic
impulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe, formed for sound,
just as cats pur. You will credit me, I hope, when I tell 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, February 28, 1769.
Dear Sir,
It is not improbable that the Guernsey lizard and our green lizard 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 or wood, or only of a few trees.
It gave me satisfaction to find that 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 stinted shrubs and bushes, as
if they had roosted there all night. As soon as the air became clear
and pleasant they all were on the wing at once; and, by a placid and
easy flight, proceeded on southward towards the sea: after this I did
not see any more flocks, only now and then a straggler.
I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow kind
disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the bulk of them
seem to withdraw at once: only some stragglers stay behind a long
while, and do never, there is the greatest reason to believe, leave
this island. Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come forth in a
warm day, as bats do continually of a warm evening, after they have
disappeared for weeks. For a very respectable gentleman assured me
that, as he was walking with some friends under Merton-wall on a
remarkably hot noon, either in the last week in December or the first
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 a morning last autumn, and see the swallows and
martins clustering on the chimneys and thatch of the neighbouring
cottages, I could not help being touched with a secret delight, mixed
with some degree of mortification: with delight to observe with how
much ardour and punctuality those poor little birds obeyed the strong
impulse towards migration, or hiding, imprinted on their minds by their
great Creator; and with some degree of mortification, when I reflected
that, after all our pains and inquiries, we are yet not quite certain
to what regions they do migrate; and are still farther embarrassed to
find that some do not actually migrate at all.
These reflections made so strong an impression on my 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, May 29, 1769.
Dear Sir,
The scarabaeus 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 thirteenth of April I went to the sheep-down, where the
ring-ousels have been observed to make their appearance at spring and
fall, in their way perhaps to the north or south; and was much pleased
to see three birds about the usual spot. We shot a cock and a hen; they
were plump and in high condition. The hen had but very small rudiments
of eggs within her, which proves they are late breeders; whereas those
species of the thrush kind that remain with us the whole year have
fledged young before that time. In their crops was nothing very
distinguishable, but somewhat that seemed like blades of vegetables
nearly digested. In autumn they feed on haws and yew-berries, and in
the spring on ivy-berries. I dressed one of these birds, and found it
juicy and well-flavoured. It is remarkable that they make but a few
days’ stay in their spring visit, but rest near a fortnight at
Michaelmas. These birds, from the observations of three springs and two
autumns, are most punctual in their return; and exhibit a new migration
unnoticed by the writers, who supposed they never were to be seen in
any of the southern counties.
One of my neighbours lately brought me a new salicaria, which at first
I suspected might have proved your 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
further inquiry. For my part, I suspect it is a second sort of
locustella, hinted at by Dr. Derham in Ray’s Letters: see p. 108. He
also procured me a grasshopper-lark.
* For this salicaria see letter August 30, 1769.
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[1] 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[2] cuckoo’s tale,
To hear the clamorous[3] 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, unsubdu’d of wing:
Amusive birds!—say where your hid retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat;
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led,
When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ?
Such baffled searches mock man’s prying pride,
The God of Nature is your secret guide!
While 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[4] 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’ awakened churn-owl hung
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song;
While high in air, and pois’d upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft enamour’d woodlark[5] 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![6]
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.[7]
I am, etc.
[1] The angler’s may-fly, the ephemera vulgata Linn., comes forth from
its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the
evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its
fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear
about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight.
See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, etc.
[2] Vagrant cuckoo; so called because, being tied down by no incubation
or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without
control.
[3] Charadrius aedicnemus.
[4] Gryllus campetris.
[5] In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and
hang singing in the air
[6] The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up the stalk
of a grass to make herself more conspicuous) is a signal to the male,
which is a slender dusky scarabaeus.
[7] See the story of Hero and Leander.)
Letter XXV
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Aug. 30, 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 the 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 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 be 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 the
motacilla salicaria of his Fauna Suecica seems to come the nearest to
it. It is no uncommon bird, haunting the sides of ponds and rivers
where there is covert, and the reeds and sedges of moors. The country
people in some places call it the sedge-bird. It sings incessantly
night and day during the breeding-time, imitating the note of a
sparrow, a swallow, a sky-lark; and has a strange hurrying manner in
its song. My specimens correspond most minutely to the description of
your fen salicaria, shot near Revesby. Mr. Ray has given an excellent
characteristic of it when he says, ‘Rostrum & pedes in hac avicula
multo majores sunt quam pro corporis ratione.’ See letter May 29, 1769.
I have got you the egg of an oedicnemus, or stone curlew, which was
picked up in a fallow on the naked ground: There were two; but the
finder inadvertently crushed one with his foot before he saw them.
When I wrote to you last year on 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 a 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. Ouadr. is an innocuous and
sweet animal; but, when pressed hard by dogs and men, it can eject such
a 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, December 8, 1769.
Dear Sir,
I was much gratified by your communicative letter on your return from
Scotland, where you spent, I find, some considerable time, and gave
yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of that extensive
kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the highlands.
The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry; because men seldom allot
themselves half the time they should do: but, fixing on a day for their
return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey
that required dispatch, than as philosophers investigating the works of
nature. You must have made, no doubt, many discoveries, and laid up a
good fund of materials for a future edition of the British Zoology; and
will have no reason to repent that you have bestowed so much pains on a
part of Great Britain that perhaps was never so well examined before.
It has always been matter of wonder to me that field-fares, 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 of September: but their flocks were larger than
common, and their stay protracted somewhat beyond the usual time. If
they came to spend the whole winter with us, as some of their congeners
do, and then left us, as they do, in spring, I should not be so much
struck with the occurrence, since it would be similar to that of the
other winter birds of passage; but when I see them for a fortnight at
Michaelmas, and again for about a week in the middle of April, I am
seized with wonder, and long to be informed whence these travellers
come, and whither they go, since they seem to use our hills merely as
an inn or baiting place.
Your account of the greater brambling, or snow-fleck, is very amusing;
and strange it is that such a short-winged bird should delight in such
perilous voyages over the northern ocean! Some country people in the
winter time have every now and then told me that they have seen two or
three white larks on our downs; but on considering the 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 that 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 on the white hare.
As a neighbour was lately ploughing in a dry chalky field, far removed
from any water, he turned out a water rat, that was curiously laid up
in an hybernaculum artificially formed of grass and leaves. At one end
of the burrow lay above a gallon of potatoes regularly stowed, on which
it was to have supported itself for the winter. But the difficulty with
me is how this amphibius mus came to fix its winter station at such a
distance from the water. Was it determined in its choice of that place
by the mere accident of finding the potatoes which were planted there;
or is it the constant practice of the aquatic rat to forsake the
neighbourhood of the water in the colder months?
Though I delight very little in analogous reasoning, knowing how
fallacious it is with respect to natural history; yet, in the following
instance, I cannot help being inclined to think it may conduce towards
the explanation of a difficulty that I have mentioned before, with
respect to the invariable early retreat of the hirundo apus, or swift,
so many weeks before its congeners; and that not only with us, but also
in Andalusia, where they also begin to retire about the beginning of
August.
The great large bat* (which by the by is at present a nondescript in
England, and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires and
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 phalaenae, that are of short
continuance; and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by
the defect of their food.
* The little bat appears almost every month in the year; but I have
never seen the large ones till the end of April, nor after July. They
are most common in June, but never in any plenty; are a rare species
with us.
By my journal it appears that curlews clamoured on to October the
thirty-first; since which I have not seen or heard any. Swallows were
observed on to November the third.
Letter XXVII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Feb. 22, 1770.
Dear Sir,
Hedge-hogs abound in my gardens and fields. The manner in which they
eat their 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 waffles 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 hedge-hogs, which
appeared to be about five or six days old; they, I find, like puppies,
are born blind, and could not see when they came to my hands. No doubt
their spines are soft and flexible at the time of their birth, or else
the poor dam would have but a bad time of it in the critical moment of
parturition: but it is plain that they soon harden; for these little
pigs had such stiff prickles on their backs and sides as would easily
have fetched blood, had they not been 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 into a ball
was not then arrived at its full tone and firmness. Hedge-hogs 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 field-fare (turdus
pilaris), which I think is particular enough: this bird, though it sits
on trees in the day-time, and procures the greatest part of its food
from white-thorn hedges; yea, moreover, builds on very high trees; as
may be seen by the Fauna Suecica; yet always appears with us to roost
on the ground. They are seen to come in flocks just before it is dark,
and to settle and nestle among the heath on our forest. And besides,
the larkers, in 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
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 green-house, slung
under the belly and chin by ropes, and in a standing posture; but,
though it had been dead for so short a time, it was in so putrid a
state that the stench was hardly supportable. The grand 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 birds of the grallae order. I measured it, as
they do an horse, and found that, from the ground to the wither, it was
just five feet four inches; which height answers exactly to sixteen
hands, 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 leg and great lip must contribute much. I
have read somewhere that it delights in eating the nymphaea, or
water-lily. From the fore-feet to the belly behind the shoulder it
measured three feet and eight inches: the length of the legs before and
behind consisted a great deal in the tibia, which was strangely long;
but in my haste to get out of the stench, I forgot to measure that
joint exactly. Its scut seemed to be about an inch long; the colour was
a grizzly black; the mane about four inches long; the fore-hoofs were
upright and shapely, the hind flat and splayed. The spring before it
was only two years old, so that most probably it was not then come to
its growth. What a vast tall beast must a full-grown stag be! I have
been told some arrive at ten feet and an half! This poor creature had
at first a female companion of the same species, which died the spring
before. In the same garden was a young stag, or red deer, between whom
and this moose it was hoped that there might have been a breed; but
their inequality of height must have always been a bar to any commerce
of the amorous kind. I should have been glad to have examined the
teeth, tongue, lips, hoofs, etc., minutely; but the putrefaction
precluded all further 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, May 12, 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 black-cap and white-throat;
and some have not been heard yet, as the grasshopper-lark and largest
willow-wren. As to the fly-catcher, I have not seen it; it is indeed
one of the latest, but should appear about this time: and yet, amidst
all this meteorous strife and war of the elements, two swallows
discovered themselves as long ago as the eleventh of April, in frost
and snow; but they withdrew quickly, and were not visible again for
many days. House-martins, which are always more backward than swallows,
were not observed till May came in.
Among the monogamous birds several are to be found, after pairing-time,
single, and of each sex: but whether this state of celibacy is matter
of choice or necessity, is not so easily discoverable. When the
house-sparrows deprive my martins of their nests, as soon as I cause
one to be shot, the other, be it cock or hen, presently procures a
mate, and so for several times following.
I have known a dove-house infested by a pair of white owls, which made
great havoc among the young pigeons: one of the owls was shot as soon
as possible; but the survivor readily found a mate, and the mischief
went on. After some time the new pair were both destroyed, and the
annoyance ceased.
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 shadow 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Aug. 1, 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, an horn room
furnished with more than thirty different pairs; but I have not seen
that house lately.
Mr. Barrington showed me many astonishing collections of stuffed and
living birds from all quarters of the world. After I had studied over
the latter for a time, I remarked that every species almost that came
from distant regions, such as South America, the coast of Guinea, 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Sept. 14, 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 merits in
ascertaining many of the birds of the Tirol and Carniola. Monographers,
come from whence they may, have, I think, fair presence to challenge
some regard and approbation from the lovers of natural history; for, as
no man can alone investigate all the works of nature, these partial
writers may, each in their department, be more accurate in their
discoveries, and freer from errors, than 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
observations 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 rostra
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.
* Annus Primus Historico-Naturalis.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXII
T Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, October 29, 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 inferno; 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 convenit,’ 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 sheltery shores of Gibraltar and Barbary.
Scopoli’s characters of his ordines and genera are clear, just, and
expressive, and much in the spirit of Linnaeus. These few remarks are
the result of my first perusal of Scopoli’s Annus Primus.
The bane of our science is the comparing one animal to the other by
memory: for want of caution in this particular, Scopoli falls into
errors: he is not so full with regard to the manners of his indigenous
birds as might be wished, as you justly observe: his Latin is easy,
elegant, and expressive, and very superior to Kramer’s.*
* See his Elenchus vegerabilium et animalium per Austriam inferiorem,
etc.
I am pleased to see that my description of the moose corresponds so
well with yours.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Nov. 26, 1770.
Dear Sir,
I was much pleased to see, among the collection of birds from
Gibraltar, some of those short-winged English summer birds of passage,
concerning whose departure we have made so much inquiry. Now if these
birds are found in Andalusia to migrate to and from Barbary, it may
easily be supposed that those that come to us may migrate back to the
continent, and spend their winters in some of the warmer parts of
Europe. This is certain, that many soft-billed birds that come to
Gibraltar appear there only in spring and autumn, seeming to advance in
pairs towards the northward, for the sake of breeding during the summer
months; and retiring in parties and broods towards the south at the
decline of the year: so that the rock of Gibraltar is the great
rendezvous, and place of observation, from whence they take their
departure each way towards Europe or Africa. It is therefore no mean
discovery, I think, to find that our small short-winged summer birds of
passage are to be seen spring and autumn on the very skirts of Europe;
it is a presumptive proof of their emigrations.
Scopoli seems to me to have found the hirundo melba, the great
Gibraltar swift, in Tirol, without knowing it. For what is his hirundo
alpina but the afore-mentioned bird in other words? 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 of September.
When the oedicnemus flies it stretches out its legs straight behind,
like an heron.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXIV
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, March 30, 1771.
Dear Sir,
There is an insect with us, especially on chalky districts, which is
very troublesome and teasing all the latter end of the summer, getting
into people’s skins, especially those of women and children, and
raising tumours which itch intolerably. This animal (which we call an
harvest-bug) is very minute, scarce discernible to the naked eye; of a
bright scarlet colour, and of the genus of Acarus. They are to 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 the
farm-kitchens on the bacon-racks and about the mantelpieces, 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 posficis
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 Moufet, mentioned by Derham in his
Physico-theology, p. 250: an insect worthy of remark for depositing its
eggs as it flies in so dexterous a manner on the single hairs of the
legs and flanks of grass-horses. But then Derham is mistaken when he
advances that this oestrus is the parent of that 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 Geoffrey, t. 17, f. 4.
A full history of noxious insects hurtful in the field, garden, and
house, suggesting all the known and likely means of 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, oeconomy, 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 that can be conveyed at first by words alone.
Letter XXXV
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
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 an half,
and four inches and an half from the nose to the tip of the tail; their
heads were large, their nostrils bilobated, their shoulders broad and
muscular, and their whole bodies fleshy and plump. Nothing could be
more sleek and soft than their fur, which was of a bright 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 send forth a vary rancid and offensive smell.
Letter XXXVII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, 1771.
Dear Sir,
On the twelfth of 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 the twenty-second, they
rendezvoused in a neighbour’s walnut-tree, where it seemed probable
they had taken up their lodging for the night. At the dawn of the day,
which was foggy, they arose all together in infinite numbers,
occasioning such a rushing from the strokes of their wings against the
hazy air, as might be heard to a considerable distance: since that no
flock has appeared, only a few stragglers.
Some swifts staid late, till the twenty-second of August —a rare
instance! for they usually withdraw within the first week.*
* See Letter LIII to Mr. Barrington.
On September the twenty-fourth three or four ring-ousels appeared in my
fields for the first time this season: how punctual are these visitors
in their autumns and spring migrations!
Letter XXXVIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, March 15, 1773.
Dear Sir,
By my journal for last autumn it appears that the house-martins bred
very late, and staid very late in these parts; for, on the first of
October, I saw young martins in their nests nearly fledged; and again,
on the twenty-first of October, we had at the next house a nest full of
young martins just ready to fly; and the old ones were hawking for
insects with great alertness. The next morning the brood forsook their
nest, and were flying round the village. From this day I never saw one
of the swallow kind till November the third; when twenty, or perhaps
thirty, house-martins were playing all day long by the side of the
hanging wood, and over my fields. Did these small weak birds, some of
which were nestlings twelve days ago, shift their quarters at this late
season of the year to the other side of the northern tropic? Or rather,
is it not more probable that the next church, ruin, chalk-cliff, steep
covert, or perhaps sandbank, lake or pool (as a more northern
naturalist would say), may become their hybernaculum, and afford them a
ready and obvious retreat?
We now begin to expect our vernal migration of ring-ousels every week.
Persons worthy of credit assure me that ring-ousels were seen at
Christmas 1770 in the forest of Bere, on the southern verge of this
county. Hence we may conclude that their migrations are only internal,
and not extended to the continent southward, if they do at 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
farther, 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Nov. 9, 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 Frinshampond, a great lake, at
about six miles from hence, while it was sitting on the handle of a
plough and devouring a fish: it used to precipitate itself into the
water, and so take its prey by surprise.
A great ash-coloured butcher-bird was shot last winter in Tisted-park,
and a red-backed butcher-bird at Selborne: they are rarae aves in this
country.
Crows go in pairs the whole year round.
Cornish choughs abound, and breed on Beachy-head and on all the cliffs
of the Sussex coast.
The common wild-pigeon, or stock-dove, is a bird of passage in the
south of England, seldom appearing till towards the end of November; 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 that he has taken the nests of ring-ousels on
Dartmoor: they build in banks on the sides of streams.
Titlarks not only sing sweetly as they sit on trees, but also as they
play and toy about on the wing; and particularly while they are
descending, and sometimes as they stand on the ground.
Adamson’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 the
twenty-third.
The swift appears about ten or twelve days later than the
house-swallow: viz., about the twenty-fourth or twenty-sixth of April.
Whin-chats and stone-chattel stay with us the whole year.
Some wheat-ears continue with us the winter through.
Wagtails, 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 have rather said an humming),
I suspect we mean the same thing. However, while they are playing about
on the wing they certainly make a loud piping with their mouths: but
whether that bleating or humming is ventriloquous, or proceeds from the
motion of their wings, I cannot say; but this I know, that when this
noise happens the bird is always descending, and his wings are
violently agitated.
Soon after the lapwings have done breeding they congregate, and,
leaving the moors and marshes, betake themselves to downs and
sheep-walks.
Two years ago last spring the little auk was found alive and unhurt,
but fluttering and unable to rise, in a lane a few miles from
Alresford, where there is a great lake: it was kept a while, but died.
I saw young teals taken alive in the ponds of Wolmerforest 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Sept. 2, 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 kestrel 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 red-starts 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.
Red-breasts sing all through the spring, summer, and autumn. The reason
that they are called autumn songsters is, because in the two first
seasons their voices are drowned and lost in the general chorus; in the
latter their song becomes distinguishable. Many songsters of the autumn
seem to be the young cock red-breasts of that year: notwithstanding the
prejudices in their favour, they do much mischief in gardens to the
summer-fruits.*
* They eat also the berries of the ivy, the honeysuckle, and the
euonymus europaeus, or spindle-tree.
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 scarabaeus solstitialis, or
fern-chafer, commence with the month of July, and cease about the end
of it. These scarabs are the constant food of caprimulgi, or fern-owls,
through that period. They abound on the chalky downs and in some sandy
districts, but not in the clays.
In the garden of the Black-bear inn in the town of Reading is a stream
or canal running under the stables and out into the fields on the other
side of the road; in this water are many carps, which lie rolling about
in sight, being fed by travellers, who amuse themselves by tossing them
bread: but as soon as the weather grows at all severe these fishes are
no longer seen, because they retire under the stables, where they
remain till the return of spring. Do they lie in a torpid state? if
they do not, how are they supported?
The note of the white-throat, which is continually repeated, and often
attended with odd gesticulations on the wing, is harsh and displeasing.
These birds seem of a pugnacious disposition; for they sing with an
erected crest and attitudes of rivalry and defiance; are shy and wild
in breeding-time, avoiding neighbourhoods, and haunting lonely lanes
and commons; nay even the very tops of the Sussex-downs, where there
are bushes and covert; but in July and August they bring their broods
into gardens and orchards, and make great havoc among the
summer-fruits.
The black-cap has in common a full, sweet, deep, loud and wild pipe;
yet that strain is of short continuance, and his motions are desultory;
but when that bird sits calmly and engages in song in earnest, he pours
forth very sweet, but inward melody, and expresses great variety of
soft and gentle modulations, superior perhaps to those of any of our
warblers, the nightingale excepted.
Black-caps mostly haunt orchards and gardens; while they warble their
throats are wonderfully distended.
The song of the red-start is superior, though somewhat like that of the
white-throat: some birds have a few more notes than others. Sitting
very placidly on the top of a 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 an house, or in the hole of a wall, or
on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a door
where people are going in and out all day long. This bird does not make
the least pretension to song, but uses a little inward wailing note
when it thinks its young in danger from cats or other 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.*
* Sweden, 221; Great Britain, 252 species.
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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
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 wood-peckers) migrates,
while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird,
braves our severest frosts without availing himself of houses or
villages, to which most of our winter birds crowd in distressful
seasons, while this keeps aloof in fields and woods; but perhaps this
may be the reason why they may often perish, and why they are almost as
rare as any bird we know.
I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, which winter
with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All the
species of wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams near their
spring-heads, where they never freeze; and, by wading, pick out the
aurelias of the genus of Phryganeae,* etc.
* See Derham’s Physico-theology, p. 235.
Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they
pick up crumbs and other sweepings: and in mild weather they procure
worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see
that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on
any mild winter’s night. Red-breasts and wrens in the winter haunt
out-houses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and flies that
have laid themselves up during the cold season. But the grand support
of the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of
aureliae 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 straw
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. Beside insects, it is very fond of flesh; for it
frequently picks bones on dung-hills: it is a vast admirer of suet, and
haunts butchers’ shops. When a boy, I have known twenty in a morning
caught with snap mousetraps, 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 wheat-ear and whin-chat support themselves in winter cannot be
so easily ascertained, since they spend their time on wild heaths and
warrens; the former especially, where there are stone quarries: most
probably it is that their maintenance arises from the aureliae of the
lepidoptera ordo, which furnish them with a plentiful table in the
wilderness.
I am, etc.
Letter XLII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, March 9, 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 water-falls, 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. Mall
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 Eglintoun, near Glasgow, is worthy of notice.
The pine plantations of that nobleman are very grand and extensive
indeed.
I am, etc.
Letter XLIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Dear Sir,
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 embrio 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 tenth of July in the same summer a pair of sparrow-hawks bred
in an old crow’s nest on a low beech in the same hanger; and as their
brood, which was numerous, began to grow up, became so daring and
ravenous, that they were a terror to all the dames in the village that
had chickens or ducklings under their care. A boy climbed the tree, and
found the young so fledged that they all escaped from him: but
discovered that a good house had been kept: the larder was well-stored
with provisions; for he brought down a young 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
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Nov. 30, 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, is that
of stock-dove.
Unless the stock-dove in the winter varies greatly in manners from
itself in summer, no species seems more unlikely to be domesticated,
and to make an house-dove. We very rarely see the latter settle on
trees at all, nor does it ever haunt the woods; but the former, as long
as it stays with us, from November perhaps to 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, these 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 an hundred arguments is, the instance
you give in Sir Roger Mostyn’s house-doves, in Caernarvonshire; which,
though tempted by plenty of food and gentle treatment, can never be
prevailed on to inhabit their cote for any time; but as soon as they
begin to breed, betake themselves to the fastnesses of Ormshead, and
deposit their young in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns and
precipices of that stupendous promontory.
Naturam expellas furcâ, 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 wildfowl 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 an
hundred of these doves; but in former times the flocks were so vast not
only with us but all the district round, that on mornings and evenings
they traversed the air, like rooks, in strings, reaching for a mile
together. When they thus 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….
* Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flocks used to
withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over.
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 farther excuse I shall add his
translation also.
Qualis speluncâ subitò commota Columba,
Cui domus, et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi,
Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis
Dat tecto ingentem—mox aere lapse quieto,
Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas.
As when a dove her rocky hold forsakes,
Rous’d, in her 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, &c.
LETTERS to DAINES BARRINGTON
Letter I
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, June 30, 1769.
Dear Sir,
When I was in town last month I partly engaged that I would sometime do
myself the honour to write to you on the subject of natural history:
and I am the more ready to fulfil my promise, because I see you are a
gentleman of great candour, and one that will make allowances;
especially where the writer professes to be an out-door naturalist, one
that takes his observations from the subject itself, and not from the
writings of others.
The following is a List of the Summer Birds of Passage which I have
discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the order in which
they appear.
Usually appears about:
1. Wry-neck, Raii nomina: Jynx, sive torquilla: The middle of March:
harsh note.
2. Smallest willow-wren, Regulus non cristatus: March 23: chirps till
September.
3. Swallow, Hirundo domestica: April 13.
4. Martin, Hirundo rustica: Ditto.
5. Sand-martin, Hirundo riparia: Ditto.
6. Black-cap, Atricapilla: Ditto: a sweet wild note.
7. Nightingale, Luscinia: Beginning of April.
8. Cuckoo, Cuculus: Middle of April.
9. Middle willow-wren, Regulus non cristatus: Ditto, a sweet plaintive
note.
10. White-throat, Ficedulae affinis: Middle of April: mean note; sings
on till September.
11. Red-start, Ruticilla: Ditto: more agreeable song.
12. Stone curlew, OEdicnemus: End of March; loud nocturnal whistle.
13. Turtle-dove, Turtur:
14. Grasshopper-lark, Alauda minima locustae voce: Middle of April: a
small sibilous note, till the end of July.
15. Swift, Hirundo apus: About April 27.
16. Less reed-sparrow, Passer arundinaceus minor: A sweet polyglot, but
hurrying: it has the notes of many birds.
17. Land-rail, Ortygometra: A loud harsh note, crex, crex.
18. Largest willow-wren, Regulus non cristatus: Cantat voce stridula
locustae; end of April, on the tops of high beeches.
19. Goat-sucker, or fern-owl, Caprimulgus: Beginning of May; chatters
by night with a singular noise.
20. Fly-catcher, Stoparola: May 12. A very mute bird: this is the
latest summer bird of passage.
This assemblage of curious and amusing birds belongs to ten several
genera of the 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.
2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 16, 18. Motacilla.
3, 4, 5, 15. Hirundo.
8. Cuculus.
12. Charadrius.
13. Columba.
17. Rallus.
19. Caprimulgus.
14. Alauda.
20. Muscicapa.
Most soft-billed birds live on insects, and not on grain and seeds; and
therefore at the end of summer they retire: but the following
soft-billed birds, though insect-eaters, stay with us the year round:
Red-breast, Raii nomina: Rubecula:
Wren, Passer troglodytes: These frequent houses; and haunt outbuildings
in the winter; eat spiders.
Hedge-sparrow, Curruca: Haunt sinks for crumbs and other sweepings.
White-wagtail, Motacilla alba:
Yellow-wagtail, Motacilla flava:
Grey-wagtail, Motacilla cinerea: These frequent shallow rivulets near
the spring heads, where they never freeze: eat the aureliae of
Phryganea. The smallest birds that walk.
Wheat-ear, Oenanthe: Some of these are to be seen with us the winter
through.
Whin-chat, OEnanthe secunda:
Stone-chatter, 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:
1. Ring-ousel, Raii nomina: Merula torquata: This is a new migration
which I have lately discovered about Michaelmas week, and again about
the fourteenth of March.
2. Redwing, Turdus iliacus: About Michaelmas.
3. Fieldfare, Turdus pilaris, Though a percher by day, roosts on the
ground.
4. Royston-crew, Cornix cinerea: Most frequent on downs.
5. Wood-cock, 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. Widgeon, Penelope:
14. Teal, breeds with us in Wolmer-forest, Querquedula: On our lakes
and streams.
15. Gross-beak, Coccothraustes:
16. Cross-bill, Loxia:
17. Silk-tail, Garrulus bohemicus: These are only wanderers that appear
occasionally, and are not observant of any regular migration.
These birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the following
Linnaean genera:
1, 2, 3. Turdus.
4. Corvus.
5, 6, 7. Scolopax.
8. Columba.
9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Anas.
15, 16. Loxia.
17. Ampelis.
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 minor: Among reeds and willows.
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
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Nov. 2, 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.
1. Woodlark, Raii nomina: Alauda arborea: In January, and continues to
sing through all the summer and autumn.
2. Song-thrush, Turdus simpliciter dictus: In February and on to
August, reassume their song in autumn.
3. Wren, Passer troglodytes: All the year, hard frost excepted.
4. Red-breast, Rubecula: Ditto.
5. Hedge-sparrow, Curruca: Early in February to July the 10th.
6. Yellow-hammer, Emberiza flava: Early in February, and on through
July to August the 21st.
7. Skylark, Alauda vulgaris: In February, and on to October.
8. Swallow, Hirundo domestica: From April to September.
9. Black-cap, Atricapilla: Beginning of April to July 13.
10. Titlark, Alauda pratorum: From middle of April to July the 16th.
11. Blackbird, Merula vulgaris: Sometimes in February and March, and so
on to July the twenty third; reassumes in autumn.
12. White-throat, Ficedulcae affinis: In April and on to July 23.
13. Goldfinch, Carduelis: April and through to September 16.
14. Greenfinch, Chloris: On to July and August 2.
15. Less reed-sparrow, Passer arundinaceus minor: May, on to beginning
of July.
16. Common linnet, Linaria vulgaris: Breeds and whistles on till
August; reassumes its note when they begin to congregate in October,
and again early before the flock separate.
Birds that cease to be in full song, and are usually silent at or
before Midsurnmer:
17. Middle willow-wren, Regulus non cristatus: Middle of June: begins
in April.
18. Red-start, Ruticilla: Middle of June: begins in May.
19. Chaffinch, Fringilla: Beginning of June: sings first in February.
20. Nightingale, Luscinia: Middle of June: sings first in April.
Birds that sing for a short tune, and very early in the spring:
21. Missel-bird, Turdus viscivorus: January the 2nd, 1770, in February.
Is called in Hampshire and Sussex the storm-cock, because its song is
supposed to forebode windy wet weather: is the largest singing bird we
have.
22. Great tit-mouse, or ox-eye, Fringillago: In February, March, April:
reassumes for a short time in September.
Birds that have somewhat of a note or song, and yet are hardly to be
called singing birds:
23. Golden-crowned wren, Regulus cristatus: Its note as minute as its
person; frequents the tops of high oaks and firs; the smallest British
bird.
24. Marsh titmouse, Parus palustris: Haunts great woods; two harsh
sharp notes.
25. Small willow-wren, Regulus non cristatus: Sings in March and on to
September.
26. Largest ditto, Ditto: Cantat voce stridula locustae: from end of
April to August.
27. Grasshopper-lark, Alauda minima voce locustae: Chirps all night,
from 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.
2, 11, 21. Turdus.
3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 25, 26. Motacilla.
6, 30. Emberiza.
8, 28. Hirundo.
13, 16, 19. Pringilla.
22, 24. Parus.
14, 29. Loxia.
Birds that sing as they fly are but few:
Skylark, Raii nomina. 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.
White-throat, Ficedulae 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:
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, Palurnbus torquatus: Lays the beginning of April.
All birds that continue in full song till after Midsummer appear to me
to breed more than once.
Most kinds of birds seem to me to be wild and shy somewhat in
proportion to their bulk; I mean in this island, where they are much
pursued and annoyed: but in Ascension-island, and many other desolate
places, mariners have found fowls so unacquainted with an human figure,
that they would stand still to be taken; as is the case with boobies,
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
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Jan. 15, 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 punctually. 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 yellowhammer breed late, the latter very late; and
therefore it is no wonder that they protract their song; for I lay it
down as a maxim in ornithology, that as long as there is any incubation
going on there is music. As to the red-breast 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 also has an hurrying manner, not at
all to its advantage; it is notwithstanding a delicate polyglot.
It is new to me that titlarks in cages sing in the night; perhaps only
caged birds do so. I once knew a tame red-breast 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
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Feb. 19, 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 red-breast, 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 farther appear that this simple bird, when
divested of the 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.’*
* Job xxxix. 16, 17.
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
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, April 12, 1770.
Dear Sir,
I heard many birds of several species sing last year after Midsummer;
enough to prove that the summer solstice is not the period that puts a
stop to the music of the woods. The yellowhammer no doubt persists with
more steadiness than any other; but the woodlark, the wren, the
red-breast, the swallow, the white-throat, the goldfinch, the common
linnet, are all undoubted instances of the truth of what I advance.
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
birdcatcher; and so little used to birds in a cage, that I fear if I
had one it would soon die for want of skill in feeding.
Was your reed-sparrow, which you kept in a cage, the thick-billed
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 the 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 to sit at all on the egg of the cuckoo without being
scandalized at the vast disproportioned 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 rose 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
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 21, 1770.
Dear Sir,
The severity and turbulence of last month so interrupted the regular
progress 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
eleventh of 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 an history of the birds of so distant and southern a region as
Carniola would be new and interesting. I could wish to see that work,
and hope to get it sent down. Dr. Scopoli is physician to the wretches
that work in the quicksilver mines of that district.
* This work he calls his Annus Primus Historico-Naturalis.
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.**
** See Letter XXV to Mr. Pennant.
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 farther about it at present.*
* See Letter XLIII to Mr. Barrington.
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.
Letter VII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Ringmer, near Lewes, Oct. 8, 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 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 observations of those birds, I
never could discover the least degree of rivalry or hostility between
the species.
Ray remarks that birds of the gallinae 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 frequency 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-ousel 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-ousels (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 auspicious 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 lookout 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,
whin-chats, 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, sow-thistles, are its favourite
dish. In a neighbouring village one was kept till by tradition it was
supposed to be an hundred years old. An instance of vast longevity in
such a poor reptile!
Letter VIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Dec. 20, 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 half of the species
appears: therefore we may conclude that the fringillae caelebes, 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 birds should be interrupted in winter; since
in many animals, and particularly in bucks and does, the sexes herd
separately, except at the season when commerce is necessary for the
continuance of the breed. For this matter of the chaffinches see Fauna
Suecica, p. 85, and 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 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 blackbirds 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 and redwings disappear sooner or
later according as the warm weather comes on earlier or later. For I
well remember, after that dreadful winter of 1739-40, that cold
north-east winds continued to blow on through April and May, and that
these kinds 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
caeruleo-viridia maculis nigris variis.’ Hence we may be assured that
fieldfares and redwings breed in Sweden. Scopoli says, in his Annus
Primus, of the woodcock, that ‘nupta ad nos venit circa aequinoctium
vernale’; meaning in Tirol, 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 haec septentrionalium provinciarum aestivo 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 an 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 one year is
twenty inches and an half.
Letter IX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Fyfield, near Andover, Feb. 12, 1771.
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, to 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 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 moon-shiny nights cross the German ocean from Scandinavia.
As a proof that birds of less speed may pass that sea, considerable as
it is, I shall relate the following incident, which, though mentioned
to have 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.
* I have read a like anecdote of a swan.
At present I do not know anybody near the sea-side that will take the
trouble to remark at what time of the moon woodcocks first come: if I
lived near the sea myself I would soon tell you more of the matter. One
thing I used to observe when I was a sportsman, that there were times
in which woodcocks were so sluggish and sleepy that they would drop
again when flushed just before the spaniels, nay, just at the muzzle of
a gun that had been fired at them: whether this strange laziness was
the effect of a recent fatiguing journey I shall not presume to say.
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-ousel for Mr.
Tunstal during their autumnal visit; but I will endeavour to get him
one when they call on us again in April. I am glad that you and that
gentleman saw my Andalusian birds; I hope they answered your
expectation. 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; and 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
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Aug. 1, 1771.
Dear Sir,
From what follows, it will appear that neither owls nor cuckoos keep to
one note. A friend remarks that many (most) of his owls hoot in B flat:
but that one went almost half a note below A. 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 they retreat
from Scandinavian winters: and much more the ordo of grallae, who, all
to a bird, forsake the northern parts of Europe at the approach of
winter. ‘Grallae tanquam conjugatae unanimiter in fugam se conjiciunt;
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 Eckmarck
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
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Feb. 8, 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 dews, 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
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
March 9, 1772.
Dear Sir,
As a gentleman and myself were walking on the fourth of last November
round the sea-banks at Newhaven, near the mouth of the Lewes river, in
pursuit of natural knowledge, we were surprised to see three
house-swallows gliding very swiftly by us. That morning was rather
chilly, with the wind at north-west; but the tenor of the weather for
some time before had been delicate, and the noons remarkably warm. From
this incident, and from repeated accounts which I meet with, I am more
and more induced to believe that many of the swallow kind do not depart
from this island; but lay themselves up in holes and caverns; and do,
insect-like and bat-like, come forth at mild times, and than retire
again to their latebrae. Nor make I the least doubt but that, if I
lived at Newhaven, Seaford, Brighthelmstone, or any of those towns near
the chalk-cliffs of the Sussex coast, by proper observations, I should
see swallows stirring at periods of the winter, when the noons were
soft and inviting, and the sun warm and invigorating. And I am the more
of this opinion from what I have remarked during some of our late
springs, that though some swallows did make their appearance about the
usual time, viz., the thirteenth or fourteenth of April, yet meeting
with an harsh reception, and blustering cold north-east winds, they
immediately withdrew, absconding for several days, till the weather
gave them better encouragement.
Letter XIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
April 12, 1772.
Dear Sir,
While I was in Sussex last autumn my residence was at the village near
Lewes, from whence I had formerly the pleasure of writing to you. On
the first of November I remarked that the old tortoise, formerly
mentioned, began first to dig the ground in order to the forming its
hybernaculum, which it had fixed on just beside a great tuft of
hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with its fore-feet, and throws it
up over its back with its hind; but the motion of its legs is
ridiculously slow, little exceeding the hour-hand of a clock; and
suitable 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 thirteenth of November, yet the work remained
unfinished. Harsher weather, and frosty mornings, would have quickened
its operations. No part of its behaviour ever struck me more than the
extreme timidity it always expresses with regard to rain; for though it
has a shell that would secure it against the wheel of a loaded cart,
yet does it discover as much solicitude about rain as a lady dressed in
all her best attire, shuffling away on the first sprinklings, and
running its head up in a corner. If attended to, it becomes an
excellent weather-glass; for as sure as it walks elate, and as it were
on tiptoe, feeding with great 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 has
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!
* Isaiah i. 3.
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
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, March 26, 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 an hen, just become a
mother, is no longer that placid bird she used to be, but with feathers
standing on end, wings hovering, and clocking note, she runs about like
one possessed. Dams will throw themselves in the way of the greatest
danger in order to avert it from their progeny. Thus a partridge will
tumble along before a sportsman in order to draw away the dogs from her
helpless covey. In the time of nidification the most feeble birds will
assault the most rapacious. All the hirundines of a village are up in
arms at the sight of an hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves
that district. A very exact observer has often remarked that a pair of
ravens nesting in the rock of Gibraltar would suffer no vulture or
eagle to rest near their station, but would drive them from the hill
with an amazing fury: even the blue thrush at the season of breeding
would dart out from the clefts of the rocks to chase away the kestril,
or the sparrow-hawk. If you stand near the nest of a bird that has
young, she will not be induced to betray them by an inadvertent
fondness, but will wait about at a distance with meat in her mouth for
an hour together.
Should I farther corroborate what I have advanced above by some
anecdotes which I probably may have mentioned before in conversation,
yet you will, I trust, pardon the repetition for the sake of
illustration.
The fly-catcher of the Zoology (the stoparola of Ray), builds every
year in the vines that grow on the walls of my house. A pair of these
little birds had one year inadvertently placed their nest on a naked
bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the inconvenience
that followed. But an hot sunny season coming on before the brood was
half fledged, the reflection of the wall became insupportable, and must
inevitably have destroyed the tender young, had not affection suggested
an expedient, and prompted the parent-birds to hover over the nest all
the hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths gaping 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
up a large bundle of long green moss, as it were, carelessly thrown
over the nest, in order to dodge the eye of any impertinent intruder.
A still more remarkable mixture of sagacity and instinct occurred to me
one day as my people were pulling off the lining of an hotbed, in order
to add some fresh dung. From out of the side of this bed leaped an
animal with great agility that made a most grotesque figure; nor was it
without great 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.
Letter XV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, July 8, 1773.
Dear Sir,
Some young men went down lately to a pond on the verge of Wolmer-forest
to hunt flappers, or young wild-ducks, many of which they caught, and,
among the rest, some very minute yet well-fledged wild-fowls alive,
which, upon examination, I found to be teals. I did not know till then
that teals ever bred in the south of England, and was much pleased with
the discovery: this I look upon as a great stroke in natural history.
We have had, ever since I can remember, a pair of white owls that
constantly breed under the eaves of this church. As I have paid good
attention to the manner of life of these birds during their season of
breeding, which lasts the summer through, the following remarks may not
perhaps be unacceptable: — About an hour before sunset (for then the
mice begin to run) they sally forth in quest of prey, and hunt all
round the hedges of meadows and small enclosures for them, which seem
to be their only food. In this irregular country we can stand on an
eminence and see them beat the fields over like a setting-dog, and
often drop down in the grass or corn. I have minuted these birds with
my watch for an hour together, and have found that they return to their
nests, the one or the other of them, about once in five minutes;
reflecting at the same time on the adroitness that every animal is
possessed of as regards the well-being of itself and offspring. But a
piece of address, which they show when they return loaded, should not,
I think, be passed over in silence. — As they take their prey with
their claws, so they carry it in their claws to their nest: but, as the
feet are necessary in their ascent under the tiles, they constantly
perch first on the roof of the chancel, and shift the mouse from their
claws to their bill, that the feet may be at liberty to take hold of
the plate on the wall as they are rising under the eaves.
White owls seem not (but in this I am not positive) to hoot at all: all
that clamorous hooting appears to me to come from the wood kinds. The
white owl does indeed snore and hiss in a tremendous manner; and these
menaces well answer the intention of intimidating: for I have known a
whole village up in arms on such an occasion, imagining the church-yard
to be full of goblins and spectres. White owls also often scream
horribly as they fly along; from this screaming probably arose the
common people’s imaginary species of screech-owl, which they
superstitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The plumage
of the remiges of the wings of every species of owl that I have yet
examined is remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps it may be necessary
that the wings of these birds should not make much resistance or
rushing, that they may be enabled to steal through the air unheard upon
a nimble and watchful quarry.
While I am talking of owls, it may not be improper to mention what I
was told by a gentleman of the county of Wilts. As they were grubbing a
vast hollow pollard-ash that had been the mansion of owls for
centuries, he discovered at the bottom a mass of matter that at first
he could not account for. After examination, he found it was a
congeries of the bones of mice (and perhaps of birds and bats) that had
been heaping together for ages, being cast up in pellets out of the
crops of many generations of inhabitants. For owls cast up the bones,
fur, and feathers of what they devour, after the manner of hawks. He
believes, he told me, that there were bushels of this kind of
substance.
When brown owls hoot their throats swell as big as an hen’s egg. I have
known an owl of this species live a full year without any water.
Perhaps the case may be the same with all birds of prey. When owls fly
they stretch out their legs behind them as a balance to their large
heavy heads; for as most nocturnal birds have large eyes and ears they
must have large heads to contain them. Large eyes I presume are
necessary to collect every ray of light, and large concave ears to
command the smallest degree of sound or noise.
I am, etc.
The hirundines are a most inoffensive, harmless, entertaining, social,
and useful tribe of birds: they touch no fruit in our gardens; delight,
all except one species, in attaching themselves to our houses; amuse us
with their migrations, songs, and marvellous agility; and clear our
outlets from the annoyances of gnats and other troublesome insects.
Some districts in the south seas, near Guiaquil,* are desolated, it
seems, by the infinite swarms of venomous mosquitoes, which fill the
air, and render those coasts insupportable. It would be worth inquiring
whether any species of hirundines is found in those regions. Whoever
contemplates the myriads of insects that sport in the sunbeams of a
summer evening in this country, will soon be convinced to what a degree
our atmosphere would be choked with them was it not for the friendly
interposition of the swallow tribe.
* See Ulloa’s Travels.
Many species of birds have their particular lice; but the hirundines
alone seem to be annoyed with dipterous insects, which infest every
species, and are so large, in proportion to themselves, that they must
be truly irksome and injurious to them. These are the hippoboscae
hirundinis with narrow subulated wings, abounding in every nest; and
are hatched by the warmth of the bird’s own body during incubation, and
crawl about under its feathers.
A species of them is familiar to horsemen in the south of England under
the name of forest-fly; and, to some, of side-fly, from its running
sideways like a crab. It creeps under the tails, and about the groins,
of horses, which, at their first coming out of the north, are rendered
half frantic by the tickling sensation; while our own breed little
regards them.
The curious Reaumur discovered the large eggs, or rather pupae, of
these flies as big as the flies themselves, which he hatched in his own
bosom. Any person that will take the troupe to examine the old nests of
either species of swallows may find in them the black shining cases of
the pupae of these insects: but for other particulars, too long for
this place, we refer the reader to L’Histoire d’Insectes of that
admirable entomologist. Tom. iv. pi. ii.
Letter XVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Nov. 20, 1773.
Dear Sir,
In obedience to your injunctions I sit down to give you some account of
the house-martin, or martlet; and, if my monography of this little
domestic and familiar bird should happen to meet with your approbation,
I may probably soon extend my inquiries to the rest of the British
hirundines — the swallow, the swift, and the bank-martin.
A few house-martins begin to appear about the sixteenth of April;
usually some few days later than the swallow. For some time after they
appear the hirundines in general pay no attention to the business of
nidification, but play and sport about either to recruit from the
fatigue of their journey, if they do migrate at all, or else that their
blood may recover its true tone and texture after it has been so long
benumbed by the severities of winter. About the middle of May, if the
weather be fine, the martin begins to think in earnest of providing a
mansion for its family. The crust or shell of this nest seems to be
formed of such dirt or loam as comes most readily to hand, and is
tempered and wrought together with little bits of broken straws to
render it tough and tenacious. As this bird often builds against a
perpendicular wall without any projecting ledge under, it requires its
utmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may
safely carry the superstructure. On this occasion the bird not only
clings with its claws, but partly supports itself by strongly inclining
its tail against the wall, making that a fulcrum; and thus steadied it
works and plasters the materials into the face of the brick or stone.
But then, that this work may not, while it is soft and green, pull
itself down by its own weight, the provident architect has prudence and
forbearance enough not to advance her work too fast; but by building
only in the morning, and by dedicating the rest of the day to food and
amusement, gives it sufficient time to dry and harden. About half an
inch seems to be a sufficient layer for a day. Thus careful workmen
when they build mud-walls (informed at first perhaps by this lithe
bird) raise but a moderate layer at a time, and then desist; lest the
work should become top-heavy, and so be ruined by is own weight. By
this method in about ten or twelve days is formed an hemispheric nest
with a small aperture towards the top, strong, compact, and warm; and
perfectly fitted for all the purposes for which it was intended. But
then nothing is more common than for the house-sparrow, as soon as the
shell is finished, to seize on it as is own, to eject the owner, and to
line it after is own manner.
After so much labour is bestowed in erecting a mansion, as nature
seldom works in vain, martins win breed on for several years together
in the same nest, where it happens to be well sheltered and secure from
the injuries of weather. The shed or crust of the nest is a sort of
rustic work full of knobs and protuberances on the outside: nor is the
inside of those that I have examined smoothed with any exactness at
all; but is rendered soft and warm, and fit for incubation, by a lining
of small straws, grasses, and feathers, and sometimes by a bed of moss
interwoven with wool. In this nest they tread, or engender, frequently
during the time of building; and the hen lays from three to five white
eggs.
At first when the young are hatched, and are in a naked and helpless
condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, carry out what
comes away from their young. Was it not for this affectionate
cleanliness the nestlings would soon be burnt up, and destroyed in so
deep and hollow a nest, by their own caustic excrement. In the
quadruped creation the same neat precaution is made use of;
particularly among dogs and cats, where the dams lick away what
proceeds from their young. But in birds there seems to be a particular
provision, that the dung of nestlings is enveloped into a tough kind of
jelly, and therefore is the easier conveyed off without soiling or
daubing. Yet, as nature is cleanly in all her ways, the young perform
this office for themselves in a little time by thrusting their tails
out at the aperture of their nest. As the young of small birds
presently arrive at their ἡλικία or full growth, they soon become
impatient of confinement, and sit all day with their heads out at the
orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them with food
from morning to night. For a time the young are fed on the wing by
their parents; but the feat is done by so quick and almost
imperceptible a sleight, that a person must have attended very exactly
to their motions before he would be able to perceive it. As soon as the
young are able to shift for themselves, the dams immediately turn their
thoughts to the business of a second brood: while the first flight,
shaken off and rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks,
and are the birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny
mornings and evenings round towers and steeples, and on the mobs of
churches and houses. These congregations usually begin to take place
about the first week in August; and therefore we may conclude that by
that time the first flight is pretty well over. The young of this
species do not quit their abodes all together; but the more forward
birds get abroad some days before the rest. These approaching the eaves
of buildings, and playing about before them, make people think that
several old ones attend one nest. They are often capricious in fixing
on a nesting place, beginning many edifices, and leaving them
unfinished; but when once a nest is completed in a sheltered place, it
serves for several seasons. Those which breed in a ready finished house
get the start in hatching of those that build new by ten days or a
fortnight. These industrious artificers are at their labours in the
long days before four in the morning: when they fix than materials they
plaster them on with their chins, moving their heads with a quick
vibratory motion. They dip and wash as they fly sometimes in very hot
weather, but not so frequency as swallows. It has been observed that
martins usually build to a north-east or north-west aspect, that the
heat of the sun may not crack and destroy their nests: but instances
are also remembered where they bred for many years in vast abundance in
an hot stifled inn-yard, against a wall facing to the south.
Birds in general are wise in their choice of situation: but in this
neighbourhood every summer is seen a strong proof to the contrary at an
house without eaves in an exposed district, where some martins build
year by year in the corners of the windows. But, as the corners of
these windows (which face to the south-east and south-west) are too
shallow, the nests are washed down every hard rain; and yet these birds
drudge on to no purpose from summer to summer, without changing their
aspect or house. It is a piteous sight to see them labouring when half
their nest is washed away and bringing dirt …. ‘generis lapsi sarcire
ruinas.’ Thus is instinct a most wonderful unequal faculty; in some
instances so much above reason, in other respects so far below it!
Martins love to frequent towns, especially if there are great lakes and
rivers at hand; nay, they even affect the close air of London. And I
have not only seen them nesting in the Borough, but even in the Strand
and Fleet-street; but then it was obvious from the dinginess of their
aspect that their feathers partook of the filth of that sooty
atmosphere. Martins are by far the least agile of the four species;
their wings and tails are short, and therefore they are not capable of
such surprising turns and quick and glancing evolutions as the swallow.
Accordingly they make use of a placid easy motion in a middle region of
the air, seldom mounting to any great height, and never sweeping long
together over the surface of the ground or water. They do not wander
far for food, but affect sheltered districts, over some lake, or under
some hanging wood, or in some hollow vale, especially in windy weather.
They breed the latest of all the swallow kind: in 1772 they had
nestlings on to October the twenty-first, and are never without
unfledged young as late as Michaelmas.
As the summer declines the congregating docks increase in numbers daily
by the constant accession of the second broods, till at last they swarm
in myriads upon myriads round the villages on the Thames, darkening the
face of the sky as they frequent the aits of that river, where they
roost. They retire, the bulk of them I mean, in vast flocks together
about the beginning of October: but have appeared of late years in a
considerable eight in this neighbourhood, for one day or two, as late
as November the third and sixth, after they were supposed to have been
gone for more than a fortnight. They therefore withdraw with us the
latest of any species. Unless these birds ate very short-lived indeed,
or unless they do not return to the district where they are bred, they
must undergo vast devastations somehow, sad somewhere; for the birds
that return yearly bear no manner of proportion to the birds that
retire.
House-martins ate distinguished from that congeners by having that legs
coveted with soft downy feathers down to their toes. They are no
songsters, but twitter in a pretty inward soft manner in their nests.
During the time of breeding they are often greatly molested with fleas.
I am, etc.
Letter XVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Ringmer, near Lewes, Dec. 9, 1773.
Dear Sir,
I received your last favour just as I was setting out for this place;
and am pleased to find that my monography met with your approbation. My
remarks are the result of many years’ observation; and are, I trust,
true on the whole: though I do not pretend to say that they are
perfectly void of mistake, or that a more nice observer ought not make
many additions, since subjects of this kind are inexhaustible.
If you think my letter worthy the notice of your respectable society,
you are at liberty to lay it before them; and they win consider it, I
hope, as it was intended, as an humble attempt to promote a more minute
inquiry into natural history; into the life and conversation of
animals. Perhaps hereafter I may be induced to take the house-swallow
under consideration, and from that proceed to the rest of the British
hirundines.
Though I have now travelled the Sussex-downs upwards of thirty years,
yet I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh
admiration year by year; and think I see new beauties every time I
traverse it. This range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far as
East-Bourn, is about sixty miles in length, and is called the South
Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass along you
command a noble view of the wild, or weald, on one hand, and the broad
downs and sea on the other. Mr. Ray used to visit a family* just at the
foot of these hips, and was so ravished with the prospect from
Plumpton-plain near Lewes, that he mentions those scopes in his Wisdom
of God in the Works of the Creation with the utmost satisfaction, and
thinks them equal to anything he had seen in the finest parts of
Europe.
* Mr. Courthope, of Danny.
For my own part, I think there is somewhat peculiarly sweet and amusing
in the shapely figured aspect of chalk-hills in preference to those of
stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless.
Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to convey
to you the same idea, but I never contemplate these mountains without
thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to growth in their gentle
swellings and smooch fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides, and
regular hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative
dilation and expansion…. Or was there ever a time when these immense
masses of calcareous matter were drown into fermentation by some
adventitious moisture; were raised and leavened into such shapes by
some plastic power; and so made to swell and heave their broad backs
into the sky so much above the less animated clay of the wild below?
By what I can guess from the admeasurements of the hills that have been
taken round my house, I should suppose that these hills surmount the
wild at au average at about the rate of five hundred feet.
One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep: from the westward till
you get to the river Adur all the flocks have horns, and smooth white
faces, and white legs; and a hornless sheep is rarely to be seen: but
as soon as you pass the river eastward, and mount Beeding-hill, all the
flocks at once become hornless, or, as they call them, poll-sheep; and
have moreover black faces with a white tuft of wool on their foreheads,
and speckled and spotted legs: so that you would think that the flocks
of Laban were pasturing on one side of the stream, and the variegated
breed of his son-in-law Jacob were cantoned along on the other. And
this diversity holds good respectively on each side from the valley of
Bramber and Beeding to the eastward, and westward all the whole length
of the downs. If you talk with the shepherds on this subject, they tell
you that the case has been so from time immemorial: and smile at your
simplicity if you ask them whether the situation of these two different
breeds might not be reversed? However, an intelligent friend of mine
near Chichester is determined to try the experiment; and has this
autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced a parcel of
black-faced hornless rams among his horned western ewes. The
black-faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the finest wool.
As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late a season
of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a look-out as possible
so near the southern coast, with respect to the summer short-winged
birds of passage. We make great inquiries concerning the withdrawing of
the swallow kind, without examining enough into the causes why this
tribe is never to be seen in winter; for, entre nous, the disappearing
of the latter is more marvellous than that of the former, and much more
unaccountable. The hirundines, if they please, are certainly capable of
migration; and yet no doubt are often found in a torpid state: but
redstarts, nightingales, white-throats, black-caps, etc., etc., are
very ill provided for long flights; have never been once found, as I
ever heard of, in a torpid state, and yet can never be supposed, in
such troops, from year to year to dodge and elude the eyes of the
curious and inquisitive, which from day to day discern the other small
birds that are known to abide our winters. But, notwithstanding all my
care, I saw nothing like a summer bird of passage: and, what is more
strange, not one wheat-ear, though they abound so in the autumn as to
be a considerable perquisite to the shepherds that take them; and
though many are to be seen to my knowledge all the winter through in
many parts of the south of England. The most intelligent shepherds tell
me that some few of these birds appear on the downs in March, and then
withdraw to breed probably in warrens and stone-quarries: now and then
a nest is plowed up in a fallow on the downs under a furrow, but it is
thought a rarity. At the time of wheat-harvest they begin to be taken
in great numbers; are sent for sale in vast quantities to
Brighthelmstone and Tunbridge; and appear at the tables of all the
gentry that entertain with any degree of elegance. About Michaelmas
they retire and are seen no more till March. Though these birds are,
when in season, in great plenty on the south downs round Lewes, yet at
East-Bourn, which is the eastern extremity of those downs, they abound
much more. One thing is very remarkable — that though in the height of
the season so many hundreds of dozens are taken, yet they never are
seen to flock; and it is a rare thing to see more than three or four at
a time: so that there must be a perpetual flitting and constant
progressive succession. It does not appear that any wheat-ears are
taken to the westward of Houghton-bridge, which stands on the river
Arun.
I did not fail to look particularly after my new migration of
ring-ousels; and to take notice whether they continued on the downs to
this season of the year; as I had formerly remarked them in the month
of October all the way from Chichester to Lewes wherever there were any
shrubs and covert: but not one bird of this sort came within my
observation. I only saw a few larks and whin-chats, some rooks, and
several kites and buzzards.
About Midsummer a flight of cross-bills comes to the pine-groves about
this house, but never makes any long stay.
The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, still
continues in this garden; and retired under ground about the twentieth
of November, and came out again for one day on the thirtieth: it lies
now buried in a wet swampy border under a wall facing to the south, and
is enveloped at present in mud and mire!
Here is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants of which seem
to get their livelihood very easily; for they spend the greatest part
of the day on their nest-trees when the weather is mild. These rooks
retire every evening all the winter from this rookery, where they only
call by the way, as they are going to roost in deep woods: at the dawn
of day they always revisit their nest-trees, and are preceded a few
minutes by a flight of daws, that act, as it were, as their harbingers.
I am, etc.
Letter XVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Jan. 29, 1774.
Dear Sir,
The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the first comer
of all the British hirundines; and appears in general on or about the
thirteenth of April, as I have remarked from many years’ observation.
Not but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier: and, in
particular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a whole day
together on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday; which day could not fall out
later than the middle of March, and often happened early in February.
It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and
mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if these early
visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two
dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a
time. A circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than migration;
since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to its
hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two only to warmer
latitudes.
The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no means builds
altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and out-houses against
the rafters; and so she did in Virgil’s time:
… Ante
Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo.
In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called ladu swala, the
barn-swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are no
chimneys to houses, except they are English-built: in these countries
she constructs her nest in porches, and gateways, and galleries, and
open halls.
Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place; as we have
known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well, through which
chalk had been formerly drawn up for the purpose of manure: but in
general with us this hirundo breeds in chimneys; and loves to haunt
those stacks where there is a constant fire, no doubt for the sake of
warmth. Not that it can subsist in the immediate shaft where there is a
fire; but prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and disregards
the perpetual smoke of that funnel, as I have often observed with some
degree of wonder.
Five or six or more feet down the chimney does this little bird begin
to form her nest about the middle of May, which consists, like that of
the house-martin, of a crust or shell composed of dirt or mud, mixed
with short pieces of straw to render it tough and permanent; with this
difference, that whereas the shell of the martin is nearly hemispheric,
that of the swallow is open at the top, and like half a deep dish: this
nest is lined with fine grasses, and feathers which are often collected
as they float in the air.
Wonderful is the address which this adroit bird shows all day long in
ascending and descending with security through so narrow a pass. When
hovering over the mouth of the funnel, the vibrations of her wings
acting on the confined air occasion a rumbling like thunder. It is not
improbable that the dam submits to this inconvenient situation so low
in the shaft, in order to secure her broods from rapacious birds, and
particularly from owls, which frequently fall down chimneys, perhaps in
attempting to get at these nestlings.
The swallow lays from four to six white eggs, dotted with red specks;
and brings out her first brood about the last week in June, or the
first week in July. The progressive method by which the young are
introduced into life is very amusing: first, they emerge from the shaft
with difficulty enough, and often fall down into the rooms below: for a
day or so they are fed on the chimney-top, and then are conducted to
the dead leafless bough of some tree, where, sitting in a row, they are
attended with great assiduity, and may then be called perchers. In a
day or two more they become flyers, but are still unable to take their
own food; therefore they play about near the place where the dams are
hawking for flies; and when a mouthful is collected, at a certain
signal given, the dam and the nestling advance, rising towards each
other, and meeting at an angle; the young one all the while uttering
such a little quick note of gratitude and complacency, that a person
must have paid very little regard to the wonders of nature that has not
often remarked this feat.
The dam betakes herself immediately to the business of a second brood
as soon as she is disengaged from her first; which at once associates
with the first broods of house-martins; and with them congregates,
clustering on sunny roofs, towers, and trees. This hirundo brings out
her second brood towards the middle and end of August.
All the summer long is the swallow a most instructive pattern of
unwearied industry and affection; for, from morning to night, while
there is a family to be supported, she spends the whole day in skimming
close to the ground, and exerting the most sudden turns and quick
evolutions. Avenues, and long walks under hedges, and pasture-fields,
and mown meadows where cattle graze, are her delight, especially if
there are trees interspersed; because in such spots insects most
abound. When a fly is taken a smart snap from her bill is heard,
resembling the noise at the shutting of a watch-case; but the motion of
the mandibles are too quick for the eye.
The swallow, probably the male bird, is the excubitor to house-martins,
and other little birds, announcing the approach of birds of prey. For
as soon as an hawk appears, with a shrill alarming note he calls all
the swallows and martins about him; who pursue in a body, and buffet
and strike their enemy till they have driven him from the village,
darting down from above on his back, and rising in a perpendicular line
in perfect security. This bird also will sound the alarm, and strike at
cats when they climb on the roofs of houses, or otherwise approach the
nests. Each species of hirundo drinks as it flies along, sipping the
surface of the water; but the swallow alone, in general, washes on the
wing, by dropping into a pool for many times together: in very hot
weather house-martins and bank-martins dip and wash a little.
The swallow is a delicate songster, and in soft sunny weather sings
both perching and flying; on trees in a kind of concert, and on
chimney-tops: is also a bold flyer, ranging to distant downs and
commons even in windy weather, which the other species seem much to
dislike; nay, even frequenting exposed sea-port towns, and making
little excursions over the salt water. Horsemen on wide downs are often
closely attended by a little party of swallows for miles together,
which plays before and behind them, sweeping around, and collecting all
the skulking insects that are roused by the trampling of the horses’
feet: when the wind blows hard, without this expedient, they are often
forced to settle to pick up their lurking prey.
This species feeds much on little coleoptera, as well as on gnats and
flies: and often settles on dug ground, or paths, for gravels to grind
and digest its food. Before they depart, for some weeks, to a bird,
they forsake houses and chimneys, and roost in trees; and usually
withdraw about the beginning of October; though some few stragglers may
appear on at times till the first week in November.
Some few pairs haunt the new and open streets of London next the
fields, but do not enter, like the house-martin, the close and crowded
parts of the city.
Both male and female are distinguished from their congeners by the
length and forkedness of their tails. They are undoubtedly the most
nimble of all the species: and when the male pursues the female in
amorous chase, they then go beyond their usual speed, and exert a
rapidity almost too quick for the eye to follow.
After this circumstantial detail of the life and discerning στοργὴ of
the swallow, I shall add, for your farther amusement, an anecdote or
two not much in favour of her sagacity:
A certain swallow built for two years together on the handles of a pair
of garden-shears, that were stuck up against the boards in an
out-house, and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever that
implement was wanted: and, what is stranger still, another bird of the
same species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that
happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn.
This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was
brought as a curiosity worthy the most elegant private museum in Great
Britain. The owner, struck with the oddity of the sight, furnished the
bringer with a large shell, or conch, desiring him to fix it just where
the owl hung: the person did as he was ordered, and the following year
a pair, probably the same pair, built their nest in the conch, and laid
their eggs.
The owl and the conch make a strange grotesque appearance, and are not
the least curious specimens in that wonderful collection of art and
nature.*
* Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum.
Thus is instinct in animals, taken the least out of its way, an
undistinguishing, limited faculty; and blind to every circumstance that
does not immediately respect self-preservation, or lead at once to the
propagation or support of their species.
I am,
With all respect, etc., etc.
Letter XIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Feb. 14, 1774.
Dear Sir,
I received your favour of the eighth, and am pleased to find that you
read my little history of the swallow with your usual candour: nor was
I less pleased to find that you made objections where you saw reason.
As to the quotations, it is difficult to say precisely which species of
hirundo Virgil might intend in the lines in question, since the
ancients did not attend to specific differences like modern
naturalists: yet somewhat may be gathered, enough to incline me to
suppose that in the two passages quoted the poet had his eye on the
swallow.
In the first place the epithet garrula suits the swallow well, who is a
great songster; but not the martin, which is rather a mute bird; and
when it sings is so inward as scarce to be heard. Besides, if tignum in
that place signifies a rafter rather than a beam, as it seems to me to
do, then I think it must be the swallow that is alluded to, and not the
martin; since the former does frequently build within the roof against
the rafters; while the latter always, as far as I have been able to
observe, builds without the roof against eaves and cornices.
As to the simile, too much stress must not be laid on it: yet the
epithet nigra speaks plainly in favour of the swallow, whose back and
wings are very black; while the rump of the martin is milk-white, its
back and wings blue, and all its under part white as snow. Nor can the
clumsy motions (comparatively clumsy) of the martin well represent the
sudden and artful evolutions and quick turns which Juturna gave to her
brother’s chariot, so as to elude the eager pursuit of the enraged
Aeneas. The verb sonat also seems to imply a bird that is somewhat
loquacious.*
* Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis ædes
Pervolat, et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo,
Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas:
Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum
Stagna sonat …
We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so as to raise the springs to
a pitch beyond any thing since 1764; which was a remarkable year for
floods and high waters. The land-springs, which we call lavants, break
out much on the downs of Sussex, Hampshire, and Wiltshire. The country
people say when the lavants rise corn will always be dear; meaning that
when the earth is so glutted with water as to send forth springs on the
downs and uplands, that the corn-vales must be drowned; and so it has
proved for these ten or eleven years past. For land-springs have never
obtained more since the memory of man than during that period; nor has
there been known a greater scarcity of all sorts of grain, considering
the great improvements of modern husbandry. Such a run of wet seasons a
century or two ago would, I am persuaded, have occasioned a famine.
Therefore pamphlets and newspaper letters, that talk of combinations,
tend to inflame and mislead; since we must not expect plenty till
Providence sends us more favourable seasons.
The wheat of last year, all round this district, and in the county of
Rutland, and elsewhere, yields remarkably bad: and our wheat on the
ground, by the continual late sudden vicissitudes from fierce frost to
pouring rains, looks poorly; and the turnips rot very fast.
Letter XX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Feb. 26, 1774.
Dear Sir,
The sand-martin, or bank-martin, is by much the least of any of the
British hirundines; and, as far as we have ever seen, the smallest
known hirundo; though Brisson asserts that there is one much smaller,
and that is the hirundo esculenta.
But it is much to be regretted that it is scarce possible for any
observer to be so full and exact as he could wish in reciting the
circumstances attending the life and conversation of this little bird,
since it is fera natura, at least in this part of the kingdom,
disclaiming all domestic attachments, and haunting wild heaths and
commons where there are large lakes; while the other species,
especially the swallow and house-martin, are remarkably gentle and
domesticated, and never seem to think themselves safe but under the
protection of man.
Here are in this parish, in the sand-pits and banks of the lakes of
Wolmer-forest, several colonies of these birds; and yet they are never
seen in the village; nor do they at all frequent the cottages that are
scattered about in that wild district. The only instance I ever
remember where this species haunts any building is at the town of
Bishop’s Waltham, in this county, where many sand-martins nestle and
breed in the scaffold-holes of the back-wall of William of Wykeham’s
stables: but then this wall stands in a very sequestered and retired
enclosure, and faces upon a large and beautiful lake. And indeed this
species seems so to delight in large waters, that no instance occurs of
their abounding, but near vast pools or rivers: and in particular it
has been remarked that they swarm in the banks of the Thames in some
places below London-bridge.
It is curious to observe with what different degrees of architectonic
skill Providence has endowed birds of the same genus, and so nearly
correspondent in their general mode of life! for while the swallow and
the house-martin discover the greatest address in raising and securely
fixing crusts or shells of loam as cunabula for their young, the
bank-martin terebrates a round and regular hole in the sand or earth,
which is serpentine, horizontal, and about two feet deep. At the inner
end of this burrow does this bird deposit, in a good degree of safety,
her rude nest, consisting of fine grasses and feathers, usually
goose-feathers, very inartificially laid together.
Perseverance will accomplish anything: though at first one would be
disinclined to believe that this weak bird, with her soft and tender
bill and claws, should ever be able to bore the stubborn sand-bank
without entirely disabling herself; yet with these feeble instruments
have I seen a pair of them make great dispatch: and could remark how
much they had scooped that day by the fresh sand which ran down the
bank, and was of a different colour from that which lay loose and
bleached in the sun.
In what space of time these little artists are able to mine and finish
these cavities I have never been able to discover, for reasons given
above; but it would be a matter worthy of observation, where it falls
in the way of any naturalist to make his remarks. This I have often
taken notice of, that several holes of different depths are left
unfinished at the end of summer. To imagine that these beginnings were
intentionally made in order to be in the greater forwardness for next
spring, is allowing perhaps too much foresight and rerum prudentia to a
simple bird. May not the cause of these latebrae being left unfinished
arise from their meeting in those places with strata too harsh, hard,
and solid, for their purpose, which they relinquish, and go to a fresh
spot that works more freely ? Or may they not in other places fall in
with a soil as much too loose and mouldering, liable to flounder, and
threatening to overwhelm them and their labours ?
One thing is remarkable — that, after some years, the old holes are
forsaken and new ones bored; perhaps because the old habitations grow
foul and fetid from long use, or because they may so abound with fleas
as to become untenable. This species of swallow moreover is strangely
annoyed with fleas: and we have seen fleas, bed-fleas (pulex irritans),
swarming at the mouths of these holes, like bees upon the stools of
their hives.
The following circumstance should by no means be omitted — that these
birds do not make use of their caverns by way of hybernacula, as might
be expected; since banks so perforated have been dug out with care in
the winter, when nothing was found but empty nests.
The sand-martin arrives much about the same time with the swallow, and
lays, as she does, from four to six white eggs. But as the species is
cryptogame, carrying on the business of nidification, incubation, and
the support of its young in the dark, it would not be so easy to
ascertain the time of breeding, were it not for the coming forth of the
broods, which appear much about the time, or rather somewhat earlier
than those of the swallow. The nestlings are supported in common like
those of their congeners, with gnats and other small insects; and
sometimes they are fed with libellulae (dragon-flies) almost as long as
themselves. In the last week in June we have seen a row of these
sitting on a rail near a great pool as perchers; and so young and
helpless, as easily to be taken by hand: but whether the dams ever feed
them on the wing, as swallows and house-martins do, we have never yet
been able to determine; nor do we know whether they pursue and attack
birds of prey.
When they happen to breed near hedges and enclosures, they are
dispossessed of their breeding holes by the house-sparrow, which is on
the same account a fell adversary to house-martins.
These hirundines are no songsters, but rather mute, making only a
little harsh noise when a person approaches their nests. They seem not
to be of a sociable turn, never with us congregating with their
congeners in the autumn. Undoubtedly they breed a second time, like the
house-martin and swallow; and withdraw about Michaelmas.
Though in some particular districts they may happen to abound, yet in
the whole, in the south of England at least, is this much the rarest
species. For there are few towns or large villages but what abound with
house-martins; few churches, towers, or steeples, but what are haunted
by some swifts; scarce a hamlet or single cottage-chimney that has not
its swallow; while the bank-martins, scattered here and there, live a
sequestered life among some abrupt sand-hills, and in the banks of some
few rivers.
These birds have a peculiar manner of flying; flitting about with odd
jerks, and vacillations, not unlike the motions of a butterfly.
Doubtless the flight of all hirundines is influenced by, and adapted
to, the peculiar sort of insects which furnish their food. Hence it
would be worth inquiry to examine what particular group of insects
affords the principal food of each respective species of swallow.
Notwithstanding what has been advanced above, some few sand-martins, I
see, haunt the skirts of London, frequenting the dirty pools in Saint
George’s-Fields, and about White-Chapel. The question is where these
build, since there are no banks or bold shores in that neighbourhood:
perhaps they nestle in the scaffold-holes of some old or new deserted
building. They dip and wash as they fly sometimes, like the
house-martin and swallow.
Sand-martins differ from their congeners in the diminutiveness of their
size, and in their colour, which is what is usually called a
mouse-colour. Near Valencia in Spain, they are taken, says Willughby,
and sold in the markets for the table; and are called by the country
people, probably from their desultory jerking manner of flight,
Papilion de montagna.
Letter XXI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 28, 1774.
Dear Sir,
As the swift or black-martin is the largest of the British hirundines,
so is it undoubtedly the latest comer. For I remember but one instance
of its appearing before the last week in April: and in some of our late
frosty, harsh springs, it has not been seen till the beginning of May.
This species usually arrives in pairs.
The swift, like the sand-martin, is very defective in architecture,
making no crust, or shell, for its nest; but forming it of dry grasses
and feathers, very rudely and inartificially put together. With all my
attention to these birds, I have never been able once to discover one
in the act of collecting or carrying in materials: so that I have
suspected (since their nests are exactly the same) that they sometimes
usurp upon the house-sparrows, and expel them, as sparrows do the house
and sand-martin; well remembering that I have seen them squabbling
together at the entrance of their holes; and the sparrows up in arms,
and much disconcerted at these intruders. And yet I am assured, by a
nice observer in such matters, that they do collect feathers for their
nests in Andalusia; and that he has shot them with such materials in
their mouths.
Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business of nidification quite
in the dark, in crannies of castles, and towers, and steeples, and upon
the tops of the walls of churches under the roof; and therefore cannot
be so narrowly watched as those species that build more openly: but,
from what I could ever observe, they begin nesting about the middle of
May; and I have remarked, from eggs taken, that they have sat hard by
the ninth of June. In general they haunt tall buildings, churches, and
steeples, and breed only in such: yet in this village some pairs
frequent the lowest and meanest cottages, and educate their young under
those thatched roofs. We remember but one instance where they breed out
of buildings; and that is in the sides of a deep chalk-pit near the
town of Odiham, in this county, where we have seen many pairs entering
the crevices, and skimming and squeaking round the precipices.
As I have regarded these amusive birds with no small attention, if I
should advance something new and peculiar with respect to them, and
different from all other birds, I might perhaps be credited; especially
as my assertion is the result of many years’ exact observation. The
fact that I would advance is, that swifts tread, or copulate, on the
wing: and I would wish any nice observer, that is startled at this
supposition, to use his own eyes, and I think he will soon be
convinced. In another class of animals, viz., the insect, nothing is so
common as to see the different species of many genera in conjunction as
they fly. The swift is almost continually on the wing; and as it never
settles on the ground, on trees, or roofs, would seldom find
opportunity for amorous rites, was it not enabled to indulge them in
the air. If any person would watch these birds of a fine morning in
May, as they are sailing round at a great height from the ground, he
would see, every now and then, one drop on the back of another, and
both of them sink down together for many fathoms with a loud piercing
shriek. This I take to be the juncture when the business of generation
is carrying on.
As the swift eats, drinks, collects materials for its nest, and, at it
seems, propagates on the wing; it appears to live more in the air than
any other bird, and to perform all functions there save those of
sleeping and incubation.
This hirundo differs widely from its congeners in laying invariably but
two eggs at a time, which are milk-white, long, and peaked at the small
end; whereas the other species lay at each brood from four to six. It
is a most alert bird, rising very early, and retiring to roost very
late; and is on the wing in the height of summer at least sixteen
hours. In the longest days it does not withdraw to rest till a quarter
before nine in the evening, being the latest of all day birds. Just
before they retire whole groups of them assemble high in the air, and
squeak, and shoot about with wonderful rapidity. But this bird is never
so much alive as in sultry thundry weather, when it expresses great
alacrity, and calls forth all its powers. In hot mornings several,
getting together in little parties, dash round the steeples and
churches, squeaking as they go in a very clamorous manner; these, by
nice observers, are supposed to be males, serenading their sitting
hens; and not without reason, since they seldom squeak till they come
close to the walls or eaves, and since those within utter at the same
time a little inward note of complacency.
When the hen has sat hard all day, she rushes forth just as it is
almost dark, and stretches and relieves her weary limbs, and snatches a
scanty meal for a few minutes, and then returns to her duty of
incubation. Swifts, when wantonly and cruelly shot while they have
young, discover a little lump of insects in their mouths, which they
pouch and hold under their tongue. In general they feed in a much
higher district than the other species; a proof that gnats and other
insects do also abound to a considerable height in the air: they also
range to vast distances; since locomotion is no labour to them, who are
endowed with such wonderful powers of wing. Their powers seem to be in
proportion to their levers; and their wings are longer in proportion
than those of almost any other bird. When they mute, or ease themselves
in flight, they raise their wings, and make them meet over their backs.
At some certain times in the summer I had remarked that swifts were
hawking very low for hours together over pools and streams; and could
not help inquiring into the object of their pursuit that induced them
to descend so much below their usual range. After some trouble, I found
that they were taking phryganeae, ephemerae, and libellulae
(cadew-flies, may-flies, and dragon-flies) that were just emerged out
of their aurelia state. I then no longer wondered that they should be
so willing to stoop for a prey that afforded them such plentiful and
succulent nourishment.
They bring out their young about the middle or latter end of July: but
as these never become perchers, nor, that ever I could discern, are fed
on the wing by their dams, the coming forth of the young is not so
notorious as in the other species.
On the thirtieth of last June I untiled the eaves of an house where
many pairs build, and found in each nest only two squab naked pulli: on
the eighth of July I repeated the same inquiry, and found they had made
very little progress towards a fledged state, but were still naked and
helpless. From whence we may conclude that birds whose way of life
keeps them perpetually on the wing would not be able to quit their nest
till the end of the month. Swallows and martins, that have numerous
families, are continually feeding them every two or three minutes;
while swifts, that have but two young to maintain, are much at their
leisure, and do not attend on their nests for hours together.
Sometimes they pursue and strike at hawks that come in their way; but
not with that vehemence and fury that swallows express on the same
occasion. They are out all day long in wet days, feeding about, and
disregarding still rain: from whence two things may be gathered; first,
that many insects abide high in the air, even in rain; and next, that
the feathers of these birds must be well preened to resist so much wet.
Windy, and particularly windy weather with heavy showers, they dislike;
and on such days withdraw, and are scarce ever seen.
There is a circumstance respecting the colour of swifts, which seems
not to be unworthy our attention. When they arrive in the spring they
are all over of a glossy, dark soot-colour, except their chins, which
are white; but, by being all day long in the sun and air, they become
quite weather-beaten and bleached before they depart, and yet they
return glossy again in the spring. Now, if they pursue the sun into
lower latitudes, as some suppose, in order to enjoy a perpetual summer,
why do they not return bleached ? Do they not rather perhaps retire to
rest for a season, and at that juncture moult and change their
feathers, since all other birds are known to moult soon after the
season of breeding?
Swifts are very anomalous in many particulars, dissenting from all
their congeners not only in the number of their young, but in breeding
but once in a summer; whereas all the other British hirundines breed
invariably twice. It is past all doubt that swifts can breed but once,
since they withdraw in a short time after the flight of their young,
and some time before their congeners bring out their second brood. We
may here remark, that, as swifts breed but once in a summer, and only
two at a time, and the other hirundines twice, the latter, who lay from
four to six eggs, increase at an average five times as fast as the
former.
But in nothing are swifts more singular than in their early retreat.
They retire, as to the main body of them, by the tenth of August, and
sometimes a few days sooner: and every straggler invariably withdraws
by the twentieth, while their congeners, all of them, stay till the
beginning of October; many of them all through that month, and some
occasionally to the beginning of November. This early retreat is
mysterious and wonderful, since that time is often the sweetest season
in the year. But, what is more extraordinary, they begin to retire
still earlier in the most southerly parts of Andalusia, where they can
be no ways influenced by any defect of heat; or, as one might suppose,
defect of food. Are they regulated in their motions with us by a
failure of food, or by a propensity to moulting, or by a disposition to
rest after so rapid a life, or by what? This is one of those incidents
in natural history that not only baffles our searches, but almost
eludes our guesses!
These hirundines never perch on trees or roofs, and so never congregate
with their congeners. They are fearless while haunting their nesting
places, and are not to be scared with a gun; and are often beaten down
with poles and cudgels as they stoop to go under the eaves. Swifts are
much infested with those pests to the genus called hippoboscae
hirundinis; and often wriggle and scratch themselves, in their flight,
to get rid of that clinging annoyance.
Swifts are no songsters, and have only one harsh screaming note; yet
there are ears to which it is not displeasing, from an agreeable
association of ideas, since that note never occurs but in the most
lovely summer weather.
They never settle on the ground but through accident; and when down can
hardly rise, on account of the shortness of their legs and the length
of their wings: neither can they walk, but only crawl; but they have a
strong grasp with their feet, by which they cling to walls. Their
bodies being flat they can enter a very narrow crevice; and where they
cannot pass on their bellies they will turn up edgewise.
The particular formation of the foot discriminates the swift from all
British hirundines; and indeed from all other known birds, the hirundo
melba, great white-bellied swift of Gibraltar, excepted; for it is so
disposed as to carry ‘omnes quatuor digitos anticos’ all its four toes
forward; besides, the least toe, which should be the back-toe, consists
of one bone alone, and the other three only of two apiece. A
construction most rare and peculiar, but nicely adapted to the purposes
in which their feet are employed. This, and some peculiarities
attending the nostrils and under mandible, have induced a discerning
naturalist* to suppose that this species might constitute a genus per
se.
* John Antony Scopoli, of Carniola, M.D.
In London a party of swifts frequents the Tower, playing and feeding
over the river just below the bridge; others haunt some of the churches
of the Borough next the fields; but do not venture, like the
house-martin, into the close crowded part of the town.
The Swedes have bestowed a very pertinent name on this swallow, calling
it ring swala, form the perpetual rings or circles that it takes round
the scene of its nidification.
Swifts feed on coleoptera, or small beetles with hard cases over their
wings, as well as on the softer insects; but it does not appear how
they can procure gravel to grind their food, as swallows do, since they
never settle on the ground. Young ones, over-run with hippoboscae, are
sometimes found, under their nests, fallen to the ground: the number of
vermin rendering their abode insupportable any longer. They frequent in
this village several abject cottages: yet a succession still haunts the
same unlikely roofs: a good proof this that the same birds return to
the same spots. As they must stoop very low to get up under these
humble eaves, cats lie in wait, and sometimes catch them on the wing.
On the fifth of July, 1775, I again untiled part of a roof over the
nest of a swift. The dam sat in the nest; but so strongly was she
affected by natural στοργὴ for her brood, which she supposed to be in
danger, that, regardless of her own safety, she would not stir, but lay
sullenly by them, permitting herself to be taken in hand. The squab
young we brought down and placed on the grass-plot, where they tumbled
about, and were as helpless as a new-born child. While we contemplated
their naked bodies, their unwieldy disproportioned abdomina, and their
heads, too heavy for their necks to support, we could not but wonder
when we reflected that these shiftless beings in a little more than a
fortnight would be able to dash through the air almost with the
inconceivable swiftness of a meteor; and perhaps, in their emigration
must traverse vast continents and oceans as distant as the equator. So
soon does nature advance small birds to their ἡλικία or state of
perfection; while the progressive growth of men and large quadrupeds is
slow and tedious!
I am, etc.
Letter XXII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 13, 1774.
Dear Sir,
By means of a straight cottage chimney I had an opportunity this summer
of remarking, at my leisure, how swallows ascend and descend through
the shaft; but my pleasure, in contemplating the address with which
this feat was performed to a consideraable depth in the chimney, was
somewhat interrupted by apprehensions lest my eyes might undergo the
same fate with those of Tobit.*
* Tobit ii. 10.
Perhaps it may be some amusement to you to hear at what times the
different species of hirundines arrived this spring in three very
distant counties of this kingdom. With us the swallow was seen first on
April the 4th, the swift on April the 24th, the bank-martin on April
the 12th, and the house-martin not till April the 30th. At South Zele,
Devonshire, swallows did not arrive till April the 25th; swifts, in
plenty, on May the 1st; and house-martins not till the middle of May.
At Blackburn, in Lancashire, swifts were seen April the 28th, swallows
April the 29th, house-martins May the 1st. Do these different dates, in
such distant districts, prove anything for or against migration ?
A farmer, near Weyhill, fallows his land with two teams of asses; one
of which works till noon, and the other in the afternoon. When these
animals have done their work, they are penned, all night, like sheep,
on the fallow. In the winter they are confined and foddered in a yard,
and make plenty of dung.
Linnaeus says that hawks ‘paciscuntur inducias cum avibus, quamdiu
cuculus cuculat’ but it appears to me that, during that period, many
little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen
by their feathers left in lanes and under hedges.
The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, driving
such birds as approach its nest, with great fury, to a distance. The
Welch call it pen y llwyn, the head or master of the coppice. He
suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter the garden where he
haunts; and is, for the time, a good guard to the new-sown legumens. In
general he is very successful in the defence of his family: but once I
observed in my garden, that several magpies came determined to storm
the nest of a missel-thrush: the dams defended their mansion with great
vigour, and fought resolutely pro aris & focis; but numbers at last
prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed the young alive.
In the season of notification the wildest birds are comparatively tame.
Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though they are continually
frequented; and the missel-thrush, though most shy and wild in the
autumn and winter, builds in my garden close to a walk where people are
passing all day long.
Wall-fruit abounds with me this year: but my grapes, that used to be
forward and good, are at present backward beyond all precedent: and
this is not the worst of the story; for the same ungenial weather, the
same black cold solstice, has injured the more necessary fruits of the
earth, and discoloured and blighted our wheat. The crop of hops
promises to be very large.
Frequent returns of deafness incommode me sadly, and half disqualify me
for a naturalist; for, when those fits are upon me, I lose all the
pleasing notices and little intimations arising from rural sounds: and
May is to me as silent and mute with respect to the notes of birds,
etc., as August. My eyesight is, thank God, quick and good; but with
respect to the other sense, I am, at times, disabled:
And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
Letter XXIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, June 8, 1775.
Dear Sir,
On September the 21st, 1741, being then on a visit, and intent on
field-diversions, I rose before daybreak: when I came into the
enclosures, I found the stubbles and clover-grounds matted all over
with a thick coat of cobweb, in the meshes of which a copious and heavy
dew hung so plentifully that the whole face of the country seemed, as
it were, covered with two or three setting-nets drawn one over another.
When the dogs attempted to hunt, their eyes were so blinded and
hoodwinked that they could not proceed, but were obliged to lie down
and scrape the incumbrances from their faces with their fore-feet, so
that, finding my sport interrupted, I returned home musing in my mind
on the oddness of the occurrence.
As the morning advanced the sun became bright and warm, and the day
turned out one of those most lovely ones which no season but the autumn
produces; cloudless, calm, serene, and worthy of the South of France
itself.
About nine an appearance very unusual began to demand our attention, a
shower of cobwebs falling from very elevated regions, and continuing,
without any interruption, till the close of the day. These webs were
not single filmy threads, floating in the air in all directions, but
perfect flakes or rags; some near an inch broad, and five or six long,
which fell with a degree of velocity which showed they were
considerably heavier than the atmosphere.
On every side as the observer turned his eyes might he behold a
continual succession of fresh flakes falling into his sight, and
twinkling like stars as they turned their sides towards the sun.
How far this wonderful shower extended would be difficult to say; but
we know that it reached Bradley, Selborne, and Alresford, three places
which lie in a sort of a triangle, the shortest of whose sides is about
eight miles in extent.
At the second of those places there was a gentleman (for whose veracity
and intelligent turn we have the greatest veneration) who observed it
the moment he got abroad; but concluded that, as soon as he came upon
the hill above his house, where he took his morning rides, he should be
higher than this meteor, which he imagined might have been blown, like
thistle-down, from the common above: but, to his great astonishment,
when he rode to the most elevated part of the down, 300 feet above his
fields, he found the webs in appearance still as much above him as
before; still descending into sight in a constant succession, and
twinkling in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most
incurious.
Neither before nor after was any such fall observed; but on this day
the flakes hung in the trees and hedges so thick, that a diligent
person sent out might have gathered baskets full.
The remark that I shall make on these cobweb-like appearances, called
gossamer, is, that, strange and superstitious as the notions about them
were formerly, nobody in these days doubts but that they are the real
production of small spiders, which swarm in the fields in fine weather
in autumn, and have a power of shooting out webs from their tails so as
to render themselves buoyant, and lighter than air. But why these
rapturous insects should that day take such a wonderful aerial
excursion, and why their webs should at once become so gross and
material as to be considerably more weighty than air, and to descend
with precipitation, is a matter beyond my skill. If I might be allowed
to hazard a supposition, I should imagine that those filmy threads,
when first shot, might be entangled in the rising dew, and so drawn up,
spiders and all, by a brisk evaporation into the region where clouds
are formed: and if the spiders have a power of coiling and thickening
their webs in the air, as Dr. Lister says they have [see his Letters to
Mr. Ray], then, when they were become heavier than the air, they must
fall.
Every day in fine weather, in autumn chiefly, do I see those spiders
shooting out their webs and mounting aloft: they will go off from your
finger if you will take them into your hand. Last summer one alighted
on my book as I was reading in the parlour; and, running to the top of
the page, and shooting out a web, took its departure from thence. But
what I most wondered at, was that it went off with considerable
velocity in a place where no air was stirring; and I am sure that I did
not assist it with my breath. So that these little crawlers seem to
have, while mounting, some loco-motive power without the use of wings,
and to move in the air, faster then the air itself.
Letter XXIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Aug. 15, 1775.
Dear Sir,
There is a wonderful spirit of sociality in the brute creation,
independent of sexual attachment: the congregating of gregarious birds
in the winter is a remarkable instance.
Many horses, though quiet with company, will not stay one minute in a
field by themselves: the strongest fences cannot restrain them. My
neighbour’s horse will not only not stay by himself abroad, but he will
not bear to be left alone in a strange stable without discovering the
utmost impatience, and endeavouring to break the rack and manger with
his fore feet. He has been known to leap out at a stable-window,
through which dung was thrown, after company; and yet in other respects
is remarkably quiet. Oxen and cows will not fatten by themselves; but
will neglect the finest pasture that is not recommended by society. It
would be needless to instance in sheep, which constantly flock
together.
But this propensity seems not to be confined to animals of the same
species; for we know a doe still alive, that was brought up from a
little fawn with a dairy of cows; with them it goes afield, and with
them it returns to the yard. The dogs of the house take no notice of
this deer, being used to her; but, if strange dogs come by, a chase
ensues; while the master smiles to see his favourite securely leading
her pursuers over hedge, or gate, or stile, till she returns to the
cows, who, with fierce longings and menacing horns, drive the
assailants quite out of the pasture.
Even great disparity of kind and size does not always prevent social
advances and mutual fellowship. For a very intelligent and observant
person has assured me that, in the former part of his life, keeping but
one horse, he happened also on a time to have but one solitary hen.
These two incongruous animals spent much of their time together in a
lonely orchard, where they saw no creature but each other. By degrees
an apparent regard began to take place between these two sequestered
individuals. The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of
complacency, rubbing herself gently against his legs; while the horse
would look down with satisfaction, and move with the greatest caution
and circumspection, lest he should trample on his diminutive companion.
Thus, by mutual good offices, each seemed to console the vacant hours
of the other: so that Milton, when he puts the following sentiment in
the mouth of Adam, seems to be somewhat mistaken:
Much less can bird with beast, or fish with fowl,
So well converse, nor with the ox the ape.
I am, etc.
Letter XXV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Oct. 2, 1775.
Dear Sir,
We have two gangs or hordes of gypsies which infest the south and west
of England, and come round in their circuit two or three times in the
year. One of these tribes calls itself by the noble name of Stanley, of
which I have nothing particular to say; but the other is distinguished
by an appellative somewhat remarkable. — As far as their harsh
gibberish can be understood, they seem to say that the name of their
clan is Curleople; now the termination of this word is apparently
Grecian: and as Mezeray and the gravest historians all agree that these
vagrants did certainly migrate from Egypt and the East two or three
centuries ago, and so spread by degrees over Europe, may not this name,
a little corrupted, be the very name they brought with them from the
Levant? It would be matter of some curiosity, could one meet with an
intelligent person among them, to inquire whether, in their jargon,
they still retain any Greek words: the Greek radicals will appear in
hand, foot, head, water, earth, etc. It is possible that amidst their
cant and corrupted dialect many mutilated remains of their native
language might still be discovered.
With regard to those peculiar people, the gypsies, one thing is very
remarkable, and especially as they came from warmer climates; and that
is, that while other beggars lodge in barns, stables, and cow-houses,
these sturdy savages seem to pride themselves in braving the severities
of winter, and in living sub dio the whole year round. Last September
was as wet a month as ever was known; and yet during those deluges did
a young gypsy-girl lie-in in the midst of one of our hop-gardens, on
the cold ground, with nothing over her but a piece of blanket extended
on a few hazel-rods bent hoop-fashion, and stuck into the earth at each
end, in circumstances too trying for a cow in the same condition: yet
within this garden there was a large hop-kiln, into the chambers of
which she might have retired, had she thought shelter an object worthy
her attention.
Europe itself, it seems, cannot set bounds to the rovings of those
vagabonds; for Mr. Bell, in his return from Peking, met a gang of these
people on the confines of Tartary, who were endeavouring to penetrate
those deserts and try their fortune in China.*
* See Bell’s Travels in China.
Gypsies are called in French, Bohemians; in Italian and modern Greek,
Zingari.
I am, etc.
Letter XXVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Nov. 1, 1775.
Dear Sir,
Hic … taedae pingues, hic plurimus ignis
Semper, et assidua postes fuligine nigri.
I shall make no apology for troubling you with the detail of a very
simple piece of domestic Economy, being satisfied that you think
nothing beneath your attention that tends to utility: the matter
alluded to is the use of rushes instead of candles, which I am well
aware prevails in many districts besides this; but as I know there are
countries also where it does not obtain, and as I have considered the
subject with some degree of exactness, I shall proceed in my humble
story, and leave you to judge of the expediency.
The proper species of rush for this purpose seems to be the juncus
effusus, or common soft rush, which is to be found in most moist
pastures, by the sides of streams, and under hedges. These rushes are
in best condition in the height of summer; but may be gathered, so as
to serve the purpose well, quite on to autumn. It would be needless to
add that the largest and longest are best. Decayed labourers, women,
and children, make it their business to procure and prepare them. As
soon as they are cut they must be flung into water, and kept there; for
otherwise they will dry and shrink, and the peel will not run. At first
a person would find it no easy matter to divest a rush of its peel or
rind, so as to leave one regular, narrow, even rib from top to bottom
that may support the pith: but this, like other feats, soon becomes
familiar even to children; and we have seen an old woman, stone-blind,
performing this business with great dispatch, and seldom failing to
strip them with the nicest regularity. When these junci are thus far
prepared, they must lie out on the grass to be bleached, and take the
dew for some nights, and afterwards be dried in the sun.
Some address is required in dipping these rushes in the scalding fat or
grease; but this knack also is to be attained by practice. The careful
wife of an industrious Hampshire labourer obtains all her fat for
nothing; for she saves the scumrnings of her bacon-pot for this use;
and, if the grease abounds with salt, she causes the salt to
precipitate to the bottom, by setting the scummings in a warm oven.
Where hogs are not much in use, and especially by the sea-side, the
coarser animal oils will come very cheap. A pound of common grease may
be procured for four pence; and about six pounds of grease will dip a
pound of rushes; and one pound of rushes may be bought for one
shilling: so that a pound of rushes, medicated and ready for use, will
cost three shillings. If men that keep bees will mix a little wax with
the grease, it will give it a consistency, and render it more cleanly,
and make the rushes burn longer: mutton-suet would have the same
effect.
A good rush, which measured in length two feet four inches and an half,
being minuted, burnt only three minutes short of an hour: and a rush
still of greater length has been known to burn one hour and a quarter.
These rushes give a good clear light. Watch-lights (coated with
tallow), it is true, shed a dismal one, ‘darkness visible’; but then
the wicks of those have two ribs of the rind, or peel, to support the
pith, while the wick of the dipped rush has but one. The two ribs are
intended to impede the progress of the flame, and make the candle last.
In a pound of dry rushes, avoirdupois, which I caused to be weighed and
numbered, we found upwards of one thousand six hundred individuals. Now
suppose each of these burns, one with another, only half an hour, then
a poor man will purchase eight hundred hours of light, a time exceeding
thirty-three entire days, for three shillings. According to this
account each rush, before dipping, costs 1/33 of a farthing, and 1/11
afterwards. Thus a poor family will enjoy 5&1/2 hours of comfortable
light for a farthing. An experienced old housekeeper assures me that
one pound and a half of rushes completely supplies his family the year
round, since working people burn no candle in the long days, because
they rise and go to bed by daylight.
Little farmers use rushes much in the short days, both morning and
evening in the dairy and kitchen; but the very poor, who are always the
worst economists, and therefore must continue very poor, buy an
halfpenny candle every evening, which, in their blowing open rooms,
does not burn much more than two hours. Thus have they only two hours’
light for their money instead of eleven.
While on the subject of rural oeconomy, it may not be improper to
mention a pretty implement of housewifery that we have seen no where
else; that is, little neat besoms which our foresters make from the
stalk of the polytricum commune, or great golden maiden-hair, which
they call silk-wood, and find plenty in the bogs. When this moss is
well combed and dressed, and divested of its outer skin, it becomes of
a beautiful bright chestnut colour; and, being soft and pliant, is very
proper for the dusting of beds, curtains, carpets, hangings, etc. If
these besoms were known to the brushmakers in town, it is probable they
might come much in use for the purpose above-mentioned.*
* A besom of this sort is to be seen in Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum.
I am, etc.
Letter XXVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, December 12, 1775.
Dear Sir,
We had in this village more than twenty years ago an idiot-boy, whom I
well remember, who, from a child, showed a strong propensity to bees;
they were his food, his amusement, his sole object. And as people of
this cast have seldom more than one point in view, so this lad exerted
all his few faculties on this one pursuit. In the winter he dosed away
his time, within his father’s house, by the fireside, in a kind of
torpid state, seldom departing from the chimney-corner; but in the
summer he was all alert, and in quest of his game in the fields, and on
sunny banks. Honeybees, humble-bees, and wasps, were his prey wherever
he found them: he had no apprehensions from their stings, but would
seize them nudis manibus, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and
suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would
fill his bosom between his shirt and his skin with a number of these
captives; and sometimes would confine them in bottles. He was a very
merops apiaster, or bee-bird; and very injurious to men that kept bees;
for he would slide into their bee-gardens, and, sitting down before the
stools, would rap with his finger on the hives, and so take the bees as
they came out. He has been known to overturn hives for the sake of
honey, of which he was passionately fond. Where metheglin was making he
would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of what he
called bee-wine. As he ran about he used to make a humming noise with
his lips, resembling the buzzing of bees. This lad was lean and sallow,
and of a cadaverous complexion; and, except in his favourite pursuit,
in which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of
understanding. Had his capacity been better, and directed to the same
object, he had perhaps abated much of our wonder at the feats of a more
modern exhibitor of bees; and we may justly say of him now,
… Thou,
Had thy presiding star propitious shone,
Should’st Wildman be. …
When a tall youth he was removed from hence to a distant village, where
he died, as I understand, before he arrived at manhood.
I am, etc.
Letter XXVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Jan. 8, 1776.
Dear Sir,
It is the hardest thing in the world to shake off superstitious
prejudices: they are sucked in as it were with our mother’s milk; and
growing up with us at a time when they take the fastest hold and make
the most lasting impressions, become so interwoven into our very
constitutions, that the strongest good sense is required to disengage
ourselves from them. No wonder therefore that the lower people retain
them their whole lives through, since their minds are not invigorated
by a liberal education, and therefore not enabled to make any efforts
adequate to the occasion.
Such a preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on the
superstitions of this district, lest we should be suspected of
exaggeration in a recital of practices too gross for this enlightened
age.
But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to remember,
that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within twenty miles of the
capital, they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age,
and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of witchcraft; and, by
trying experiments, drowned them in a horse-pond.
In a farm-yard near the middle of this village stands, at this day, a
row of pollard-ashes, which, by the seams and long cicatrices down
their sides, manifestly show that, in former times, they have been
cleft asunder. These trees, when young and flexible, were severed and
held open by wedges, while ruptured children, stripped naked, were
pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion that, by such a
process, the poor babes would be cured of their infirmity. As soon as
the operation was over, the tree, in the suffering part, was plastered
with loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and
soldered together, as usually fell out, where the feat was performed
with any adroitness at all, the party was cured; but, where the cleft
continued to gape, the operation, it was supposed, would prove
ineffectual. Having occasion to enlarge my garden not long since, I cut
down two or three such trees, one of which did not grow together.
We have several persons now living in the village, who, in their
childhood, were supposed to be healed by this superstitious ceremony,
derived down perhaps from our Saxon ancestors, who practiced it before
their conversion to Christianity.
At the south corner of the Plestor, or area, near the church, there
stood, about twenty years ago, a very old grotesque hollow pollard-ash,
which for ages had been looked on with no small veneration as a
shrew-ash. Now a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, when
gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the
pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the
part affected: for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful
and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it
horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel
anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against
this accident, to which they were continually liable, our provident
fore-fathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, when once
medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made
thus: * — Into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an
auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged
in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations long since forgotten. As
the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration are no longer
understood, all succession is at an end, and no such tree is known to
subsist in the manor, or hundred.
* For a similar practice, see Plot’s Staffordshire.
As to that on the Plestor,
The late vicar stubb’d and burnt it,
when he was way-warden, regardless of the remonstrances of the
by-standers, who interceded in vain for its preservation, urging its
power and efficacy, and alleging that it had been
Religione patrum multos servata per annos.
I am, etc.
Letter XXIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Feb. 7, 1776.
Dear Sir,
In heavy fogs, on elevated situations especially, trees are perfect
alembics: and no one that has not attended to such matters can imagine
how much water one tree will distil in a night’s time by condensing the
vapour, which trickles down the twigs and boughs, so as to make the
ground below quite in a float. In Newton-lane, in October 1775, on a
misty day, a particular oak in leaf dropped so fast that the cart-way
stood in puddles and the ruts ran with water, though the ground in
general was dusty.
In some of our smaller islands in the West-Indies, if I mistake not,
there are no springs or rivers; but the people are supplied with that
necessary element, water, merely by the dripping of some large tall
trees, which, standing in the bosom of a mountain, keep their heads
constantly enveloped with fogs and clouds, from which they dispense
their kindly never-ceasing moisture; and so render those districts
habitable by condensation alone.
Trees in leaf have such a vast proportion more of surface than those
that are naked, that, in theory, their condensations should greatly
exceed those that are stripped of their leaves; but, as the former
imbibe also a great quantity of moisture, it is difficult to say which
drip most: but this I know, that deciduous trees that are entwined with
much ivy seem to distil the greatest quantity. Ivy-leaves are smooth,
and thick, and cold, and therefore condense very fast; and besides
evergreens imbibe very little. These facts may furnish the intelligent
with hints concerning what trees they should plant round small ponds
that they would wish to be perennial; and show them how advantageous
some trees are in preference to others.
Trees perspire profusely, condense largely, and check evaporation so
much, that woods are always moist: no wonder therefore that they
contribute much to pools and streams.
That trees are great promoters of lakes and rivers appears from a
well-known fact in North America; for, since the woods and forests have
been grubbed and cleared, all bodies of water are much diminished; so
that some streams, that were very considerable a century ago, will not
now drive a common mill.* Besides, most woodlands, forests, and chases
with us abound with pools and morasses; no doubt for the reason given
above.
* Vide Kalm’s Travels to North America.
To a thinking mind few phenomena are more strange than the state of
little ponds on the summits of chalk-hills, many of which are never dry
in the most trying droughts of summer. On chalk-hills I say, because in
many rocky and gravelly soils springs usually break out pretty high on
the sides of elevated grounds and mountains; but no person acquainted
with chalky districts will allow that they ever saw springs in such a
soil but in valleys and bottoms, since the waters of so pervious a
stratum as chalk all lie on one dead level, as well-diggers have
assured me again and again.
Now we have many such little round ponds in this district; and one in
particular on our sheep-down, three hundred feet above my house; which
though never above three feet deep in the middle, and not more than
thirty feet in diameter, and containing perhaps not more than two or
three hundred hogsheads of water, yet never is known to fail, though it
affords drink for three hundred or four hundred sheep, and for at least
twenty head of large cattle beside. This pond, it is true, is over-hung
with two moderate beeches, that, doubtless, at times afford it much
supply: but then we have others as small, that, without the aid of
trees, and in spite of evaporation from sun and wind, and perpetual
consumption by cattle, yet constantly maintain a moderate share of
water, without overflowing in the wettest seasons, as they would do if
supplied by springs. By my journal of May 1775, it appears that ‘the
small and even considerable ponds in the vales are now dried up, while
the small ponds on the very tops of hills are but little affected.’ Can
this difference be accounted for from evaporation alone, which
certainly is more prevalent in bottoms ? or rather have not those
elevated pools some unnoticed recruits, which in the night time
counterbalance the waste of the day; without which the cattle alone
must soon exhaust them ? And here it will be necessary to enter more
minutely into the cause. Dr. Hales, in his Vegetable Statics, advances,
from experiment, that ‘the moister the earth is the more dew falls on
it in a night: and more than a double quantity of dew falls on a
surface of water than there does on an equal surface of moist earth.’
Hence we see that water, by its coolness, is enabled to assimilate to
itself a large quantity of moisture nightly by condensation; and that
the air, when loaded with fogs and vapours, and even with copious dews,
can alone advance a considerable and never-failing resource. Persons
that are much abroad, and travel early and late, such as shepherds,
fishermen, etc., can tell what prodigious fogs prevail in the night on
elevated downs, even in the hottest parts of summer; and how much the
surfaces of things are drenched by those swimming vapours, though, to
the senses, all the while, little moisture seems to fall.
I am, etc.
Letter XXX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, April 3, 1776.
Dear Sir,
Monsieur Herissant, a French anatomist, seems persuaded that he has
discovered the reason why cuckoos do not hatch their own eggs; the
impediment, he supposes, arises from the internal structure of their
parts, which incapacitates them for incubation. According to this
gentleman, the crop or craw of a cuckoo does not lie before the sternum
at the bottom of the neck, as in the gallinae columbae, etc., but
immediately behind it, on and over the bowels, so as to make a large
protuberance in the belly.*
* Histoire de l’Academie Royale, 1752.
Induced by this assertion, we procured a cuckoo; and, cutting open the
breast-bone, and exposing the intestines to sight, found the crop lying
as mentioned above. This stomach was large and round, and stuffed hard
like a pin-cushion with food, which, upon nice examination, we found to
consist of various insects; such as small scarabs, spiders, and
dragon-flies; the last of which we have seen cuckoos catching on the
wing as they were just emerging out of the aurelia state. Among this
farrago also were to be seen maggots, and many seeds, which belonged
either to gooseberries, currants, cranberries, or some such fruit; so
that these birds apparently subsist on insects and fruits: nor was
there the least appearance of bones, feathers, or fur to support the
idle notion of their being birds of prey.
The sternum in this bird seemed to us to be remarkably short, between
which and the anus lay the crop, or craw, and immediately behind that
the bowels against the backbone.
It must be allowed, as this anatomist observes, that the crop placed
just upon the bowels must, especially when full, be in a very uneasy
situation during the business of incubation; yet the test will be to
examine whether birds that are actually known to sit for certain are
not formed in a similar manner. This inquiry I proposed to myself to
make with a fern-owl, or goat-sucker, as soon as opportunity offered:
because, if their information proves the same, the reason for
incapacity in the cuckoo will be allowed to have been taken up somewhat
hastily.
Not long after a fern-owl was procured, which, from its habit and
shape, we suspected might resemble the cuckoo in its internal
construction. Nor were our suspicions ill-grounded; for, upon the
dissection, the crop, or craw, also lay behind the sternum, immediately
on the viscera, between them and the skin of the belly. It was bulky,
and stuffed hard with large phalaenae, moths of several sorts, and
their eggs, which no doubt had been forced out of those insects by the
action of swallowing.
Now as it appears that this bird, which is so well known to practice
incubation, is formed in a similar manner with cuckoos, Monsieur
Herissant’s conjecture, that cuckoos are incapable of incubation from
the disposition of their intestines, seems to fall to the ground: and
we are still at a loss for the cause of that strange and singular
peculiarity in the instance of the cuculus canorus.
We found the case to be the same with the ring-tail hawk, in respect to
formation; and, as far as I can recollect, with the swift; and probably
it is so with many more sorts of birds that are not granivorous.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, April 29, 1776.
Dear Sir,
On August the 4th, 1775, we surprised a large viper, which seemed very
heavy and bloated, as it lay in the grass basking in the sun. When we
came to cut it up, we found that the abdomen was crowded with young,
fifteen in number; the shortest of which measured full seven inches,
and were about the size of full-grown earthworms. This little fry
issued into the world with the true viper-spirit about them, showing
great alertness as soon as disengaged from the belly of the dam: they
twisted and wriggled about, and set themselves up, and gaped very wide
when touched with a stick, showing manifest tokens of menace and
defiance, though as yet they had no manner of fangs that we could find,
even with the help of our glasses.
To a thinking mind nothing is more wonderful than that early instinct
which impresses young animals with the notion of the situation of their
natural weapons, and of using them properly in their own defence, even
before those weapons subsist or are formed. Thus a young cock will spar
at his adversary before his spurs are grown; and a calf or a lamb will
push with their heads before their horns are sprouted. In the same
manner did these young adders attempt to bite before their fangs were
in being. The dam however was furnished with very formidable ones,
which we lifted up (for they fold down when not used) and cut them off
with the point of our scissors.
There was little room to suppose that this brood had ever been in the
open air before; and that they were taken in for refuge, at the mouth
of the dam, when she perceived that danger was approaching; because
then probably we should have found them somewhere in the neck, and not
in the abdomen.
Letter XXXII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Castration has a strange effect: it emasculates both man, beast, and
bird, and brings them to a near resemblance of the other sex. Thus
eunuchs have smooth unmuscular arms, thighs, and legs; and broad hips,
and beardless chins, and squeaking voices. Gelt-stags and bucks have
hornless heads, like hinds and does. Thus wethers have small horns,
like ewes; and oxen large bent horns, and hoarse voices when they low,
like cows: for bulls have short straight horns; and though they mutter
and grumble in a deep tremendous tone, yet they low in a shrill high
key. Capons have small combs and gills, and look pallid about the head,
like pullets; they also walk without any parade, and hover chickens
like hens. Barrow-hogs have also small tusks like sows.
Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour puts a
stop to the growth of those parts or appendages that are looked upon as
its insignia. But the ingenious Mr. Lisle, in his book on husbandry,
carries it much farther; for he says that the loss of those insignia
alone has sometimes a strange effect on the ability itself: he had a
boar so fierce and venereous, that, to prevent mischief, orders were
given for his tusks to be broken off. No sooner had the beast suffered
this injury then his powers forsook him, and he neglected those females
to whom before he was passionately attached, and from whom no fences
could restrain him.
Letter XXXIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
The natural term of an hog’s life is little known, and the reason is
plain — because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep that
turbulent animal to the full extent of its time: however, my neighbour,
a man of substance, who had no occasion to study every little advantage
to a nicety, kept an half-bred Bantam sow, who was as thick as she was
long, and whose belly swept on the ground, till she was advanced to her
seventeenth year; at which period she showed some tokens of age by the
decay of her teeth and the decline of her fertility.
For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters in the
year of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a litter; but, as
there were near double the number of pigs to that of teats, many died.
From long experience in the world this female was grown very sagacious
and artful:-when she found occasion to converse with a boar she used to
open all the intervening gates, and march, by herself, up to a distant
farm where one was kept; and when her purpose was served would return
by the same means. At the age of about fifteen her litters began to be
reduced to four or five; and such a litter she exhibited when in her
fatting-pen. She proved, when fat, good bacon, juicy, and tender; the
rind, or sward, was remarkably thin. At a moderate computation she was
allowed to have been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs: a
prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped! She was
killed in spring 1775.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 9, 1776.
Dear Sir,
… admorunt ubera tigres.
We have remarked in a former letter how much incongruous animals, in a
lonely state, may be attached to each other from a spirit of sociality;
in this it may not be amiss to recount a different motive which has
been known to create as strange a fondness.
My friend had a little helpless leveret brought to him, which the
servants fed with milk in a spoon, and about the same time his cat
kittened and the young were dispatched and buried. The hare was soon
lost, and supposed to be gone the way of most foundlings, to be killed
by some dog or cat. However, in about a fortnight, as the master was
sitting in his garden in the dusk of the evening, he observed his cat,
with tail erect, trotting towards him, and calling with little short
inward notes of complacency, such as they use towards their kittens,
and something gamboling after, which proved to be the leveret that the
cat had supported with her milk, and continued to support with great
affection.
Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and
predaceous one!
Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the ferocious genus of
Feles, the murium leo, as Linnaeus calls it, should be affected with
any tenderness towards an animal which is its natural prey, is not so
easy to determine.
This strange affection probably was occasioned by that desiderium,
those tender maternal feelings, which the loss of her kittens had
awakened in her breast; and by the complacency and ease she derived to
herself from the procuring her teats to be drawn, which were too much
distended with milk, till, from habit, she became as much delighted
with this foundling as if it had been her real offspring.
This incident is no bad solution of that strange circumstance which
grave historians as well as the poets assert, of exposed children being
sometimes nurtured by female wild beasts that probably had lost their
young. For it is not one whit more marvellous that Romulus and Remus,
in their infant state, should be nursed by a she-wolf, than that a poor
little sucking leveret should be fostered and cherished by a bloody
grimalkin.
… viridi fœtam Mavortis in antro
Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circum
Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
Impavidos: illam tereti cervice reflexam
Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua.
Letter XXXV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 20, 1777.
Dear Sir,
Lands that are subject to frequent inundations are always poor; and
probably the reason may be because the worms are drowned. The most
insignificant insects and reptiles are of much more consequence, and
have much more influence in the Economy nature, than the incurious are
aware of; and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which
renders them less an object of attention; and from their numbers and
fecundity. Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable
link in the chain of nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable
chasm. For, to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds,
which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great
promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them,
by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering it
pervious to rains and the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and
stalks of leaves and twigs into it; and, most of all, by throwing up
such infinite numbers of lumps of earth called worm-casts, which, being
their excrement, is a fine manure for grain and grass. Worms probably
provide new soil for hills and slopes where the rain washes the earth
away; and they affect slopes, probably to avoid being flooded.
Gardeners and farmers express their detestation of worms; the former
because they render their walks unsightly, and make them much work: and
the latter because, as they think, worms eat their green corn. But
these men would find that the earth without worms would soon become
cold, hard-bound, and void of fermentation; and consequently sterile:
and besides, in favour of worms, it should be hinted that green corn,
plants, and flowers, are not so much injured by them as by many species
of coleoptera (scarabs), and tipulae (long-legs), in their larva, or
grub-state; and by unnoticed myriads of small shell-less snails, called
slugs, which silently and imperceptibly make amazing havoc in the field
and garden.*
* Farmer Young, of Norton-farm, says that this spring (1777) about four
acres of his wheat in one field was entirely destroyed by slugs, which
swarmed on the blades of corn, and devoured it as fast as it sprang.
These hints we think proper to throw out in order to set the
inquisitive and discerning to work.
A good monography of worms would afford much entertainment and
information at the same time, and would open a large and new field in
natural history. Worms work most in the spring; but by no means lie
torpid in the dead months; are out every mild night in the winter, as
any person may be convinced that will take the pains to examine his
grass-plots with a candle; are hermaphrodites, and much addicted to
venery, and consequently very prolific.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Nov. 22, 1777.
Dear Sir,
You cannot but remember that the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of
last March were very hot days; so sultry that everybody complained and
were restless under those sensations to which they had not been
reconciled by gradual approaches.
This sudden summer-like heat was attended by many summer coincidences;
for on those two days the thermometer rose to sixty-six in the shade;
many species of insects revived and came forth; some bees swarmed in
this neighbourhood; the old tortoise, near Lewes in Sussex, awakened
and came forth out of its dormitory; and, what is most to my present
purpose, many house-swallows appeared and were very alert in many
places, and particularly at Cobham, in Surrey.
But as that short warm period was succeeded as well as preceded by
harsh severe weather, with frequent frosts and ice, and cutting winds,
the insects withdrew, the tortoise retired again into the ground, and
the swallows were seen no more until the tenth of April, when, the
rigour of the spring abating, a softer season began to prevail.
Again; it appears by my journals for many years past, that
house-martins retire, to a bird, about the beginning of October; so
that a person not very observant of such matters would conclude that
they had taken their last farewell: but then it may be seen in my
diaries also that considerable flocks have discovered themselves again
in the first week of November, and often on the fourth day of that
month only for one day; and that not as if they were in actual
migration, but playing about at their leisure and feeding calmly, as if
no enterprise of moment at all agitated their spirits. And this was the
case in the beginning of this very month; for, on the fourth of
November, more than twenty house-martins, which, in appearance, had all
departed about the seventh of October, were seen again, for that one
morning only, sporting between my fields and the Hanger, and feasting
on insects which swarmed in that sheltered district. The preceding day
was wet and blustering, but the fourth was dark and mild, and soft, the
wind at south-west, and the thermometer at 58 1/2 ; a pitch not common
at that season of the year. Moreover, it may not be amiss to add in
this place, that whenever the thermometer is above 50 the bat comes
flitting out in every autumnal and winter month.
From all these circumstances laid together, it is obvious that torpid
insects, reptiles, and quadrupeds, are awakened from their profoundest
slumbers by a little untimely warmth; and therefore that nothing so
much promotes this death-like stupor as a defect of heat. And farther,
it is reasonable to suppose that two whole species, or at least many
individuals of those two species, of British hirundines, do never leave
this island at all, but partake of the same benumbed state: for we
cannot suppose that, after a month’s absence, house-martins can return
from southern regions to appear for one morning in November, or that
house-swallows should leave the districts of Africa to enjoy, in March,
the transient summer of a couple of days.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Jan. 8, 1778.
Dear Sir,
There was in this village several years ago a miserable pauper, who,
from his birth, was addicted with a leprosy, as far as we are aware of
a singular kind, since it affected only the palms of his hands and the
soles of his feet. This scaly eruption usually broke out twice in the
year, at the spring and fall; and, by peeling away, left the skin so
thin and tender that neither his hands or feet were able to perform
their functions; so that the poor object was half his time on crutches,
incapable of employ, and languishing in a tiresome state of indolence
and inactivity. His habit was lean, lank, and cadaverous. In this sad
plight he dragged on a miserable existence, a burden to himself and his
parish, which was obliged to support him till he was relieved by death
at more than thirty years of age.
The good women, who love to account for every defect in children by the
doctrine of longing, said that his mother felt a violent propensity for
oysters, which she was unable to gratify; and that the black rough
scurf on his hands and feet were the shells of that fish. We knew his
parents, neither of which were lepers; his father in particular lived
to be far advanced in years.
In all ages the leprosy has made dreadful havoc among mankind. The
Israelites seem to have been greatly afflicted with it from the most
remote times; as appears from the peculiar and repeated injunctions
given them in the Levitical law.* Nor was the rancour of this foul
disorder much abated in the last period of their commonwealth, as may
be seen in many passages of the New Testament.
* See Leviticus, chap. xiii. and xiv.
Some centuries ago this horrible distemper prevailed all Europe over;
and our forefathers were by no means exempt, as appears by the large
provision made for objects labouring under this calamity. There was an
hospital for female lepers in the diocese of Lincoln, a noble one near
Durham, three in London and Southwark, and perhaps many more in or near
our great towns and cities. Moreover, some crowned heads, and other
wealthy and charitable personages, bequeathed large legacies to such
poor people as languished under this hopeless infirmity.
It must therefore, in these days, be, to an humane and thinking person,
a matter of equal wonder and satisfaction, when he contemplates how
nearly this pest is eradicated, and observes that a leper now is a rare
sight. He will, moreover, when engaged in such a train of thought,
naturally inquire for the reason. This happy change perhaps may have
originated and been continued from the much smaller quantity of salted
meat and fish now eaten in these kingdoms; from the use of linen next
the skin; from the plenty of better bread; and from the profusion of
fruits, roots, legumes, and greens, so common in every family. Three or
four centuries ago, before there were any enclosures, sown-grasses,
field-turnips, or field-carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown
fat in summer, and were not killed for winter-use, were turned out soon
after Michaelmas to shift as they could through the dead months; so
that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring. Hence the
marvellous account of the vast stores of salted flesh found in the
larder of the eldest Spencer** t in the days of Edward the Second, even
so late in the spring as the third of May. It was from magazines like
these that the turbulent barons supported in idleness their riotous
swarms of retainers ready for any disorder or mischief. But agriculture
is now arrived at such a pitch of perfection, that our best and fattest
meats are killed in the winter; and no man need eat salted flesh,
unless he prefers it, that has money to buy fresh.
** Viz. Six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef, and six hundred
muttons.
One cause of this distemper might be, no doubt, the quantity of
wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty at all seasons
as well as in Lent; which our poor now would hardly be persuaded to
touch.
The use of linen changes, shirts or shifts, in the room of sordid and
filthy woollen, long worn next the skin, is a matter of neatness
comparatively modern; but must prove a great means of preventing
cutaneous ails. At this very time woollen instead of linen prevails
among the poorer Welch, who are subject to foul eruptions.
The plenty of good wheaten bread that now is found among all ranks of
people in the south, instead of that miserable sort which used in old
days to be made of barley or beans, may contribute not a little to the
sweetening their blood and correcting their juices; for the inhabitants
of mountainous districts, to this day, are still liable to the itch and
other cutaneous disorders, from a wretchedness and poverty of diet.
As to the produce of a garden, every middle-aged person of observation
may perceive, within his own memory, both in town and country, how
vastly the consumption of vegetables is increased. Green-stalls in
cities now support multitudes in a comfortable state, while gardeners
get fortunes. Every decent labourer also has his garden, which is half
his support, as well as his delight; and common farmers provide plenty
of beans, peas, and greens, for their hinds to eat with their bacon;
and those few that do not are despised for their sordid parsimony, and
looked upon as regardless of the welfare of their dependents. Potatoes
have prevailed in this little district, by means of premiums, within
these twenty years only; and are much esteemed here now by the poor,
who would scarce have ventured to taste them in the last reign.
Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of cabbage, because they
call the month of February sprout-cale; but, long after their days, the
cultivation of gardens was little attended to. The religious, being men
of leisure, and keeping up a constant correspondence with Italy, were
the first people among us that had gardens and fruit-trees in any
perfection, within the walls of their abbies* and priories. The barons
neglected every pursuit that did not lead to war or tend to the
pleasure of the chase.
* ‘In monasteries the lamp of knowledge continued to burn, however
dimly. In them men of business were formed for the state: the art of
writing was cultivated by the monks; they were the only proficients in
mechanics, gardening, and architecture.’ — See Dalrymple’s Annals of
Scotland.
It was not till gentlemen took up the study of horticulture themselves
that the knowledge of gardening made such hasty advances. Lord Cobham,
Lord Ila, and Mr. Waller of Beaconsfield, were some of the first people
of rank that promoted the elegant science of ornamenting without
despising the superintendence of the kitchen quarters and fruit walls.
A remark made by the excellent Mr. Ray in his Tour of Europe at once
surprises us, and corroborates what has been advanced above; for we
find him observing, so late as his days, that ‘the Italians use several
herbs for sallets, which are not yet or have not been but lately used
in England, viz., selleri (celery), which is nothing else but the sweet
smallage; the young shoots whereof, with a little of the head of the
root cut off, they eat raw with oil and pepper.’ And further he adds
‘curled endive blanched is much used beyond seas; and, for a raw
sallet, seemed to excel lettuce itself.’ Now this journey was
undertaken no longer ago than in the year 1663.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Fortè puer, comitum seductus ab agmine fido,
Dixerat, ecquis adest ? et, adest, responderat echo.
Hic stupet; utque aciem partes divisit in omnes;
Voce, veni, clamat magna. Vocat illa vocantem.
Selborne, Feb. 12, 1778.
Dear Sir,
In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales, and
hanging woods, it is no wonder that echoes should abound. Many we have
discovered that return the cry of a pack of dogs, the notes of a
hunting-horn, a tunable ring of bells, or the melody of birds, very
agreeably: but we were still at a loss for a polysyllabical, articulate
echo, till a young gentleman, who had parted from his company in a
summer evening walk, and was calling after them, stumbled upon a very
curious one in a spot where it might least be expected. At first he was
much surprised, and could not be persuaded but that he was mocked by
some boy; but, repeating his trials in several languages, and finding
his respondent to be a very adroit polyglot, he then discerned the
deception.
This echo in an evening, before rural noises cease, would repeat ten
syllables most articulately and distinctly, especially if quick dactyls
were chosen. The last syllables of
Tityre, tu patulæ recubans …
were as audibly and intelligibly returned as the first: and there is no
doubt, could trial have been made, but that at midnight, when the air
is very elastic, and a dead stillness prevails, one or two syllables
more might have been obtained; but the distance rendered so late an
experiment very inconvenient.
Quick dactyls, we observed, succeeded best; for when we came to try its
powers in slow, heavy, embarrassed spondees of the same number of
syllables,
Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens …
we could perceive a return but of four or five.
All echoes have some one place to which they are returned stronger and
more distinct than to any other; and that is always the place that lies
at right angles with the object of repercussion, and is not too near,
nor too far off. Buildings, or naked rocks, re-echo much more
articulately than hanging wood or vales; because in the latter the
voice is as it were entangled, and embarrassed in the covert, and
weakened in the rebound.
The true object of this echo, as we found by various experiments, is
the stone-built, tiled hop-kiln in Galleylane, which measures in front
40 feet, and from the ground to the eaves 12 feet. The true centrum
phonicum, or just distance, is one particular spot in the King’s-field,
in the path to Nore-hill, on the very brink of the steep balk above the
hollow cart way. In this case there is no choice of distance; but the
path, by mere contingency, happens to be the lucky, the identical spot,
because the ground rises or falls so immediately, if the speaker either
retires or advances, that his mouth would at once be above or below the
object.
We measured this polysyllabical echo with great exactness, and found
the distance to fall very short of Dr. Plot’s rule for distinct
articulation: for the Doctor, in his history of Oxfordshire, allows 120
feet for the return of each syllable distinctly: hence this echo, which
gives ten distinct syllables, ought to measure 400 yards, or 120 feet
to each syllable; whereas our distance is only 258 yards, or near 75
feet, to each syllable. Thus our measure falls short of the Doctor’s,
as five to eight: but then it must be acknowledged that this candid
philosopher was convinced afterwards, that some latitude must be
admitted of in the distance of echoes according to time and place.
When experiments of this sort are making, it should always be
remembered that weather and the time of day have a vast influence on an
echo; for a dull, heavy, moist air deadens and clogs the sound; and hot
sunshine renders the air thin and weak, and deprives it of all its
springiness; and a ruffling wind quite defeats the whole. In a still,
clear, dewy evening the air is most elastic; and perhaps the later the
hour the more so.
Echo has always been so amusing to the imagination, that the poets have
personified her; and in their hands she has been the occasion of many a
beautiful fiction. Nor need the gravest man be ashamed to appear taken
with such a phenomenon, since it may become the subject of
philosophical or mathematical inquiries.
One should have imagined that echoes, if not entertaining, must at
least have been harmless and inoffensive; yet Virgil advances a strange
notion, that they are injurious to bees. After enumerating some
probable and reasonable annoyances, such as prudent owners would wish
far removed from their bee-gardens, he adds
… aut ubi concava pulsu
Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat image.
This wild and fanciful assertion will hardly be admitted by the
philosophers of these days; especially as they all now seem agreed that
insects are not furnished with any organs of hearing at all. But if it
should be urged, that though they cannot hear yet perhaps they may feel
the repercussion of sounds, I grant it is possible they may. Yet that
these impressions are distasteful or hurtful, I deny, because bees, in
good summers, thrive well in my outlet, where the echoes are very
strong: for this village is another Anathoth, a place of responses or
echoes. Besides, it does not appear from experiment that bees are in
any way capable of being affected by sounds: for I have often tried my
own with a large speaking-trumpet held close to their hives, and with
such an exertion of voice as would have hailed a ship at the distance
of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various employments
undisturbed, and without showing the least sensibility or resentment.
Some time since its discovery this echo is become totally silent,
though the object, or hop-kiln remains: nor is there any mystery in
this defect, for the field between is planted as an hop-garden, and the
voice of the speaker is totally absorbed and lost among the poles and
entangled foliage of the hops. And when the poles are removed in autumn
the disappointment is the same; because a tall quick-set hedge,
nurtured up for the purpose of shelter to the hop ground, entirely
interrupts the impulse and repercussion of the voice: so that till
those obstructions are removed no more of its garrulity can be
expected.
Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his park or outlet a
pleasing incident, he might build one at little or no expense. For
whenever he had occasion for a new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the
like structure, it would be only needful to erect this building on the
gentle declivity of an hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a
few hundred yards distance; and perhaps success might be the easier
ensured could some canal, lake, or stream, intervene. From a seat at
the centrum phonicum he and his friends might amuse themselves
sometimes of an evening with the prattle of this loquacious nymph; of
whose complacency and decent reserve more may be said than can with
truth of every individual of her sex; since she is
… quæ nec reticere loquenti,
Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo.
I am, etc.
P.S. — The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the following lovely
quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting
for their causes from popular superstition:
Quæ bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis
Tute tibi atque alus, quo pacto per loca sola
Saxa pareis formas verborum ex ordine reddant,
Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos
Quaerimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus.
Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces
Unam quom jaceres: ita colles collibus ipsis
Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre.
Haec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere
Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur;
Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti
Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi,
Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas,
Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum:
Et genus agricolum late sentiscere, quom Pan
Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans,
Unco saepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis,
Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam.
Lucretius, lib. iv. 1. 576.
Letter XXXIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 13, 1778.
Dear Sir,
Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds the swifts,
I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every year the same
number of pairs invariably; at least the result of my inquiry has been
exactly the same for a long time past. The swallows and martins are so
numerous, and so widely distributed over the village, that it is hardly
possible to recount them; while the swifts, though they do not all
build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and
rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The number that I
constantly find are eight pairs; about half of which reside in the
church, and the rest build in some of the lowest and meanest thatched
cottages. Now as these eight pairs, allowance being made for accidents,
breed yearly eight pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase;
and what determines every spring which pairs shall visit us, and
reoccupy their ancient haunts ?
Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have always
supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange
ἀντιστοργὴ, which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind to the
most passionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of
birds over the face of the earth. Without this provision one favourite
district would be crowded with inhabitants, while others would be
destitute and forsaken. But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous
superiority, and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes: and the
rivalry of the males, in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one on
the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins return in the same
exact number annually is not easy to say, for reasons given above: but
it is apparent, as I have remarked before in my Monographies, that the
numbers returning bear no manner of proportion to the numbers retiring.
Letter XL
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, June 2, 1778.
Dear Sir,
The standing objection to botany has always been, that it is a pursuit
that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without improving the
mind or advancing any real knowledge: and where the science is carried
no farther than a mere systematic classification, the charge is but too
true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this aspersion
should be by no means content with a list of names; he should study
plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegetation,
should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, should
promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the
husbandman, on the phytologist. Not that system is by any means to be
thrown aside; without system the field of nature would be a pathless
wilderness: but system should be subservient to, not the main object
of, pursuit.
Vegetation is highly worthy of our attention; and in itself is of the
utmost consequence to mankind, and productive of many of the greatest
comforts and elegancies of life. To plants we owe timber, bread, beer,
honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, etc., what not only strengthens our
hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but what secures from inclemencies
of weather and adorns our persons. Man, in his true state of nature,
seems to be subsisted by spontaneous vegetation: in middle climes,
where grasses prevail, he mixes some animal food with the produce of
the field and garden: and it is towards the polar extremes only that,
like his kindred bears and wolves, he gorges himself with flesh alone,
and is driven, to what hunger has never been known to compel the very
beasts, to prey on his own species.*
* See the late Voyages to the South-seas.
The productions of vegetation have had a vast influence on the commerce
of nations, and have been the great promoters of navigation, as may be
seen in the articles of sugar, tea, tobacco, opium, ginseng, betel,
paper, etc. As every climate has its peculiar produce, our natural
wants bring on a mutual intercourse; so that by means of trade each
distant part is supplied with the growth of every latitude. But,
without the knowledge of plants and their culture, we must have been
content with our hips and haws, without enjoying the delicate fruits of
India and the salutiferous drugs of Peru.
Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various species
of each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to make himself
acquainted with those that are useful. You shall see a man readily
ascertain every herb of the field, yet hardly know wheat from barley,
or at least one sort of wheat or barley from another.
But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be most neglected;
neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distinguish the annual from
the perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the succulent and
nutritive from the dry and juiceless.
The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a northerly and
grazing kingdom. The botanist that could improve the sward of the
district where he lived would be an useful member of society; to raise
a thick turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of systematic
knowledge; and he would be the best commonwealth’s man that could
occasion the growth of ‘two blades of grass where one alone was seen
before.’
I am, etc.
Letter XLI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, July 3, 1778.
Dear Sir,
In a district so diversified with such a variety of hill and dale,
aspects, and soils, it is no wonder that great choice of plants should
be found. Chalks, clays, sands, sheep-walks and downs, bogs, heaths,
woodlands, and champaign fields, cannot but furnish an ample flora. The
deep rocky lanes abound with filices, and the pastures and moist woods
with fungi. If in any branch of botany we may seem to be wanting, it
must be in the large aquatic plants, which are not to be expected on a
spot far removed from rivers, and lying up amidst the hill country at
the spring heads. To enumerate all the plants that have been discovered
within our limits would be a needless work; but a short list of the
more rare, and the spots where they are to be found, may be neither
unacceptable nor unentertaining:
Helleborus foetidus, stinking hellebore, bear’s foot, or setterworth, —
all over the High-wood and Coney-croft-hanger: this continues a great
branching plant the winter through, blossoming about January, and is
very ornamental in shady walks and shrubberies. The good women give the
leaves powdered to children troubled with worms; but it is a violent
remedy, and ought to be administered with caution.
Helleborus viridis, green hellebore, — in the deep stony lane on the
left hand just before the turning to Norton-farm, and at the top of
Middle Dorton under the hedge: this plant dies down to the ground early
in autumn, and springs again about February, flowering almost as soon
as it appears above ground.
Vaccinium oxycoccos, creeping bilberries or cranberries, — in the bogs
of Bin’s-pond.
Vaccinium myrtillus, whortle, or bleaberries, — on the dry hillocks of
Wolmer-forest.
Drosera rotundifolia, round-leaved sun-dew. Drosera longifolia,
long-leaved ditto. In the bogs of Bin’s-pond.
Comarum palustre, purple comarum, or marsh cinquefoil, — in the bogs of
Bin’s-pond.
Hypericon androsaemum, tutsan, St. John’s wort, — in the stony, hollow
lanes.
Vinca minor, less periwinkle, — in Selborne Hanger and Shrubwood.
Monotropa hypopithys, yellow monotropa, or bird’s nest, — in Selborne
Hanger under the shady beeches, to whose roots it seems to be
parasitical — at the north-west end of the Hanger.
Chlora perfoliata, Blackstonia perfoliata, Hudsoni, perfoliated
yellow-won, — on the banks in the King’s-field.
Paris quadrifolia, herb Paris, true-love, or one-berry, — in the Church
Litten coppice.
Chrysosplenium oppositifolium, opposite golden saxifrage, — in the dark
and rocky hollow lanes.
Gentiana amarella, autumnal gentian or fellwort, — on the Zig-zag and
Hanger;
Lathraea squamaria, tooth-wort, — in the Church Litten coppice under
some hazels near the foot-bridge, in Trimming’s garden-hedge, and on
the dry wall opposite Grange-yard.
Dipsacus pilosus, small teasel, — in the Short and Long Lith.
Lathyrus sylvestris, narrow-leaved, or wild lathyrus, — in the bushes
at the foot of the Short Lith, near the path.
Ophrys spiralis, ladies’ traces, — in the Long Lith, and towards the
south-corner of the common.
Ophrys nidus avis, birds’ nest ophrys, — in the Long Lith under the
shady beeches among the dead leaves; in Great Dorton among the bushes,
and on the Hanger plentifully.
Serapias latifolia, helleborine, — in the High-wood under the shady
beeches.
Daphne laureola, spurge laurel, — in Selborne Hanger and the High-wood.
Daphne mezereum, the mezereon, — in Selborne Hanger among the shrubs at
the south-east end above the cottages.
Lycoperdon tuber, truffles, — in the Hanger and High-wood.
Sambucus ebulus, dwarf elder, walwort, or danewort, — among the rubbish
and ruined foundations of the Priory.
Of all the propensities of plants none seem more strange than their
different periods of blossoming. Some produce their flowers in the
winter, or very first dawnings of spring; many when the spring is
established; some at midsummer, and some not till autumn. When we see
the helleborus foetidus and helleborus niger blowing at Christmas, the
helleborus hyemalis in January, and the helleborus viridis as soon as
ever it emerges out of the ground, we do not wonder, because they are
kindred plants that we expect should keep pace the one with the other.
But other congenerous vegetables differ so widely in their time of
flowering that we cannot but admire. I shall only instance at present
in the crocus sativus, the vernal, and the autumnal crocus, which have
such an affinity, that the best botanists only make them varieties of
the same genus, of which there is only one species; not being able to
discern any difference in the corolla, or in the internal structure.
Yet the vernal crocus expands its flowers by the beginning of March at
farthest, and often in very rigorous weather; and cannot be retarded
but by some violence offered: — while the autumnal (the saffron) defies
the influence of the spring and summer, and will not blow till most
plants begin to fade and run to seed. This circumstance is one of the
wonders of the creation, little noticed, because a common occurrence:
yet ought not to be overlooked on account of its being familiar, since
it would be as difficult to be explained as the most stupendous
phaenomenon in nature.
Say, what impels, amidst surrounding snow,
Congealed, the crocus’ flamy bud to grow?
Say, what retards, amidst the summer’s blaze,
Th’ autumnal bulb till pale, declining days ?
The GOD of SEASONS; whose pervading power
Controls the sun, or sheds the fleecy shower:
He bids each flower His quickening word obey;
Or to each lingering bloom enjoins delay.
Letter XLII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Omnibus animalibus reliquis certus et uniusmodi, et in suo cuique
genere incessus est: aves solae vario meatu feruntur, et in terra, et
in äere.—PLIN. Hist. Nat. lib. x. cap. 38.
Selborne, Aug. 7, 1778.
Dear Sir,
A good ornithologist should be able to distinguish birds by their air
as well as by their colours and shape; on the ground as well as on the
wing, and in the bush as well as in the hand. For, though it must not
be said that every species of birds has a manner peculiar to itself,
yet there is somewhat in most genera at least, that at first sight
discriminates them, and enables a judicious observer to pronounce upon
them with some certainty. Put a bird in moron
… Et verâ incessu patuit….
Thus kites and buzzards sail round in circles with wings expanded and
motionless; and it is from their gliding manner that the former are
still called in the north of England gleads, from the Saxon verb glidan
to glide. The kestrel, or wind-hover, has a peculiar mode of hanging in
the air in one place, his wings all the while being briskly agitated.
Hen-harriers fly low over heaths or fields of corn, and beat the ground
regularly like a pointer or setting-dog. Owls move in a buoyant manner,
as if lighter than the air; they seem to want ballast. There is a
peculiarity belonging to ravens that must draw the attention even of
the most incurious — they spend all their leisure time in striking and
cuffing each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish; and, when
they move from one place to another, frequently turn on their backs
with a loud croak, and seem to be falling to the ground. When this odd
gesture betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and
thus lose the centre of gravity. Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a
frolicsome manner; crows and daws swagger in their walk; wood-peckers
fly volatu undoso, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and
so are always rising or falling in curves. All of this genus use their
tails, which incline downward, as a support while they run up trees.
Parrots, like all other hook-clawed birds, walk awkwardly, and make use
of their bill as a third foot, climbing and ascending with ridiculous
caution. All the gallinae parade and walk gracefully, and run nimbly;
but fly with difficulty, with an impetuous whirring, and in a straight
line. Magpies and jays flutter with powerless wings, and make no
dispatch; herons seem incumbered with too much sail for their light
bodies; but these vast hollow wings are necessary in carrying burdens,
such as large fishes, and the like; pigeons, and particularly the sort
called smiters, have a way of clashing their wings the one against the
other over their backs with a loud snap; another variety called
tumblers turn themselves over in the air. Some birds have movements
peculiar to the season of love: thus ring-doves, though strong and
rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the wing in a
toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while breeding,
forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the wind-hover; and the
green-finch in particular exhibits such languishing and faltering
gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird; the king-fisher
darts along like an arrow; fern-owls, or goat-suckers, glance in the
dusk over the tops of trees like a meteor; starlings as it were swim
along, while missal-thrushes use a wild and desultory flight; swallows
sweep over the surface of the ground and water, and distinguish
themselves by rapid turns and quick evolutions; swifts dash round in
circles; and the bank-martin moves with frequent vacillations like a
butterfly. Most of the small birds fly by jerks, rising and falling as
they advance. Most small birds hop; but wagtails and larks walk, moving
their legs alternately. Skylarks rise and fall perpendicularly as they
sing: woodlarks hang poised in the air; and titlarks rise and fall in
large cubes, singing in their descent. The white-throat uses odd jerks
and gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes. All the
duck-kind waddle; divers and auks walk as if fettered, and stand erect
on their tails: these are the compedes of Linnaeus. Geese and cranes,
and most wild-fowls, move in figured flights, often changing their
position. The secondary rerniges of tringae, wild-ducks, and some
others, are very long, and give their wings, when in motion, an hooked
appearance. Dab-chicks, moor-hens, and coots, fly erect, with their
legs hanging down, and hardly make any dispatch; the reason is plain,
their wings are placed too forward out of the true centre of gravity;
as the legs of auks and divers are situated too backward.
Letter XLIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 9, 1778.
Dear Sir,
From the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough to their
notes and language, of which I shall say something. Not that I would
pretend to understand their language like the vizier of the
_Spectator_, who, by the recital of a conversation which passed between
two owls, reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and
devastation; but I would be thought only to mean that many of the
winged tribes have various sounds and voices adapted to express their
various passions, wants, and feelings; such as anger, fear, love,
hatred, hunger, and the like. All species are not equally eloquent;
some are copious and fluent as it were in their utterance, while others
are confined to a few important sounds: no bird, like the fish kind, is
quite mute, though some are rather silent. The language of birds is
very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical:
little is said, but much is meant and understood.
* See Spectator, Vol. VII., No. 512.
The notes of the eagle-kind are shrill and piercing; and about the
season of nidification much diversified, as I have been often assured
by a curious observer of nature, who long resided at Gibraltar, where
eagles abound. The notes of our hawks much resemble those of the king
of birds. Owls have very expressive notes; they hoot in a fine vocal
sound, much resembling the vox humana, and reducible by a pitch-pipe to
a musical key. This note seems to express complacency and rivalry among
the males: they use also a quick call and an horrible scream; and can
snore and hiss when they mean to menace. Ravens, beside their loud
croak, can exert a deep and solemn note that makes the woods to echo;
the amorous sound of a crow is strange and ridiculous; rooks, in the
breeding season, attempt sometimes in the gaiety of their hearts to
sing, but with no great success; the parrot-kind have many modulations
of voice, as appears by their aptitude to learn human sounds; doves coo
in an amorous and mournful manner, and are emblems of despairing
lovers; the wood-pecker sets up a sort of loud and hearty laugh; the
fern-owl, or goat-sucker, from the dusk till day-break, serenades his
mate with the clattering of castanets. All the tuneful passeres express
their complacency by sweet modulations, and a variety of melody. The
swallow, as has been observed in a former letter, by a shrill alarm
bespeaks the attention of the other hirundines, and bids them be aware
that the hawk is at hand. Aquatic and gregarious birds, especially the
nocturnal, that shift their quarters in the dark, are very noisy and
loquacious; as cranes, wild-geese, wild-ducks, and the like; their
perpetual clamour prevents them from dispersing and losing their
companions.
In so extensive a subject, sketches and outlines are as much as can be
expected; for it would be endless to instance in all the infinite
variety of the feathered nation. We shall therefore confine the
remainder of this letter to the few domestic fowls of our yards, which
are most known, and therefore best understood. At first the peacock,
with his gorgeous train, demands our attention; but, like most of the
gaudy birds, his notes are grating and shocking to the ear: the yelling
of cats, and the braying of an ass, are not more disgustful. The voice
of the goose is trumpet-like, and clanking; and once saved the Capitol
at Rome, as grave historians assert: the hiss also of the gander is
formidable and full of menace, and ‘protective of his young.’ Among
ducks the sexual distinction of voice is remarkable; for, while the
quack of the female is loud and sonorous, the voice of the drake is
inward and harsh and feeble, and scarce discernible. The cock turkey
struts and gobbles to his mistress in a most uncouth manner; he hath
also a pert and petulant note when he attacks his adversary. When a hen
turkey leads forth her young brood she keeps a watchful eye: and if a
bird of prey appear, though ever so high in the air, the careful mother
announces the enemy with a little inward moan, and watches him with a
steady and attentive look; but if he approach, her note becomes earnest
and alarming, and her outcries are redoubled.
No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such a variety of expression
and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or
five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it
will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of
complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note
becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger.
When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and
easy soft note. Of all the occurrences of their life that of laying
seems to be the most important; for no sooner has a hen disburdened
herself, than she rushes forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which the
cock and the rest of his mistresses immediately adopt. The tumult is
not confined to the family concerned, but catches from yard to yard,
and spreads to every homestead within hearing, till at last the whole
village is in an uproar. As soon as a hen becomes a mother her new
relation demands a new language; she then runs clucking and screaming
about, and seems agitated as if possessed. The father of the flock has
also a considerable vocabulary; if he finds food, he calls a favourite
concubine to partake; and if a bird of prey passes over, with a warning
voice he bids his family beware. The gallant chanticleer has, at
command, his amorous phrases, and his terms of defiance. But the sound
by which he is best known is his crowing: by this he has been
distinguished in all ages as the countryman’s clock or larum, as the
watchman that proclaims the divisions of the night. Thus the poet
elegantly styles him:
… the crested cock, whose clarion sounds
The silent hours.
A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost most of his chickens by a
sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between a faggot-pile and the end
of his house to the place where the coops stood. The owner, inwardly
vexed to see his flock thus diminishing, hung a setting net adroitly
between the pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed and was
entangled. Resentment suggested the law of retaliation; he therefore
clipped the hawk’s wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his
bill, threw him down among the brood-hens. Imagination cannot paint the
scene that ensued; the expressions that fear, rage, and revenge
inspired, were new, or at least such as had been unnoticed before: the
exasperated matrons upbraided, they execrated, they insulted, they
triumphed. In a word, they never desisted from buffeting their
adversary till they had torn him in an hundred pieces.
Letter XLIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
… monstrent.
* * * * *
Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
Hyberni; vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
Gentlemen who have outlets might contrive to make ornament subservient
to utility; a pleasing eye-trap might also contribute to promote
science: an obelisk in a garden or park might be both an embellishment
and an heliotrope.
Any person that is curious, and enjoys the advantage of a good horizon,
might, with little trouble, make two heliotropes; the one for the
winter, the other for the summer solstice: and these two erections
might be constructed with very little expense; for two pieces of timber
frame-work, about ten or twelve feet high, and four feet broad at the
base, and close lined with plank, would answer the purpose.
The erection for the former should, if possible, be placed within sight
of some window in the common sitting parlour; because men, at that dead
season of the year, are usually within doors at the close of the day;
while that for the latter might be fixed for any given spot in the
garden or outlet: whence the owner might contemplate, in a fine
summer’s evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to the northward
at the season of the longest days. Now nothing would be necessary but
to place these two objects with so much exactness, that the westerly
limb of the sun, at setting, might but just clear the winter heliotrope
to the west of it on the shortest day; and that the whole disc of the
sun, at the longest day, might exactly at setting also clear the summer
heliotrope to the north of it.
By this simple expedient it would soon appear that there is no such
thing, strictly speaking, as a solstice; for, from the shortest day,
the owner would, every clear evening, see the disc advancing, at its
setting, to the westward of the object; and, from the longest day,
observe the sun retiring backwards every evening at its setting,
towards the object westward, till, in a few nights, it would set quite
behind it, and so by degrees to the west of it: for when the sun comes
near the summer solstice, the whole disc of it would at first set
behind the object: after a time the northern limb would first appear,
and so every night gradually more, till at length the whole diameter
would set north of it for about three nights; but on the middle night
of the three, sensibly more remote than the former or following. When
beginning its recess from the summer tropic, it would continue more and
more to be hidden every night, till at length it would descend quite
behind the object again; and so nightly more and more to the westward.
Letter XLV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
… Mugire videbis
Sub pedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos.
When I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and implicit assent,
accounts in Baker’s Chronicle of walking hills and travelling
mountains. John Philips, in his Cyder, alludes to the credit that was
given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein of humour
peculiar to the author of the Splendid Shilling.
I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice
Of Marcley Hill: the apple no where finds
A kinder mould: yet ’tis unsafe to trust
Deceitful ground: who knows but that once more
This mount may journey, and his present site
Forsaken, to thy neighbour’s bounds transfer
Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange
For law debates!
But, when I came to consider better, I began to suspect that though our
hills may never have journeyed that far, yet the ends of many of them
have slipped and fallen away at distant periods, leaving the cliffs
bare and abrupt. This seems to have been the case with Nore and Whetham
hills; and especially with the ridge between Harteley Park and
Ward-le-ham, where the ground has slid into vast swellings and furrows;
and lies still in such romantic confusion as cannot be accounted for
from any other cause. A strange event that happened not long since,
justifies our suspicions; which, though it befell not within the limits
of this parish, yet as it was within the hundred of Selborne, and as
the circumstances were singular, may fairly claim a place in a work of
this nature.
The months of January and February, in the year 1774, were remarkable
for great melting snows and vast gluts of rain, so that by the end of
the latter month the land-springs, or lavants, began to prevail, and to
be near as high as in the memorable winter of 1764. The beginning of
March also went on in the same tenor; when, in the night between the
8th and 9th of that month, a considerable part of the great woody
hanger at Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a
high freestone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of a
chalk-pit. It appears that this huge fragment, being perhaps sapped and
undermined by waters, foundered, and was engulfed, going down in a
perpendicular direction; for a gate which stood in the field, on the
top of the hill, after sinking with its posts for thirty or forty feet,
remained in so true and upright a position as to open and shut with
great exactness, just as in its first situation. Several oaks also are
still standing, and in a state of vegetation, after taking the same
desperate leap. That great part of this prodigious mass was absorbed in
some gulf below, is plain also from the inclining ground at the bottom
of the hill, which is free and unincumbered; but would have been buried
in heaps of rubbish, had the fragment parted and fallen forward. About
an hundred yards from the foot of this hanging coppice stood a cottage
by the side of a lane; and two hundred yards lower, on the other side
of the lane, was a farm-house, in which lived a labourer and his
family; and, just by, a stout new barn. The cottage was inhabited by an
old woman and her son and his wife. These people in the evening, which
was very dark and tempestuous, observed that the brick floors of their
kitchens began to heave and part; and that the walls seemed to open,
and the roofs to crack: but they all agree that no tremor of the
ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever felt; only that the wind
continued to make a most tremendous roaring in the woods and hangers.
The miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to bed, remained in the
utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every moment to be buried
under the ruins of their shattered edifices. When day-light came they
were at leisure to contemplate the devastations of the night: they then
found that a deep rift, or chasm, had opened under their houses, and
torn them, as it were, in two; and that one end of the barn had
suffered in a similar manner; that a pond near the cottage had
undergone a strange reverse, becoming deep at the shallow end, and so
vice versa; that many large oaks were removed out of their
perpendicular, some thrown down, and some fallen into the heads of
neighbouring trees; and that a gate was thrust forward, with its hedge,
full six feet, so as to require a new track to be made to it. From the
foot of the cliff the general course of the ground, which is pasture,
inclines in a moderate descent for half a mile, and is interspersed
with some hillocks, which were rifted, in every direction, as well
towards the great woody hanger, as from it. In the first pasture the
deep clefts began: and running across the lane, and under the
buildings, made such vast shelves that the road was impassable for some
time; and so over to an arable field on the other side, which was
strangely torn and disordered. The second pasture field, being more
soft and springy, was protruded forward without many fissures in the
turf, which was raised in long ridges resembling graves, lying at right
angles to the motion. At the bottom of this enclosure the soil and turf
rose many feet against the bodies of some oaks that obstructed their
farther course and terminated this awful commotion.
The perpendicular height of the precipice, in general, is twenty-three
yards; the length of the lapse, or slip, as seen from the fields below,
one hundred and eighty-one; and a partial fall, concealed in the
coppice, extends seventy yards more: so that the total length of this
fragment that fell was two hundred and fifty-one yards. About fifty
acres of land suffered from this violent convulsion; two houses were
entirely destroyed; one end of a new barn was left in ruins, the walls
being cracked through the very stones that composed them; a hanging
coppice was changed to a naked rock; and some grass grounds and an
arable field so broken and rifted by the chasms as to be rendered, for
a time, neither fit for the plough or safe for pasturage, till
considerable labour and expense had been bestowed in levelling the
surface and filling in the gaping fissures.
Letter XLVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
… resonant arbusta …
There is a steep abrupt pasture field interspersed with furze close to
the back of this village, well known by the name of the Short Lithe,
consisting of a rocky dry soil, and inclining to the afternoon sun.
This spot abounds with the gryllus campestris, or field-cricket; which,
though frequent in these parts, is by no means a common insect in many
other counties.
As their cheerful summer cry cannot but draw the attention of a
naturalist, I have often gone down to examine the oeconomy of these
grylli, and study their mode of life: but they are so shy and cautious
that it is no easy matter to get a sight of them; for, feeling a
person’s footsteps as he advances, they stop short in the midst of
their song, and retire backward nimbly into their burrows, where they
lurk till all suspicion of danger is over.
At first we attempted to dig them out with a spade, but without any
great success; for either we could not get to the bottom of the hole,
which often terminated under a great stone; or else, in breaking up the
ground, we inadvertently squeezed the poor insect to death. Out of one
so bruised we took a multitude of eggs, which were long and narrow, of
a yellow colour, and covered with a very tough skin. By this accident
we learned to distinguish the male from the female; the former of which
is shining black, with a golden stripe across his shoulders; the latter
is more dusky, more capacious about the abdomen, and carries a long
sword-shaped weapon at her tail, which probably is the instrument with
which she deposits her eggs in crannies and safe receptacles.
Where violent methods will not avail, more gentle means will often
succeed; and so it proved in the present case; for, though a spade be
too boisterous and rough an implement, a pliant stalk of grass, gently
insinuated into the caverns, will probe their windings to the bottom,
and quickly bring out the inhabitant; and thus the humane inquirer may
gratify his curiosity without injuring the object of it. It is
remarkable that, though these insects are furnished with long legs
behind, and brawny thighs for leaping, like grasshoppers; yet when
driven from their holes they show no activity, but crawl along in a
shiftless manner, so as easily to be taken: and again, though provided
with a curious apparatus of wings, yet they never exert them when there
seems to be the greatest occasion. The males only make that shrilling
noise perhaps out of rivalry and emulation, as is the case with many
animals which exert some sprightly note during their breeding time: it
is raised by a brisk friction of one wing against the other. They are
solitary beings, living singly male or female, each as it may happen:
hut there must be a time when the sexes have some intercourse, and then
the wings may be useful perhaps during the hours of night. When the
males meet they will fight fiercely, as I found by some which I put
into the crevices of a dry stone wall, where I should have been glad to
have made them settle. For though they seemed distressed by being taken
out of their knowledge, yet the first that got possession of the chinks
would seize upon any that were obtruded upon them with a vast row of
serrated fangs. With their strong jaws, toothed like the shears of a
lobster’s claws, they perforate and round their curious regular cells,
having no fore-claws to dig, like the mole-cricket. When taken in hand
I could not but wonder that they never offered to defend themselves,
though armed with such formidable weapons. Of such herbs as grow before
the mouths of their burrows they eat indiscriminately; and on a little
platform, which they make just by, they drop their dung; and never, in
the day-time, seem to stir more than two or three inches from home.
Sitting in the entrance of their caverns they chirp all night as well
as day from the middle of the month of May to the middle of July; and
in hot weather, when they are most vigorous, they make the hills echo;
and, in the stiller hours of darkness, may be heard to a considerable
distance. In the beginning of the season, their notes are more faint
and inward; but become louder as the summer advances, and so die away
again by degrees.
Sounds do not always give us pleasure according to their sweetness and
melody; nor do harsh sounds always displease. We are more apt to be
captivated or disgusted with the associations which they promote, than
with the notes themselves. Thus the shrilling of the field-cricket,
though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously delights some hearers,
filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of everything that is
rural, verdurous, and joyous.
About the tenth of March the crickets appear at the mouths of their
cells, which they then open and bore, and shape very elegantly. All
that ever I have seen at that season were in their pupa state, and had
only the rudiments of wings, lying under a skin or coat, which must be
cast before the insect can arrive at its perfect state;* from whence I
should suppose that the old ones of last year do not always survive the
winter. In August their holes begin to be obliterated, and the insects
are seen no more till spring.
* We have observed that they cast these skins in April, which are then
seen lying at the mouths of their holes.
Not many summers ago I endeavoured to transplant a colony to the
terrace in my garden, by boring deep holes in the sloping turf. The new
inhabitants stayed some time, and fed and sung; but wandered away by
degrees, and were heard at a farther distance every morning; so that it
appears that on this emergency they made use of their wings in
attempting to return to the spot from which they were taken.
One of these crickets, when confined in a paper cage and set in the
sun, and supplied with plants moistened with water, will feed and
thrive, and become so merry and loud as to be irksome in the same room
where a person is sitting: if the plants are not wetted it will die.
Letter XLVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
Far from all resort of mirth
Save the cricket on the hearth.
MILTON’S _Il Penseroso_.
Dear Sir,
While many other insects must be sought after in fields and woods, and
waters, the gryllus domesticus, or house-cricket, resides altogether
within our dwellings, intruding itself upon our notice whether we will
or no. This species delights in new-built houses, being, like the
spider, pleased with the moisture of the walls; and besides, the
softness of the mortar enables them to burrow and mine between the
joints of the bricks or stones, and to open communications from one
room to another. They are particularly fond of kitchens and bakers’
ovens, on account of their perpetual warmth.
Tender insects that live abroad either enjoy only the short period of
one summer, or else doze away the cold uncomfortable months in profound
slumbers; but these, residing as it were in a torrid zone, are always
alert and merry: a good Christmas fire is to them like the heats of the
dog-days. Though they are frequently heard by day, yet is their natural
time of motion only in the night. As soon as it grows dusk, the
chirping increases, and they come running forth, and are from the size
of a flea to that of their full stature. As one should suppose, from
the burning atmosphere which they inhabit, they are a thirsty race, and
show a great propensity for liquids, being found frequently drowned in
pans of water, milk, broth, or the like. Whatever is moist they affect;
and therefore often gnaw holes in wet woollen stockings and aprons that
are hung to the fire: they are the housewife’s barometer, foretelling
her when it will rain; and are prognostic sometimes, she thinks, of in
or good luck; of the death of a near relation, or the approach of an
absent lover. By being the constant companions of her solitary hours
they naturally become the objects of her superstition. These crickets
are not only very thirsty, but very voracious; for they will eat the
scummings of pots, and yeast, salt, and crumbs of bread; and any
kitchen offal or sweepings. In the summer we have observed them to fly,
when it became dusk, out of the windows, and over the neighbouring
roofs. This feat of activity accounts for the sudden manner in which
they often leave their haunts, as it does for the method by which they
come to houses where they were not known before. It is remarkable, that
many sorts of insects seem never to use their wings but when they have
a mind to shift their quarters and settle new colonies. When in the air
they move ‘volatu undoso,’ in waves or curves, like wood-packers,
opening and shutting their wings at every stroke, and so are always
rising or sinking.
When they increase to a great degree, as they did once in the house
where I am now writing, they became noisome pests, flying into the
candles, and dashing into people’s faces; but may be blasted and
destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies. In
families, at such times, they are, like Pharaoh’s plague of frogs, ‘in
their bed-chambers, and upon their beds, and in their ovens, and in
their kneading-troughs.’ * Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a
brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch hearth-crickets, and,
playing with them as they do with mice, devour them. Crickets may be
destroyed, like wasps, by phials half fined with beer, or any liquid,
and set in their haunts; for, being always eager to drink, they will
crowd in till the bottles are full.
* Exod. viii. 3.
Letter XLVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
How diversified are the modes of life not only of incongruous but even
of congenerous animals; and yet their specific distinctions are not
more various than their propensities. Thus, while the field-cricket
delights in sunny dry banks, and the house-cricket rejoices amidst the
glowing heat of the kitchen hearth or oven, the gryllus gryllotalpa
(the mole-cricket) haunts moist meadows, and frequents the sides of
ponds and banks of streams, performing all its functions in a swampy
wet soil. With a pair of fore-feet, curiously adapted to the purpose,
it burrows and works under ground like the mole, raising a ridge as it
proceeds, but seldom throwing up hillocks.
As mole-crickets often infest gardens by the sides of canals, they are
unwelcome guests to the gardener, raising up ridges in their
subterraneous progress, and rendering the walks unsightly. If they take
to the kitchen quarters, they occasion great damage among the plants
and roots, by destroying whole beds of cabbages, young legumes, and
flowers. When dug out they seem very slow and helpless, and make no use
of their wings by day; but at night they come abroad, and make long
excursions, as I have been convinced by finding stragglers, in a
morning, in improbable places. In fine weather, about the middle of
April, and just at the close of day, they begin to solace themselves
with a low, dull, jarring note, continued for a long time without
interruption, and not unlike the chattering of the fern-owl, or
goat-sucker, but more inward.
About the beginning of May they lay their eggs, as I was once an
eye-witness: for a gardener at an house, where I was on a visit,
happening to be mowing, on the 6th of that month, by the side of a
canal, his scythe struck too deep, pared off a large piece of turf, and
laid open to view a curious scene of domestic oeconomy:
… ingentem lato dedit ore fenestram:
Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt:
Apparent … penetralia.
There were many caverns and winding passages leading to a kind of
chamber, neatly smoothed and rounded, and about the size of a moderate
snuff-box. Within this secret nursery were deposited near an hundred
eggs of a dirty yellow colour, and enveloped in a tough skin, but too
lately excluded to contain any rudiments of young, being full of a
viscous substance. The eggs lay but shallow, and within the influence
of the sun, just under a little heap of fresh-moved mould, like that
which is raised by ants.
When mole-crickets fly they move ‘cursu undoso,’ rising and falling in
curves, like the other species mentioned before. In different parts of
this kingdom people call them fen-crickets, churr-worms, and
eve-churrs, all very apposite names.
Anatomists, who have examined the intestines of these insects, astonish
me with their accounts; for they say that, from the structure,
position, and number of their stomachs, or maws, there seems to be good
reason to suppose that this and the two former species ruminate or chew
the cud like many quadrupeds!
Letter XLIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 7, 1779.
It is now more than forty years that I have paid some attention to the
ornithology of this district, without being able to exhaust the
subject: new occurrences still arise as long as any inquiries are kept
alive.
In the last week of last month five of those most rare birds, too
uncommon to have obtained an English name, but known to naturalists by
the terms of himantopus, or loripes, and charadrius himantopus, were
shot upon the verge of Frinsham-pond, a large lake belonging to the
bishop of Winchester, and lying between Wolmer-forest, and the town of
Farnham, in the county of Surrey. The pond keeper says there were three
brace in the flock; but that, after he had satisfied his curiosity, he
suffered the sixth to remain unmolested. One of these specimens I
procured, and found the length of the legs to be so extraordinary,
that, at first sight, one might have supposed the shanks had been
fastened on to impose on the credulity of the beholder: they were legs
in caricature; and had we seen such proportions on a Chinese or Japan
screen we should have made large allowances for the fancy of the
draughtsman. These birds are of the plover family, and might with
propriety be called the stilt plovers. Brisson, under that idea, gives
them the apposite name of l’echasse. My specimen, when drawn and
stuffed with pepper, weighed only four ounces and a quarter, though the
naked part of the thigh measured three inches and an half, and the legs
four inches and an half. Hence we may safely assert that these birds
exhibit, weight for inches, incomparably the greatest length of legs of
any known bird. The flamingo, for instance, is one of the most long
legged birds, and yet it bears no manner of proportion to the
himantopus; for a cock flamingo weighs, at an average, about four
pounds avoirdupois; and his legs and thighs measure usually about
twenty inches. But four pounds are fifteen times and a fraction more
than four ounces and one quarter; and if four ounces and a quarter have
eight inches of legs, four pounds must have one hundred and twenty
inches and a fraction of legs; viz., somewhat more than ten feet; such
a monstrous proportion as the world never saw! If you should try the
experiment in still larger birds the disparity would still increase. It
must be matter of great curiosity to see the stilt plover move; to
observe how it can wield such a length of lever with such feeble
muscles as the thighs seem to be furnished with. At best one should
expect it to be but a bad walker: but what adds to the wonder is that
it has no back toe. Now without that steady prop support its steps it
must be liable, in speculation, to perpetual vacillations, and seldom
able to preserve the true centre of gravity.
The old name of himantopus is taken from Pliny; and, by an awkward
metaphor, implies that the legs are as slender and pliant as if cut out
of a thong of leather. Neither Willughby nor Ray, in all their curious
researches either at home or abroad, ever saw this bird. Mr. Pennant
never met with it in all Great Britain, but observed it often in the
cabinets of the curious at Paris. Hasselquist says that it migrates to
Egypt in the autumn: and a most accurate observer of nature has assured
me that he has found it on the banks of the streams in Andalusia.
Our writers record it to have been found only twice in Great Britain.
From all these relations it plainly appears that these long-legged
plovers are birds of South Europe, and rarely visit our island; and
when they do are wanderers and stragglers, and impelled to make so
distant and northern an excursion from motives or accidents for which
we are not able to account. One thing may fairly be deduced, that these
birds come over to us from the continent, since nobody can suppose that
a species not noticed once in an age, and of such a remarkable make,
can constantly breed unobserved in this kingdom.
Letter L
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, April 21, 1780.
Dear Sir,
The old Sussex tortoise, that I have mentioned to you so often, is
become my property. I dug it out of its winter dormitory in March last,
when it was enough awakened to express its resentments by hissing; and,
packing it in a box with earth, carried it eighty miles in
post-chaises. The rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused
it that, when I turned it out on a border, it walked twice down to the
bottom of my garden; however, in the evening, the weather being cold,
it buried itself in the loose mould, and continues still concealed.
As it will be under my eye, I shall now have an opportunity of
enlarging my observations on its mode of life, and propensities; and
perceive already that, towards the time of coming forth, it opens a
breathing place in the ground near its head, requiring, I conclude, a
freer respiration, as it becomes more alive. This creature not only
goes under the earth from the middle of November to the middle of
April, but sleeps great part of the summer; for it goes to bed in the
longest days at four in the afternoon, and often does not stir in the
morning till late. Besides, it retires to rest for every shower; and
does not move at all in wet days.
When one reflects on the state of this strange being, it is a matter of
wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days,
such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that appears to relish
it so little as to squander more than two-thirds of its existence in a
joyless stupor, and be lost to all sensation for months together in the
profoundest of slumbers.
While I was writing this letter, a moist and warm afternoon, with the
thermometer at 50, brought forth troupe of shell-snails; and, at the
same juncture, the tortoise heaved up the mould and put out its head;
and the next morning came forth, as it were raised from the dead; and
walked about till four in the afternoon. This was a curious
coincidence! a very amusing occurrence! to see such a similarity of
feelings between the two φερέοικοι! for so the Greeks call both the
shell-snail and the tortoise.
Summer birds are, this cold and backward spring, unusually late: I have
seen but one swallow yet. This conformity with the weather convinces me
more and more that they sleep in the winter.
Letter LI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 3, 1781.
I have now read your miscellanies through with much care and
satisfaction: and am to return you my best thanks for the honourable
mention made in them of me as a naturalist, which I wish I may deserve.
In some former letters I expressed my suspicions that many of the
house-martins do not depart in the winter far from this village. I
therefore determined to make some search about the south-east end of
the hill, where I imagined they might slumber out the uncomfortable
months of winter. But supposing that the examination would be made to
the best advantage in the spring, and observing that no martins had
appeared by the 11th of April last, on that day I employed some men to
explore the shrubs and cavities of the suspected spot. The persons took
pains, but without any success: however, a remarkable incident occurred
in the midst of our pursuit-while the labourers were at work a
house-martin, the first that had been seen this year, came down the
village in the sight of several people, and went at once into a nest,
where it stayed a short time, and then flew over the houses; for some
days after no martins were observed, not till the 16th of April, and
then only a pair. Martins in general were remarkably late this year.
Letter LII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 9, 1781.
I have just met with a circumstance respecting swifts, which furnishes
an exception to the whole tenor of my observations ever since I have
bestowed any attention on that species of hirundines. Our swifts, in
general, withdrew this year about the first day of August, all save one
pair, which in two or three days was reduced to a single bird. The
perseverance of this individual made me suspect that the strongest of
motives, that of an attachment to her young, could alone occasion so
late a stay. I watched therefore till the twenty-fourth of August, and
then discovered that, under the eaves of the church, she attended upon
two young, which were fledged, and now put out their white chins from a
crevice. These remained till the twenty-seventh, looking more alert
every day, and seeming to long to be on the wing. After this day they
were missing at once; nor could I ever observe them with their dam
coursing round the church in the act of learning to fly, as the first
broods evidently do. On the thirty-first I caused the eaves to be
searched, but we found in the nest only two callow, dead, stinking
swifts, on which a second nest had been formed. This double nest was
full of the black shining cases of the hippoboscae hirundinis.
The following remarks on this unusual incident are obvious. The first
is, that though it may be disagreeable to swifts to remain beyond the
beginning of August, yet that they can subsist longer is undeniable.
The second is, that this uncommon event, as it was owing to the loss of
the first brood, so it corroborates my former remark, that swifts breed
regularly but once; since, was the contrary the case, the occurrence
above could neither be new nor rare.
P.S. One swift was seen at Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, in 1782,
so late as the third of September.
Letter LIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
As I have sometimes known you make inquiries about several kinds of
insects, I shall here send you an account of one sort which I little
expected to have found in this kingdom. I had often observed that one
particular part of a vine growing on the walls of my house was covered
in the autumn with a black dust-like appearance, on which the flies fed
eagerly; and that the shoots and leaves thus affected did not thrive;
nor did the fruit ripen. To this substance I applied my glasses; but
could not discover that it had anything to do with animal life, as I at
first expected: but, upon a closer examination behind the larger
boughs, we were surprised to find that they were coated over with husky
shells, from whose sides proceeded a cotton-like substance, surrounding
a multitude of eggs. This curious and uncommon production put me upon
recollecting what I have heard and read concerning the coccus vitis
viniferae of Linnaeus, which, in the South of Europe, infests many
vines, and is an horrid and loathsome pest. As soon as I had turned to
the accounts given of this insect, I saw at once that it swarmed on my
vine; and did not appear to be at all checked by the preceding winter,
which had been uncommonly severe.
Not being then at all aware that it had anything to do with England, I
was much inclined to think that it came from Gibraltar among the many
boxes and packages of plants and birds which I had formerly received
from thence; and especially as the vine infested grew immediately under
my study-window, where I usually kept my specimens. True it is that I
had received nothing from thence for some years: but as insects, we
know, are conveyed from one country to another in a very unexpected
manner, and have a wonderful power of maintaining their existence till
they fall into a nidus proper for their support and increase, I cannot
but suspect still that these cocci came to me originally from
Andalusia. Yet, all the while, candour obliges me to confess that Mr.
Lightfoot has written me word that he once, and but once, saw these
insects on a vine at Weymouth in Dorsetshire; which, it is here to be
observed, is a seaport town to which the coccus might be conveyed by
shipping.
As many of my readers may possibly never have heard of this strange and
unusual insect, I shall here transcribe a passage from a natural
history of Gibraltar, written by the Reverend John White, late vicar of
Blackburn in Lancashire, but not yet published:
‘In the year 1770 a vine which grew on the east side of my house, and
which had produced the finest crops of grapes for years past, was
suddenly overspread on all the woody branches with large lumps of a
white fibrous substance resembling spiders’ webs, or rather raw cotton.
It was of a very clammy quality, sticking fast to everything that
touched it, and capable of being spun into long threads. At first I
suspected it to be the product of spiders, but could find none. Nothing
was to be seen connected with it but many brown oval husky shells,
which by no means looked like insects, but rather resembled bits of the
dry bark of the vine. The tree had a plentiful crop of grapes set, when
this pest appeared upon it; but the fruit was manifestly injured by
this foul incumbrance. It remained all the summer, still increasing,
and loaded the woody and bearing branches to a vast degree. I often
pulled off great quantities by handfuls; but it was so slimy and
tenacious that it could by no means be cleared. The grapes never filled
to their natural perfection, but turned watery and vapid. Upon perusing
the works afterwards of M. de Reaumur, I found this matter perfectly
described and accounted for. Those husky shells, which I had observed,
were no other than the female coccus, from whose sides this cotton-like
substance exudes, and serves as a covering and security for their
eggs.’
To this account I think proper to add, that, though the female cocci
are stationary, and seldom remove from the place to which they stick,
yet the male is a winged insect; and that the black dust which I saw
was undoubtedly the excrement of the females, which is eaten by ants as
well as flies. Though the utmost severity of our winter did not destroy
these insects, yet the attention of the gardener in a summer or two has
entirely relieved my vine from this filthy annoyance.
As we have remarked above that insects are often conveyed from one
country to another in a very unaccountable manner, I shall here mention
an emigration of small aphides, which was observed in the village of
Selborne no longer ago than August the 1st, 1785.
At about three o’clock in the afternoon of that day, which was very
hot, the people of this village were surprised by a shower of aphides,
or smother-flies, which fell in these parts. Those that were walking in
the street at that juncture found themselves covered with these
insects, which settled also on the hedges and gardens, blackening all
the vegetables where they alighted. My annuals were discoloured with
them, and the stalks of a bed of onions were quite coated over for six
days after. These armies were then, no doubt, in a state of emigration,
and shifting their quarters; and might have come, as far as we know,
from the great hop-plantations of Kent or Sussex, the wind being all
that day in the easterly quarter. They were observed at the same time
in great clouds about Farnham, and all along the vale from Farnham to
Alton.*
* For various methods by which several insects shift their quarters,
see Derham’s Physico-Theology.
Letter LIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Dear Sir,
When I happen to visit a family where gold and silver fishes are kept
in a glass bowl, I am always pleased with the occurrence, because it
offers me an opportunity of observing the actions and propensities of
those beings with whom we can be little acquainted in their natural
state. Not long since I spent a fortnight at the house of a friend
where there was such a vivary, to which I paid no small attention,
taking every occasion to remark what passed within its narrow limits.
It was here that I first observed the manner in which fishes die. As
soon as the creature sickens, the head sinks lower and lower, and it
stands as it were on its head; till, getting weaker, and losing all
poise, the tail turns over, and at last it floats on the surface of the
water with its belly uppermost. The reason why fishes, when dead, swim
in that manner is very obvious; because, when the body is no longer
balanced by the fins of the belly, the broad muscular back
preponderates by its own gravity, and turns the belly uppermost, as
lighter from its being a cavity, and because it contains the
swimming-bladders, which contribute to render it buoyant. Some that
delight in gold and silver fishes have adopted a notion that they need
no aliment. True it is that they will subsist for a long time without
any apparent food but what they can collect from pure water frequently
changed; yet they must draw some support from animalcula, and other
nourishment supplied by the water; because, though they seem to eat
nothing, yet the consequences of eating often drop from them. That they
are best pleased with such jejune diet may easily be confuted, since if
you toss them crumbs, they will seize them with great readiness, not to
say greediness: however, bread should be given sparingly, lest, turning
sour, it corrupt the water. They will also feed on the water-plant
called lemna (duck’s meat), and also on small fry.
When they want to move a little they gently protrude themselves with
their pinnae pectorales; but it is with their strong muscular tails
only that they and all fishes shoot along with such inconceivable
rapidity. It has been said that the eyes of fishes are immoveable: but
these apparently turn them forward or backward in their sockets as
their occasions require. They take little notice of a lighted candle,
though applied close to their heads, but flounce and seem much
frightened by a sudden stroke of the hand against the support whereon
the bowl is hung; especially when they have been motionless, and are
perhaps asleep. As fishes have no eyelids, it is not easy to discern
when they are sleeping or not, because their eyes are always open.
Nothing can be more amusing than a glass bowl containing such fishes:
the double refractions of the glass and water represent them, when
moving, in a shifting and changeable variety of dimensions, shades, and
colours; while the two mediums, assisted by the concavo-convex shape of
the vessel, magnify and distort them vastly; not to mention that the
introduction of another element and its inhabitants into our parlours
engages the fancy in a very agreeable manner.
Gold and silver fishes, though originally natives of China and Japan,
yet are become so well reconciled to our climate as to thrive and
multiply very fast in our ponds and stews. Linnaeus ranks this species
of fish under the genus of cyprinus, or carp, and calls it cyprinus
auratus.
Some people exhibit this sort of fish in a very fanciful way; for they
cause a glass bowl to be blown with a large hollow space within, that
does not communicate with it. In this cavity they put a bird
occasionally; so that you may see a goldfinch or a linnet hopping as it
were in the midst of the water, and the fishes swimming in a circle
round it. The simple exhibition of the fishes is agreeable and
pleasant; but in so complicated a way becomes whimsical and unnatural,
and liable to the objection due to him,
Qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam.
I am, etc.
Letter LV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
October 10, 1781.
Dear Sir,
I think I have observed before that much the most considerable part of
the house-martins withdraw from hence about the first week in October;
but that some, the latter broods I am now convinced, linger on till
towards the middle of that month: and that at times, once perhaps in
two or three years, a flight, for one day only, has shown itself in the
first week of November.
Having taken notice, in October 1780, that the last flight was
numerous, amounting perhaps to one hundred and fifty; and that the
season was soft and still; I was resolved to pay uncommon attention to
these late birds; to find, if possible, where they roosted, and to
determine the precise time of their retreat. The mode of life of these
latter hirundines is very favourable to such a design; for they spend
the whole day in the sheltered district between me and the Hanger,
sailing about in a placid, easy manner, and feasting on those insects
which love to haunt a spot so secure from ruffling winds. As my
principal object was to discover the place of their roosting, I took
care to wait on them before they retired to rest, and was much pleased
to find that, for several evenings together, just at a quarter past
five in the afternoon, they all scudded away in great haste towards the
south-east, and darted down among the low shrubs above the cottages at
the end of the hill. This spot in many respects seems to be well
calculated for their winter residence: for in many parts it is as steep
as the roof of any house, and therefore secure from the annoyances of
water; and it is moreover clothed with beechen shrubs, which, being
stunted and bitten by sheep, make the thickest covert imaginable; and
are so entangled as to be impervious to the smallest spaniel: besides,
it is the nature of underwood beech never to cast its leaf all the
winter; so that, with the leaves on the ground and those on the twigs,
no shelter can be more complete. I watched them on to the thirteenth
and fourteenth of October, and found their evening retreat was exact
and uniform; but after this they made no regular appearance. Now and
then a straggler was seen; and on the twenty-second of October, I
observed two in the morning over the village, and with them my remarks
for the season ended.
From all these circumstances put together, it is more than probable
that this lingering flight, at so late a season of the year, never
departed from the island. Had they indulged me that autumn with a
November visit, as I much desired I presume that, with proper
assistants, I should have settled the matter past all doubt; but though
the third of November was a sweet day, and in appearance exactly suited
to my wishes, yet not a martin was to be seen; and so I was forced,
reluctantly, to give up the pursuit.
I have only to add that were the bushes, which cover some acres, and
are not my own property, to be grubbed and carefully examined, probably
those late broods, and perhaps the whole aggregate body of the
house-martins of this district, might be found there, in different
secret dormitories; and that, so far from withdrawing into warmer
climes, it would appear that they never depart three hundred yards from
the village.
Letter LVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
They who write on natural history cannot too frequently advert to
instinct, that wonderful limited faculty, which, in some instances,
raises the brute creation as it were above reason, and in others leaves
them so far below it. Philosophers have defined instinct to be chat
secret influence by which every species is impelled naturally to
pursue, at all times, The same way or track, without any teaching or
example; whereas reason, without instruction, would often vary and do
chat by many methods which instinct effects by one alone. Now this
maxim must be taken in a qualified sense; for there are instances in
which instinct does vary and conform to the circumstances of place and
convenience.
It has been remarked chat every species of bird has a mode of
nidification peculiar to itself; so that a schoolboy would at once
pronounce on the sort of nest before him. This is the case among fields
and woods, and wilds; but, in the villages round London, where mosses
and gossamer, and cotton from vegetables, are hardly to be found, the
nest of the chaffinch has not that elegant finished appearance, nor is
it so beautifully studded with lichens, as in a more rural district:
and the wren is obliged to construct its house with straws and dry
grasses, which do not give it that rotundity and compactness so
remarkable in the edifices of the little architect. Again, the regular
nest of the house-martin is hemispheric; but where a rafter, or a
joist, or a cornice may happen to stand in the way, the nest is so
contrived as to conform to the obstruction, and becomes flat or oval,
or compressed.
In the following instances instinct is perfectly uniform and
consistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse,
and the bird called the nut-hatch (sitta Europaea), which live much on
hazel nuts; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first,
after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long
fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife; the second nibbles a hole
with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so
small that one would wonder how the kernel can be extracted through it;
while the last picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill: but as
this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like
an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were in a vice, in some cleft of
a tree, or in some crevice; when, standing over it, he perforates the
stubborn shell. We have often placed nuts in the chink of a gate-post
where nut-hatches have been known to haunt, and have always found that
those birds have readily penetrated them. While at work they make a
rapping noise that may be heard at a considerable distance.
You that understand both the theory and practical part of music may
best inform us why harmony or melody should so strangely affect some
men, as it were by recollection, for days after a concert is over. What
I mean the following passage will most readily explain:
‘Praehabebat porro vocibus humanis, instrumentisque harmonicis musicam
illam avium: non quad alia quoque non delectaretur; sed quod ex musica
humana relinqueretur in animo continens qaemdam, attentionemque et
somnum conturbans agitatio; dum ascensus, exscensus, tenores, ac
mutationes illae sonorum et consonantiarum euntque redeuntque per
phantasiam: — cum nihil tale relinqui possit ex modulationibus avium,
quae, quod non sunt perinde a nobis imitabiles, non possunt perinde
internam facultatem commovere.’ — GASSENDUS in Vita Peireskii.
This curious quotation strikes me much by so well representing my own
case, and by describing what I have so often felt, but never could so
well express. When I hear fine music I am haunted with passages
therefrom night and day; and especially at first waking, which, by
their importunity, give me more uneasiness than pleasure: elegant
lessons still tease my imagination, and recur irresistibly to my
recollection at seasons, and even when I am desirous of thinking of
more serious matters.
I am, etc.
Letter LVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
A rare, and I think a new little bird frequents my garden, which I have
great reason to think is the pettichaps: it is common in some parts of
the kingdom, and I have received formerly several dead specimens from
Gibraltar. This bird much resembles the white-throat, but has a more
white or rather silvery breast and belly; is restless and active, like
the willow-wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part
for food; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and,
putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which
stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the
ground, like the hedge-sparrow, by hopping about on the grass-plots and
mown walks.
One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing man, informs me
that, in the beginning of May, and about ten minutes before eight
o’clock in the evening, he discovered a great cluster of
house-swallows, thirty at least he supposes, perching on a willow that
hung over the verge of James Knight’s upper-pond. His attention was
first drawn by the twittering of these birds, which sat motionless in a
row on the bough, with their heads all one way, and, by their weight,
pressing down the twig so that it nearly touched the water. In this
situation he watched them till he could see no longer. Repeated
accounts of this sort, spring and fall, induce us greatly to suspect
that house-swallows have some strong attachment to water, independent
of the matter of food; and though they may not retire into that
element, yet they may conceal themselves in the banks of pools and
rivers during the uncomfortable months of winter.
One of the keepers of Wolmer-forest sent me a peregrine falcon, which
he shot on the verge of that district as it was devouring a
wood-pigeon. The falco peregrinus, or haggard falcon, is a noble
species of hawk seldom seen in the southern counties. In winter 1767
one was killed in the neighbouring parish of Faringdon, and sent by me
to Mr. Pennant into North Wales.* Since that time I have met with none
till now. The specimen measured above was in fine preservation, and not
injured by the shot: it measured forty-two inches from wing to wing,
and twenty-one from beak to tail, and weighed two pounds and an half
standing weight. This species is very robust, and wonderfully formed
for rapine: its breast was plump and muscular; its thighs long, thick,
and brawny; and its legs remarkably short and well set: the feet were
armed with most formidable, sharp, long talons: the eyelids and cere of
the bill were yellow; but the irides of the eyes dusky; the beak was
thick and hooked, and of a dark colour, and had a jagged process near
the end of the upper mandible on each side: its tail, or train, was
short in proportion to the bulk of its body: yet the wings, when
closed, did not extend to the end of the train. From its large and fair
proportions it might be supposed to have been a female; but I was not
permitted to cut open the specimen. For one of the birds of prey, which
are usually lean, this was in high case: in its craw were many
barley-corns, which probably came from the crop of the wood-pigeon, on
which it was feeding when shot: for voracious birds do not eat grain;
but when devouring their quarry, with undistinguishing vehemence
swallow bones and feathers, and all matters, indiscriminately. This
falcon was probably driven from the mountains of North Wales or
Scotland, where they are known to breed, by rigorous weather and deep
snows that had lately fallen.
* See my tenth and eleventh letter to that gentleman.
I am, etc.
Letter LVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
My near neighbour, a young gentleman in the service of the East-India
Company, has brought home a dog and a bitch of the Chinese breed from
Canton; such as are fattened in the country for the purpose of being
eaten: they are about the size of a moderate spaniel; of a pale yellow
colour, with coarse bristling hairs on their backs; sharp upright ears,
and peaked heads, which give them a very fox-like appearance. Their
hind legs are unusually straight, without any bend at the hock or ham,
to such a degree as to give them an awkward gait when they trot. When
they are in motion their tails are curved high over their backs like
those of some hounds, and have a bare place each on the outside from
the tip midway, that does not seem to be matter of accident, but
somewhat singular. Their eyes are jet black, small, and piercing; the
insides of their lips and mouths of the same colour, and their tongues
blue. The bitch has a dew-claw on each hind leg; the dog has none. When
taken out into a field the bitch showed some disposition for hunting,
and dwelt on the scent of a covey of partridges till she sprung them,
giving her tongue all the time. The dogs in South America are dumb; but
these bark much in a short thick manner, like foxes; and have a surly,
savage demeanour like their ancestors, which are not domesticated, but
bred up in sties, where they are fed for the table with rice-meal and
other farinaceous food. These dogs, having been taken on board as soon
as weaned, could not learn much from their dam; yet they did not relish
flesh when they came to England. In the islands of the Pacific Ocean
the dogs are bred up on vegetables, and would not eat flesh when
offered them by our circumnavigators.
We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, upright
fox-like ears; and that hanging ears, which are esteemed so graceful,
are the effect of choice breeding and cultivation. Thus, in the Travels
of Ysbrandt Ides from Muscovy to China, the dogs which draw the Tartars
on snow-sledges near the river Oby are engraved with prick-ears, like
those from Canton. The Kamschatdales also train the same sort of
sharp-eared peak-nosed dogs to draw their sledges; as may be seen in an
elegant print engraved for Captain Cook’s last voyage round the world.
Now we are upon the subject of dogs it may not be impertinent to add,
that spaniels, as all sportsmen know, though they hunt partridges and
pheasants as it were by instinct, and with much delight and alacrity,
yet will hardly touch their bones when offered as food; nor will a
mongrel dog of my own, though he is remarkable for ending that sort of
game. But, when we came to offer the bones of partridges to the two
Chinese dogs, they devoured them with much greediness, and licked the
platter clean.
No sporting dogs will flush woodcocks till inured to the scent and
trained to the sport, which they then pursue with vehemence and
transport; but then they will not touch their bones, but turn from them
with abhorrence, even when they are hungry.
Now, that dogs should not be fond of the bones of such birds as they
are not disposed to hunt is no wonder; but why they reject and do not
care to eat their natural game is not so easily accounted for, since
the end of hunting seems to be, that the chase pursued should be eaten.
Dogs again will not devour the more rancid water-fowls, nor indeed the
bones of any wild-fowls; nor will they touch the foetid bodies of birds
that feed on offal and garbage: and indeed there may be somewhat of
providential instinct in this circumstance of dislike; for vultures,*
and kites, and ravens, and crows, etc., were intended to be messmates
with dogs** over their carrion; and seem to be appointed by nature as
fellow-scavengers to remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of
the earth.
* Hasselquist, in his Travels to the Levant, observes that the dogs and
vultures at Grand Cairo maintain such a friendly intercourse as to
bring up their young together in the same place.
** The Chinese word for a dog to an European ear sounds like quihloh.
I am, etc.
Letter LIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
The fossil wood buried in the bogs of Wolmer-forest is not yet all
exhausted, for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a log. I have
just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of Oakhanger to a
carpenter of this village, this was the butt-end of a small oak, about
five feet long, and about five inches in diameter. It had apparently
been severed from the ground by an axe, was very ponderous, and as
black as ebony. Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had
procured it, he told me that it was to be sent to his brother, a joiner
at Farnham, who was to make use of it in cabinet work, by inlaying it
along with whiter woods.
Those that are much abroad on evenings after it is dark, in spring and
summer, frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing by on the wing, and
repeating often a short quick note. This bird I have remarked myself,
but never could make out till lately. I am assured now that it is the
stone curlew (charadrius oedicnemus). Some of them pass over or near my
house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the
hill and North field, away down towards Dorton; where, among the
streams and meadows, they find a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly
by night are obliged to be noisy; their notes often repeated become
signals or watchwords to keep them together, that they may not stray or
lose each the other in the dark.
The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious and
amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long strings
from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over
Selborne-down, where they wheel round in the air, and sport and dive in
a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a
loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we
at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding; or
rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not
unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the
rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a
pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day,
they retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and
Ropley. We remember a little girl who, as she was going to bed, used to
remark on such an occurrence, in the true spirit of physico-theology,
that the rooks were saying their prayers; and yet this child was much
too young to be aware that the scriptures have said of the Deity — that
‘he feedeth the ravens who call upon him.’
I am, etc.
Letter LX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
In reading Dr. Huxham’s Observationes de Aere, etc., written at
Plymouth, I find by those curious and accurate remarks, which contain
an account of the weather from the year 1727 to the year 1748,
inclusive, that though there is frequent rain in that district of
Devonshire, yet the quantity falling is not great; and that some years
it has been very small: for in 1731 the rain measured only 17.266 in.
and in 1741, 20.354 in.; and again in 1743 only 20.908 in. Places near
the sea have frequent scuds, that keep the atmosphere moist, yet do not
reach far up into the country; making thus the maritime situations
appear wet, when the rain is not considerable. In the wettest years at
Plymouth the Doctor measured only once 36 in.; and again once, viz.,
1734, 37.114 in.: a quantity of rain that has twice been exceeded at
Selborne in the short period of my observations. Dr. Huxham remarks,
that frequent small rains keep the air moist; while heavy ones render
it more dry, by beating down the vapours. He is also of opinion that
the dingy, smoky appearance of the sky, in very dry seasons, arises
from the want of moisture sufficient to let the light through, and
render the atmosphere transparent; because he had observed several
bodies more diaphanous when wet than dry; and did never recollect that
the air had that look in rainy seasons.
My friend who lives just beyond the top of the down, brought his three
swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with their muzzles towards the
Hanger, supposing that the report would have had a great effect; but
the experiment did not answer his expectation. He then removed them to
the Alcove on the Hanger: when the sound, rushing along the Lythe and
Combwood, was very grand: but it was at the Hermitage that the echoes
and repercussions delighted the hearers; not only filling the Lythe
with the roar, as if all the beeches were tearing up by the roots; but,
turning to the left, they pervaded the vale above Combwood-ponds; and
after a pause seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend round
Harteley-hangers, and to die away at last among the coppices and
coverts of Ward le Ham. It has been remarked before that this district
is an Anathoth, a place of responses or echoes, and therefore proper
for such experiments: we may further add that the pauses in echoes,
when they cease and yet are taken up again, like the pauses in music,
surprise the hearers, and have a fine effect on the imagination.
The gentleman above mentioned has just fixed a barometer in his parlour
at Newton Valence. The tube was first filled here (at Selborne) twice
with care, when the mercury agreed and stood exactly with my own; but
being filled again twice at Newton, the mercury stood, on account of
the great elevation of that house, three-tenths of an inch lower than
the barometers at this village, and so continues to do, be the weight
of the atmosphere what it may. The plate of the barometer at Newton is
figured as low as 27; because in stormy weather the mercury there will
sometimes descend below 28. We have supposed Newton-house to stand two
hundred feet higher than this house: but if the rule holds good, which
says that mercury in a barometer sinks one-tenth of an inch for every
hundred feet elevation, then the Newton barometer, by standing
three-tenths lower than that of Selborne, proves that Newton-house must
be three hundred feet higher than that in which I am writing, instead
of two hundred.
It may not be impertinent to add, that the barometers at Selborne stand
three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at South Lambeth;
whence we may conclude that the former place is about three hundred
feet higher than the latter; and with good reason, because the streams
that rise with us run into the Thames at Weybridge, and so to London.
Of course therefore there must be lower ground all the way from
Selborne to Sough Lambeth; the distance between which, all the windings
and indentings of the streams considered, cannot be less than an
hundred miles. I am, etc.
Letter LXI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Since the weather of a district is undoubtedly part of its natural
history, I shall make no further apology for the four following
letters, which will contain many particulars concerning some of the
great frosts and a few respecting some very hot summers, that have
distinguished themselves from the rest during the course of my
observations.
As the frost in January 1768 was, for the small it lasted, the most
severe that we had then known for many years, and was remarkably
injurious to evergreens, some account of its rigour, and reason of its
ravages, may be useful, and not unacceptable to persons that delight in
planting and ornamenting; and may particularly become a work that
professes never to lose sight of utility.
For the last two or three days of the former year there were
considerable falls of snow, which lay deep and uniform on the ground
without any drifting, wrapping up the more humble vegetation in perfect
security. From the first day to the fifth of the new year more snow
succeeded; but from that day the air became entirely clear; and the
heat of the sun about noon had a considerable influence in sheltered
situations.
It was in such an aspect that the snow on the author’s evergreens was
melted every day, and frozen intensely every night; so that the
laurustines, bays, laurels, and arbutuses looked, in three or four
days, as if they had been burnt in the fire; while a neighbour’s
plantation of the same kind, in a high cold situation, where the snow
was never melted at all, remained uninjured.
From hence I would infer that it is the repeated melting and freezing
of the snow that is so fatal to vegetation, rather than the severity of
the cold. Therefore it highly behaves every planter, who wishes to
escape the cruel mortification of losing in a few days the labour and
hopes of years, to bestir himself on such emergencies; and, if his
plantations are small, to avail himself of mats, cloths, pease-haum,
straw, reeds, or any such covering, for a short time; or, if his
shrubberies are extensive, to see that his people go about with prongs
and forks, and carefully dislodge the snow from the boughs, since the
naked foliage will shift much better for itself, than where the snow is
partly melted and frozen again.
It may perhaps appear at first like a paradox; but doubtless the more
tender trees and shrubs should never be planted in hot aspects; not
only for the reason assigned above, but also because, thus
circumstanced, they are disposed to shoot earlier in the spring, and
grow on later in the autumn than they would otherwise do, and so are
sufferers by lagging or early frosts. For this reason also plants from
Siberia will hardly endure our climate: because, on the very first
advances of spring, they shoot away, and so are cut off by the severe
nights of March or April.
Dr. Fothergill and others have experienced the same inconvenience with
respect to the more tender shrubs from North America; which they
therefore plant under north walls. There should also perhaps be a wall
to the east to defend them from the piercing blasts from that quarter.
This observation might without any impropriety be carried into animal
life; for discerning bee-masters now find that their hives should not
in the winter be exposed to the hot sun, because such unseasonable
warmth awakens the inhabitants too early from their slumbers; and, by
putting their juices into motion too soon, subjects them afterwards to
inconveniences when rigorous weather returns.
The coincidents attending this short but intense frost were, that the
horses fell sick with an epidemic distemper, which injured the winds of
many, and killed some; that colds and coughs were general among the
human species; that it froze under people’s beds for several nights;
that meat was so hard frozen that it could not be spitted, and could
not be secured but in cellars; that several redwings and thrushes were
killed by the frost; and that the large titmouse continued to pull
straw lengthwise from the eaves of thatched houses and barns in a most
adroit manner, for a purpose that has been explained already.*
* See Letter XLI to Mr. Pennant.
On the 3d of January, Benjamin Martin’s thermometer within doors, in a
close parlour where there was no fire, fell in the night to 20, and on
the 4th to 18, and the 7th to 17.5, a degree of cold which the owner
never since saw in the same situation; and he regrets much that he was
not able at that juncture to attend his instrument abroad. All this
time the wind continued north and north-east; and yet on the eighth
roost-cocks, which had been silent, began to sound their clarions, and
crows to clamour, as prognostic of milder weather; and, moreover, moles
began to heave and work, and a manifest thaw took place. From the
latter circumstance we may conclude that thaws often originate under
ground from warm vapours which arise; else how should subterraneous
animals receive such early intimations of their approach? Moreover, we
have often observed that cold seems to descend from above; for, when a
thermometer hangs abroad in a frosty night, the intervention of a cloud
shall immediately raise the mercury ten degrees; and a clear sky shall
again compel it to descend to its former gauge.
And here it may be proper to observe, on what has been said above, that
though frosts advance to their utmost severity by somewhat of a regular
gradation, yet thaws do not usually come on by as regular a declension
of cold; but often take place immediately from intense freezing; as men
in sickness often mend at once from a paroxysm.
To the great credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers, be it
remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general havoc: hence
men should learn to ornament chiefly with such trees as are able to
withstand accidental severities, and not subject themselves to the
vexation of a loss which may befall them once perhaps in ten years, yet
may hardly be recovered through the whole course of their lives.
As it appeared afterwards the ilexes were much injured, the cypresses
were half destroyed, the arbutuses lingered on, but never recovered;
and the bays, laurustines, and laurels, were killed to the ground; and
the very wild hollies, in hot aspects, were so much affected that they
cast all their leaves.
By the 14th of January the snow was entirely gone; the turnips emerged
not damaged at all, save in sunny places; the wheat looked delicately,
and the garden plants were well preserved; for snow is the most kindly
mantle that infant vegetation can be wrapped in; were it not for that
friendly meteor no vegetable life could exist at all in northerly
regions. Yet in Sweden the earth in April is not divested of snow for
more than a fortnight before the face of the country is covered with
flowers.
Letter LXII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
There were some circumstances attending the remarkable frost in January
1776 so singular and striking, that a short detail of them may not be
unacceptable.
The most certain way to be exact will be to copy the passages from my
journal, which were taken from time to time as things occurred. But it
may be proper previously to remark that the first week in January was
uncommonly wet, and drowned with vast rains from every quarter: from
whence may be inferred, as there is great reason to believe is the
case, that intense frosts seldom take place till the earth is perfectly
glutted and chilled with water;* and hence dry autumns are seldom
followed by rigorous winters.
* The autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet, and particularly the
month of September, during which there fell at Lyndon, in the county of
Rutland, six inches and an half of rain. And the terrible long frost of
1739-40 set in after a rainy season, and when the springs were very
high.
January 7th. — Snow driving all the day, which was followed by frost,
sleet, and some snow, till the 12th, when a prodigious mass overwhelmed
all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the gates and filling
the hollow lanes.
On the 14th the writer was obliged to be much abroad; and thinks he
never before or since has encountered such rugged Siberian weather.
Many of the narrow roads were now filled above the tops of the hedges;
through which the snow was driven into most romantic and grotesque
shapes, so striking to the imagination as not to be seen without wonder
and pleasure. The poultry dared not to stir out of their
roosting-places; for cocks and hens are so dazzled and confounded by
the glare of snow that they would soon perish without assistance. The
hares also lay sullenly in their seats, and would not move until
compelled by hunger; being conscious, poor animals, that the drifts and
heaps treacherously betray their footsteps, and prove fatal to numbers
of them.
From the 14th the snow continued to increase, and began to stop the
road waggons and coaches, which could no longer keep on their regular
stages; and especially on the western roads, where the fall appears to
have been deeper than in the south. The company at Bath, that wanted to
attend the Queen’s birth-day, were strangely incommoded: many carriages
of persons, who got, in their way to town from Bath, as far as
Marlborough, after strange embarrassments, here met with a ne plus
ultra. The ladies fretted, and offered large rewards to labourers, if
they would shovel them a track to London; but the relentless heaps of
snow were too bulky to be removed; and so the 18th passed over, leaving
the company in very uncomfortable circumstances at the Castle and other
inns.
On the 20th the sun shone out for the first time since the frost began;
a circumstance that has been remarked before much in favour of
vegetation. All this time the cold was not very intense, for the
thermometer stood at 29, 28, 25, and thereabout; but on the 21st it
descended to 20. The birds now began to be in a very pitiable and
starving condition. Tamed by the season, skylarks settled in the
streets of towns, because they saw the ground was bare; rooks
frequented dunghills close to houses; and crows watched horses as they
passed, and greedily devoured what dropped from them; hares now came
into men’s gardens, and, scraping away the snow, devoured such plants
as they could find.
On the 22nd the author had occasion to go to London through a sort of
Laplandian-scene, very wild and grotesque indeed. But the metropolis
itself exhibited a still more singular appearance than the country;
for, being bedded deep in snow, the pavement of the streets could not
be touched by the wheels or the horses’ feet, so that the carriages ran
about without the least noise. Such an exception from din and clatter
was strange, but not pleasant; it seemed to convey an uncomfortable
idea of desolation:
… ipsa silentia terrent.
On the 27th much snow fell all day, and in the evening the frost became
very intense. At South Lambeth, for the four following nights, the
thermometer fell to 11, 7, 6, 6; and at Selborne to 7, 6, 10; and on
the 31st January, just before sunrise, with rime on the trees and on
the tube of the glass, the quicksilver sunk exactly to zero, being 32
degrees below the freezing point; but by eleven in the morning, though
in the shade, it sprung up to 16.5 * — a most unusual degree of cold
this for the south of England! During these four nights the cold was so
penetrating that it occasioned ice in warm chambers and under beds; and
in the day the wind was so keen that persons of robust constitutions
could scarcely endure to face it. The Thames was at once so frozen over
both above and below bridge that crowds ran about on the ice. The
streets were now strangely incumbered with snow, which crumbled and
trod dusty; and, turning grey, resembled bay-salt; what had fallen on
the roofs was so perfectly dry that, from first to last, it lay
twenty-six days on the houses in the city; a longer time than had been
remembered by the oldest housekeepers living. According to all
appearances we might now have expected the continuance of this rigorous
weather for weeks to come, since every night increased in severity; but
behold, without any apparent cause, on the 1st of February a thaw took
place, and some rain followed before night; making good the observation
above, that frosts often go off as it were at once, without any gradual
declension of cold. On the second of February the thaw persisted; and
on the 3d swarms of little insects were frisking and sporting in a
court-yard at South Lambeth, as if they had felt no frost. Why the
juices in the small bodies and smaller limbs of such minute beings are
not frozen is a matter of curious inquiry.
* At Selborne the cold was greater than at any other place that the
author could hear of with certainty: though some reported at the time
that at a village in Kent, the thermometer fell two degrees below zero,
viz., 34 degrees below the freezing point. The thermometer used at
Selborne was graduated by Benjamin Martin.
Severe frosts seem to be partial, or to run in currents; for, at the
same juncture, as the author was informed by accurate correspondents,
at Lyndon in the county of Rutland, the thermometer stood at 19: at
Blackburn, in Lancashire, at 19: and at Manchester at 21, 20, and 18.
Thus does some unknown circumstance strangely overbalance latitude, and
render the cold sometimes much greater in the southern than in the
northern parts of this kingdom.
The consequences of this severity were, that in Hampshire, at the
melting of the snow, the wheat looked well, and the turnips came forth
little injured. The laurels and laurustines were somewhat damaged, but
only in hot aspects. No evergreens were quite destroyed; and not half
the damage sustained that befell in January, 1768. Those laurels that
were a little scorched on the south-sides were perfectly untouched on
their north-sides. The care taken to shake the snow day by day from the
branches seemed greatly to avail the author’s evergreens. A neighbour’s
laurel-hedge, in a high situation, and facing to the north, was
perfectly green and vigorous; and the Portugal laurels remained unhurt.
As to the birds, the thrushes and blackbirds were mostly destroyed; and
the partridges, by the weather and poachers, were so thinned that few
remained to breed the following year.
Letter LXIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
As the frost in December, 1784, was very extraordinary, you, I trust,
will not be displeased to hear the particulars; and especially when I
promise to say no more about the severities of winter after I have
finished this letter.
The first week in December was very wet, with the barometer very low.
On the 7th, with the barometer at 28-five-tenths, came on a vast snow,
which continued all that day and the next, and most part of the
following night; so that by the morning of the 9th the works of men
were quite overwhelmed, the lanes filled so as to be impassable, and
the ground covered twelve or fifteen inches without any drifting. In
the evening of the 9th the air began to be so very sharp that we
thought it would be curious to attend to the motions of a thermometer:
we therefore hung out two; one made by Martin and one by Dollond, which
soon began to show us what we were to expect; for, by ten o’clock, they
fell to 21, and at eleven to 4, when we went to bed. On the 10th, in
the morning, the quicksilver of Dollond’s glass was down to half a
degree below zero; and that of Martin’s, which was absurdly graduated
only to four degrees above zero, sunk quite into the brass guard of the
ball; so that when the weather became most interesting this was
useless. On the 10th, at eleven at night, though the air was perfectly
still, Dollond’s glass went down to one degree below zero! This strange
severity of the weather made me very desirous to know what degree of
cold there might be in such an exalted and near situation as Newton. We
had therefore, on the morning of the 10th, written to Mr. ——, and
entreated him to hang out his thermometer, made by Adams; and to pay
some attention to it morning and evening; expecting wonderful
phaenomena, in so elevated a region, at two hundred feet or more above
my house. But, behold! on the 10th, at eleven at night, it was down
only to 17, and the next morning at 22, when mine was at 10. We were so
disturbed at this unexpected reverse of comparative local cold, that we
sent one of my glasses up, thinking that of Mr. —— must, somehow, be
wrongly constructed. But, when the instruments came to be confronted,
they went exactly together: so that, for one night at least, the cold
at Newton was 18 degrees less than at Selborne; and, through the whole
frost, 10 or 12 degrees; and indeed, when we came to observe
consequences, we could readily credit this; for all my laurustines,
bays, ilexes, arbutuses, cypresses, and even my Portugal laurels,* and
(which occasions more regret) my fine sloping laurel hedge, were
scorched up; while, at Newton, the same trees have not lost a leaf!
* Mr. Miller, in his Gardener’s Dictionary, says positively that the
Portugal laurels remained untouched in the remarkable frost of 1739–40.
So that either that accurate observer was much mistaken, or else the
frost of December, 1784, was much more severe and destructive than that
in the year above mentioned.
We had steady frost on to the 25th, when the thermometer in the morning
was down to 10 with us, and at Newton only to 21. Strong frost
continued till the 31st, when some tendency to thaw was observed, and,
by January the 3rd, 1785, the thaw was confirmed, and some rain fell.
A circumstance that I must not omit, because it was new to us, is, that
on Friday, December the 10th, being bright sun-shine, the air was full
of icy spiculae, floating in all directions, like atoms in a sun-beam
let into a dark room. We thought them at first particles of the rime
falling from my tall hedges; but were soon convinced to the contrary,
by making our observations in open places where no rime could reach us.
Were they watery particles of the air frozen as they floated; or were
they evaporations from the snow frozen as they mounted ?
We were much obliged to the thermometers for the early information they
gave us: and hurried our apples, pears, onions, potatoes, etc., into
the cellar, and warm closets; while those who had not, or neglected
such warnings, lost all their stores of roots and fruits, and had their
very bread and cheese frozen.
I must not omit to tell you that, during those two Siberian days, my
parlour-cat was so electric, that had a person stroked her, and been
properly insulated, the shock might have been given to a whole circle
of people.
I forgot to mention before, that, during the two severe days, two men,
who were tracing hares in the snow, had their feet frozen; and two men,
who were much better employed, had their fingers so affected by the
frost, while they were thrashing in a barn, that a mortification
followed, from which they did not recover for many weeks.
This frost killed all the furze and most of the ivy, and in many places
stripped the hollies of all their leaves. It came at a very early time
of the year, before old November ended; and yet it may be allowed from
its effects to have exceeded any since 1739–40.
Letter LXIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
As the effects of heat are seldom very remarkable in the northerly
climate of England, where the summers are often so defective in warmth
and sunshine as not to ripen the fruits of the earth so well as might
be wished, I shall be more concise in my account of the severity of a
summer season, and so make a little amends for the prolix account of
the degrees of cold, and the inconveniences that we suffered from late
rigorous winters.
The summers of 1781 and 1783 were unusually hot and dry; to them
therefore I shall turn back in my journals, without recurring to any
more distant period. In the former of these years my peach and
nectarine-trees suffered so much from the heat that the rind on the
bodies was scalded and came off; since which the trees have been in a
decaying state. This may prove a hint to assiduous gardeners to fence
and shelter their wall-trees with mats or boards, as they may easily
do, because such annoyance is seldom of long continuance. During that
summer also, I observed that my apples were coddled, as it were, on the
trees; so that they had no quickness of flavour, and would not keep in
the winter. This circumstance put me in mind of what I have heard
travellers assert, that they never ate a good apple or apricot in the
south of Europe, where the beats were so great as to render the juices
vapid and insipid.
The great pests of a garden are wasps, which destroy all the finer
fruits just as they are coming into perfection. In 1781 we had none; in
1783 there were myriads; which would have devoured all the produce of
my garden, had not we set the boys to take the nests, and caught
thousands with hazel twigs tipped with bird-lime: we have since
employed the boys to take and destroy the large breeding wasps in the
spring. Such expedients have a great effect on these marauders, and
will keep them under. Though wasps do not abound but in hot summers,
yet they do not prevail in every hot summer, as I have instanced in the
two years above mentioned.
In the sultry season of 1783 honey-dews were so frequent as to deface
and destroy the beauties of my garden. My honey-suckles, which were one
week the most sweet and lovely objects that the eye could behold,
became the next the most loathsome; being enveloped in a viscous
substance, and loaded with black aphides, or smother-flies. The
occasion of this clammy appearance seems to be this, that in hot
weather the effluvia of flowers in fields and meadows and gardens are
drawn up in the day by a brisk evaporation, and then in the night fall
down again with the dews, in which they are entangled; that the air is
strongly scented, and therefore impregnated with the particles of
flowers in summer weather, our senses will inform us; and that this
clammy sweet substance is of the vegetable kind we may learn from bees,
to whom it is very grateful: and we may be assured that it falls in the
night, because it is always seen first in warm still mornings.
On chalky and sandy soils, and in the hot villages about London, the
thermometer has been often observed to mount as high as 83 or 84; but
with us, in this hilly and woody district, I have hardly ever seen it
exceed 80; nor does it often arrive at that pitch. The reason, I
conclude, is, that our dense clayey soil, so much shaded by trees, is
not so easily heated through as those above-mentioned: and, besides,
our mountains cause currents of air and breezes; and the vast effluvia
from our woodlands temper and moderate our heats.
Letter LXV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full
of horrible phaenomena; for besides the alarming meteors and tremendous
thunder-storms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of
this kingdom, the peculiar haze, or smokey fog, that prevailed for many
weeks in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its
limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known
within the memory of man. By my journal I find that I had noticed this
strange occurrence from June 23 to July 20 inclusive, during which
period the wind varied to every quarter without making any alteration
in the air. The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and
shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of
rooms; but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and
setting. All the time the heat was so intense that butchers’ meat could
hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed; and the flies swarmed
so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic,
and riding irksome. The country people began to look with a
superstitious awe, at the red, louring aspect of the sun; and indeed
there was reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive;
for, all the while, Calabria and part of the isle of Sicily, were torn
and convulsed with earthquakes; and about that juncture a volcano
sprung out of the sea on the coast of Norway. On this occasion Milton’s
noble simile of the sun, in his first book of Paradise Lost, frequency
occurred to my mind; and it is indeed particularly applicable, because,
towards the end, it alludes to a superstitious kind of dread, with
which the minds of men are always impressed by such strange and unusual
phaenomena.
… As when the sun, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal, misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs….
Letter LXVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
We are very seldom annoyed with thunder-storms; and it is no less
remarkable than true, that those which arise in the south have hardly
been known to reach this village; for before they get over us, they
take a direction to the east or to the west, or sometimes divide into
two, and go in part to one of those quarters, and in part to the other;
as was truly the case in summer 1783, when though the country round was
continually harassed with tempests and often from the south, yet we
escaped them all; as appears by my journal of that summer. The only way
that I can at all account for this fact—for such it is — is that, on
that quarter, between us and the sea, there are continual mountains,
hill behind hill, such as Nore-hill, the Barnet, Butser-hill, and
Ports-down, which somehow divert the storms, and give them a different
direction. High promontories, and elevated grounds, have always been
observed to attract clouds and disarm them of their mischievous
contents, which are discharged into the trees and summits as soon as
they come in contact with those turbulent meteors; while the humble
vales escape, because they are so far beneath them.
But, when I say I do not remember a thunder-storm from the south, I do
not mean that we never have suffered from thunder-storms at all; for on
June 5th, 1784, the thermometer in the morning being at 64, and at noon
at 70, the barometer at 29, six-tenths one-half, and the wind north, I
observed a blue mist, smelling strongly of sulphur, hanging along our
sloping woods, and seeming to indicate that thunder was at hand. I was
called in about two in the afternoon, and so missed seeing the
gathering of the clouds in the north; which they who were abroad
assured me had something uncommon in its appearance. At about a quarter
after two the storm began in the parish of Hartley, moving slowly from
north to south; and from thence it came over Norton-farm, and so to
Grange-farm, both in this parish. It began with vast drops of rain,
which were soon succeeded by round hail, and then by convex pieces of
ice, which measured three inches in girth. Had it been as extensive as
it was violent, and of any continuance (for it was very short), it must
have ravaged all the neighbourhood. In the parish of Hartley it did
some damage to one farm; but Norton, which lay in the centre of the
storm, was greatly injured; as was Grange, which lay next to it. It did
but just reach to the middle of the village, where the hail broke my
north windows, and all my garden-lights and hand-glasses, and many of
my neighbours’ windows. The extent of the storm was about two miles in
length and one in breadth. We were just sitting down to dinner; but
were soon diverted from our repast by the clattering of tiles and the
jingling of glass. There fell at the same time prodigious torrents of
rain on the farms above-mentioned, which occasioned a flood as violent
as it was sudden; doing great damage to the meadows and fallows, by
deluging the one and washing away the soil of the other. The hollow
lane towards Alton was so torn and disordered as not to be passable
till mended, rocks being removed that weighed 200 weight. Those that
saw the effect which the great hail had on ponds and pools say that the
dashing of the water made an extraordinary appearance, the froth and
spray standing up in the air three feet above the surface. The rushing
and roaring of the hail, as it approached, was truly tremendous.
Though the clouds at South Lambeth, near London, were at that juncture
thin and light, and no storm was in sight, nor within hearing, yet the
air was strongly electric; for the bells of an electric machine at that
place rang repeatedly, and fierce sparks were discharged.
When I first took the present work in hand I proposed to have added an
Annus Historico-naturalis, or the Natural History of the Twelve Months
of the Year; which would have comprised many incidents and occurrences
that have not fallen in my way to be mentioned in my series of letters;
— but, as Mr. Aikin of Warrington has lately published somewhat of this
sort, and as the length of my correspondence has sufficiently put your
patience to the test, I shall here take a respectful leave of you and
natural history together; and am,
With all due deference and regard,
Your most obliged,
And most humble servant,
GIL. WHITE.
Selborne,
June 25, 1787.
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