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THE
NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE,
WITH
OBSERVATIONS ON VARIOUS PARTS OF NATURE,
The Faturalist’s Calendar,
BY THE LATE REV. GILBERT WHITE, A.M. A NEW EDITION.
EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE, Bart. F.R.S.E. F.LS. &e.
COMPLETELY ILLUSTRATED WITH ABOUT SEVENTY ENGRAVINGS,
COM PRISING
SUBJECTS FROM NATURAL HISTORY, AND VIEWS OF SELBORNE, ITS VICINITY AND ANTIQUITIES, SKETCHED FROM NAIU RESEI FOR THIS EDITION Sntinsoma § ey tion :
JAN 2930
= — = ty. . oS ; A sonal Zooiogic™® x
LONDON : NATHANIEL COOKE, MILFORD HOUSE, STRAND. 1853.
ADVERTISEMENT TO ORIGINAL EDITION.
ep
Tue 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 oceurrences as wellas 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 carefuliy 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 b
iv ADVERTISEMENT TO ORIGINAL EDITION.
readers to pay a more ready attention to the wonders of the Creation, too frequently overlooked as common occurrences ; or if he should by any means, through his researches, have lent an helping hand towards the enlargement of the boundaries of historical and topographical knowledge; or if he should have thrown some small light upon ancient customs and manners, and especially on those that were monastic ; his purpose will be fully answered. But if he should not have been successful in any of these his intentions, yet there remains this consolation behind— that these his pursuits, by keeping the body and mind employed, have, under Providence, contributed to much health and. cheer- fulness of spirits, even to old age: and, what still adds to his happiness, have led him to the knowledge of a circle of gentle- men whose intelligent communications, as they have afforded him much pleasing information, so, could he flatter himself with a continuation of them, would they ever be deemed a matter of. singular satisfaction and improvement.
SELBORNE, January 1st, 1788.
t
VILLAGE STREEIT—WHITE’S HOUSE.
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.
—_——— >——
In agreeing to the request of the proprietors of the Wational Lllustrated Inbrary, to give my assistance to their present edition of the “Natural History of Selborne,” I have felt that there was a danger of making repetitions, and a difficulty of adding much that was new to a work which had been printed in so many forms, and had been of late years so much written about. But the wish to extend among a new generation of readers the knowledge of a book which, in the opinion of every one, is well fitted for the perusal of young persons, and is a valuable record and example how the leisure hours of a country clergyman may be profitably and innocently employed, induced me to comply. There was also the desire to make some corrections incident to our more recent information on what I had already written in a previous edition, and to explain that several editions which bore my name were accompanied with some notes, and by illustrations
bQ
vi INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.
with which I had nothing whatever todo. In 1829, when Mr. Constable had proceeded so far with his “ Miscellany,” I was requested to read over and add some notes explanatory of various passages in “Selborne,” which he then proposed to publish in his collection. To this I agreed, and that edition, with a few supplementary notes added to the volume in Mr. Bohn’s “Standard Library,” are all with which I have had any connection whatever.
There is perhaps no work of the same class that has gone through more editions than White’s Selborne. It originally appeared in 1789, four years before the author’s death, in the then fashionable quarto size ; an octavo edition in two volumes, was published under the charge of Dr. Aitkin in 1802, to which various observations were added from White’s journals ; and a second quarto edition was again published in 1813, with notes by the Rev. John Mitford, several of which are copied into the present _ volume; after these, the edition projected and published by Constable in his “ Miscellany” was the first to render the work better known and more popularly desired. When the disarrange- ment of Mr. Constable’s affairs took place, and the “Miscellany” had passed into other hands, this edition assumed several forms, and was illustrated by woodcuts, some of them engraved for it, while some were inserted that had previously been used in other works on natural history. The demand for the work, however, still continued so great, as to induce Mr. Van Voorst and others, to speculate upon fresh reprints, some of them very beautifully illustrated, and the Rev. L. Jenyns, Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Jesse, have all contributed their share to the explanation of White’s letters, and have been assisted by some of the first men of the day, in regard to such subjects as did not so immediately form a portion of their own studies, and we owe to Messrs. Bell and Owen, Yarrel and Herbert, many useful and instructive notes. The call now for another edition of The Natural History of Selborne, after so much has been illustrated and written about it, shows the continued estimation in which the work is held, and the confidence of the publishers in its value. What is the cause of this run after the correspondence of a country clergyman? Just that it is the simple recording of valuable facts as they were really seen or learned, without embellishment except as received from truth, and without allowing the imagina- tion to ramble and assume conclusions the exactness of which it had not proved. He at the same time kept steadily in view
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. vil
the moral obligation upon himself as aman and minister, to penefit his fellow creatures by impressing upon them the beneficence of the Creator, as exemplified in his works, and the | contentment and cheerfulness of spirit which their study under proper restrictions imparts to the mind. And of this man we have handed down scarcely any biographical recollections, except what can be gathered from a short sketch by his brother, or that may be interspersed among his letters ; and these are very few, as he was not given to write of himself or his private affairs. Gilbert White, at one time the recluse, and almost
obscure vicar of Selborne, had no biographer to record all the c..*.:
little outs and ins of his quiet career, he was not thought of until his letters pointed him out as a man of observation, and it is only since they have been edited and re-edited, that every source has been ransacked, with the hope of finding some memoranda of the worthy vicar and naturalist.
The sketch which his brother John appended to the octavo edition of his works in 1802, is, as we have stated, the only memorial of his life, and as it is authentic and very short, it is best to print it as it was originally published. The same modest and retired habits never tempted him, so far as is known, to sit for any likeness, and no portrait or profile remains to recal the features of one whose writings have been so much and go widely read.*
“Gilbert White was the eldest son of John White of Selborne, Esq., and of Anne, the daughter of Thomas Holt, rector of Streatham in Surrey. He was born at Selborne in July 18th, 1720 ; and received his school education at Basingstoke, under the Rev. Thomas Warton, vicar of that place, and father of those two distinguished literary characters, Dr. Joseph Warton, master of Winchester school ; and Mr. Thomas Warton, poetry- professor at Oxford. He was admitted at Oriel College, Oxford, in December 1739, and took his degree of Bachelor of Arts. in June, 1743. In March, 1744, he was elected fellow of his college. He became Master of Arts in October, 1746, and was admitted as one of the senior procters of the University in April, 1752. Being of an unambitious temper, and strongly attached to the
* “ Oriel College, of which Gilbert White was for more than fifty years a fellow, some years since offered to have a portrait painted of him for their hall. An inquiry was then made of all the members of his family; but no portrait of any description could be found. I have heard my father say that Gilbert White was much pressed by his brother Thomas (my grandfather), to have his portrait painted, and that he talked of it; but it was never done.”—A. Hott Wuitse.— Notes and Queries, September, No. 204, page 304.
Vill IN TRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.
charms of rural scenery, he early fixed his residence in his native village, where he spent the greater part of his life in| literary occupations, and especially in the study of nature. This he followed with a patient assiduity, and a mind ever open to the lessons of piety and benevolence, which such a study is so well calculated to afford. Though several occasions offered of settling upon a college living, he could never persuade himself to quit the beloved spot, which was indeed a peculiarly happy situation for an observer. He was much esteemed by a select society of intelligent and worthy friends, to whom he paid occasional visits. Thus his days passed tranquil and serene, with scarcely any other vicissitudes than those of the seasons, till they closed at a mature age on June 26, 1793.” And thus he was born, lived, and died, in his native parish and village, respected by those around him, contented in his own mind, and endeavouring to fulfil his various duties as a clergyman and member of society. A grave-stone, as unobtrusive as his life, marks upon the turf of the church-yard the place of his interment. While his relatives have endeavoured to erect a monument less exposed to decay, by placing in the interior of the chancela simple marble tablet, bearing the arms of the family, and inscribed as follows.
THE REV. GILBERT WHITH, M.A.
Fifty Years Fellow of Oriel College in Oxford, Mt
And Historian of this his native Parish. Wy
He was the eldest son of Jounn WuiTkE, Esquire, Barrister-at-Law, Hi And AnNg his Wife, only child o |
Tuomas Hotz, Rector of Streatham in Surrey ; | i
Which said Jonn WuHiITE was the only child of GiLBERT WHITE, i Formerly Vicar of this Parish. Hl
He was kind and beneficent to his Relations, i Benevolent to the Poor, it
And deservedly esteemed by all his Friends and Neighbours. i He was born July 18, 1720, O.S.
And died June 20, 1793. i
Nec bono quicquam mali evenire potest (i | nec vivo, nec mortuo.
i In the Fifth Grave from this wall are interred the Remains of i
ATATTTETTETTTTTT
~
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. ies
' White was never married, but he had several brothers and sisters ; and the family generally seems to have been possessed of very considerable ability. I am not aware that any opinion has been handed down of his powers as a preacher; but if we may judge from the letters, his sermons would probably possess that simplicity of language and staightforwardness of truth which would impress and render them acceptable to the minds of his hearers. The letters, though simply written, show both the poet and the scholar; and the mass of facts which they contain in relation to our native animals, formed the main foun- dation tosome of the principal zoological works. of that time. Pennant often seeks information from him, and quotes his authority in the description of the swallow. He writes, “'To the curious monographies on the swallow of that worthy corre- spondent (Mr. White), I must acknowledge myself indebted for numbers of the remarks above-mentioned ; ;’ and he is elsewhere frequently referred to.
Of his four brothers all of Gisnils seem to have had tastes some- what akin to Gilbert’s, they devoted a considerable portion of their leisure to pursuits connected with literature or some of the branches of natural history. It is greatly to be regretted that the manuscripts of John White have not been recovered. He also was an English clergyman ; but for some portion of his life resided at Gibraltar, where he made collections and notes evidently with the view of working out and publishing a volume upon the natural history of that promontory; a “ Fauna Calpensis,” as he termed it. It must have been, in fact, written ; for in Letter LIII. to Mr. Barrington, Mr. White writes, “TI shall now transcribe a passage from a ‘ Natural History of Gibraltar,’ written by the Rev. John White, late vicar of Blackburn, in Lancashire, but not yet published.” But although every inquiry has been made both by ourselves and others, no trace of that MS. can be discovered. His residence at Gibraltar is referred to in his brother’s letters upon migration ; and he corresponded during his residence abroad with Mr. Pennant, who, when
_ writing of the contents of his projected work, the “ Outlines of
the Globe,” states that Volume V. would be particularly rich in drawings of the “ birds and fishes of Gibraltar communicated to me by the reverend the late Mr. John White, long resident in that fortress.” *
John White corresponded also with naturalists abroad, and
* Lit. Life, page 42.
x INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.
among others with Linneus. Four letters from Linnzus, were discovered a few years since, and were published in “ Contributions to Ornithology” for 1849. They were addressed to him while resident at Gibraltar, and showed that his assist- ance was highly valued. In thanking him for some collections and memoranda, Linnzeus writes, “ Accepi et dona veré aurea pro quibus omnibus ac singulis grates immortales reddo, reddamd. dum vixero.” He was the means also of procuring for Linnzus, who had not before seen them, two birds, which his brother mentions in his letters, aml (cypselus) melba and rupestris “quam antea non vidi;” “mihi antea ignota.”* Another brother, Thomas, after bare from besth ats devoted much of his time to literary pursuits and natural history, and for ten years contributed articles to the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” under the signature of T. H. W. A third, Benjamin White, was a publisher, and his name stands on the title-page of the first edition of “Selborne.” There appears also to have been a fourth brother, Harry White.t
Upon the death of our author Gilbert, the estate of Selborne was succeeded to by his brother Benjamin, the publisher. Weare not aware of the circumstances under which this was afterwards sold, but some years since it became, and now is, the property of as worthy a successor as could have been chosen, whether we regard his abilities as a naturalist, or the respect in which he holds all that belonged to White. Professor Thomas Bell is now the possessor of White’s property and mansion; and we know that he has been careful to preserve, as far as possibly could be done, in its original state, everything that belonged to the place, or that could throw light upon his correspondence. We consider that it is Professor Bell alone who can properly edit a new Selborne. From his own knowledge of natural history, and particularly of British Zoology, he is eminently qualified to illustrate the writings, and verify the observations, while his residence upon that spot, now his home, gives him opportunities possessed by no other. We believe that this is even now in progress: we would not wish to hurry it, but long much to see it,
In writing thus, we have no ava to express ourselves dis- paragingly of previous editions ; on the contrary, we think we é
* Contributions to Ornithology, by Six William Jardine, Bart., 1849, pp. 2T
, 40. + Preface to Bennett’s Edition, pp. xii. xiii.
}
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. ie
have been all required, and that the call is still onward. Professor Bell’s edition will, in all probability, be an expensive one, for we are sure no pains or expense will be spared in any of the departments; it will therefore not be in circulation among certain classes. Now in a work so much read, and likely still to be so, when it can be obtained at so moderate a charge as that of the volumes ofthe “Illustrated Library,” it is essen- tial that explanations should accompany it, and this is one reason for notes to such a book. Since the time of the letters from Selborne vast advances have been made in all branches of science. White was one of those who mainly assisted or tempted persons to observe. Studying, searching out, and inquiring himself, he incited others; and in the letters he writes to Pennant and Barrington, he often asks questions, starts sub- jects for discussion, and brings forward objects new to the existing knowledge of the physical character of the district ; and it is very important that all those should be explained to the young reader, or to the person perhaps only entering upon the study of nature, and this it will be our object to do in any notes and commentary we may now add, and which can be done we think sufficiently for every purpose, even by one who has not seen the place or resided in the district. But there are other phenomena, which can only be illustrated by one who is resident, and has resided for some time, and continuously upon the spot. Sixty years, however short that time may appear, will produce important differences in particular localities; even during White’s incumbency he complains of the changes that are occurring, and the disturbance to the “ Ferz nature,” the increase or destruction of wood, acts remarkably on the Fauna and Flora and on the climate ; so does drainage, particularly that of any larger piece of water, and cultivation influences very materially the habits of the wild animals. Do the stone curlews - now abound as they didin White’s time, and is their shrill whistle
yet heard at the parsonage ? Do the ring-ousels still find their resting places as formerly, are all the summer visitants yet found, and have no new ones been added and become common ? How does the meteorology now agree with White’s tables ?. What are the changes in the Hanger and in Wolmer Forest? these are all subjects for Professor Bell’s edition, besides many others which the place itself will suggest, and which he will not omit tointroduce. Meanwhile, let those who wish to hand down the annals of their own districts, study to follow White’s example,
xii INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.
describe everything simply and truthfully,—record only as facts such as are known and can be proved to be such,—and never forget that one hand only fashioned all the objects which it gives them pleasure and interest to observe, and that the same power regulates their continuance or change.
No pains have been spared by the publishers’ of the present edition to illustrate it fully. An artist, Mr. Pearson, was sent to Selborne to procure authentic sketches of the village and surrounding country, so that these may be depended upon as . faithful representations, and not mere copies from previous engravings. ‘These have also been accompanied by some notes describing the present condition of Selborne, which cannot fail to be interesting.
“Selborne has probably suffered as little from chat as any village that has obtained a similar celebrity. It has been so often described in former editions of White’s fascinating and instructive volume, that any farther account of its present aspect might appear unnecessary, yet in some few particulars it may be interesting to note the result of a receyt visit. The first view of Selborne obtained by the visitor as he approaches the village from the New Elton road is peculiarly striking. The church and vicarage with a few of the houses lie embosomed among trees in the valley ; beyond these a small wooded park belonging to the residence of White extends to the “ Hanger,” or hanging wood, which is a striking feature in this locality. This wood, composed of luxuriant beech-trees, rises on the side of a steep hill to a great height, appearing to overhang the village and giving to the landscape a particular and striking beauty. Nore Hill, seen upon the left, is also a richly wooded eminence, divided from the Hanger by an undulating slope.”
The above is descriptive of the view placed at the commence- ment of our Introductory remarks. The view which has been selected as a frontispiece to this volume, and apparently taken from some point at no great distance from that chosen by the modern artist, is copied from the large engraving published with the first and original 4to edition, and upon comparing the one with the other it will be at once seen that there can be comparatively very little change, except such as would necessarily‘occur by the growth of the timber and other unavoidable natural circumstances.
“In looking along the village street of Selborne the ‘ Queen’s Arms’ is seen upon the left, the chief inn of the place, where the visitor will be hospitably entertained ; but upon the right is
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. Xlil
the habitation which no pilgrim to this favourite locality will contemplate without extreme interest. It is the residence of the naturalist himself, remaining almost in the same condition externally as when tenanted by him. One wing has been added since his death, and this*has been built in exact keeping with the other portions, and the present distinguished occupier has admirably improved the grounds and park behind the house without diminishing the interest attached to the locality by altering its leading features. The house as seen from behind
Wee = — PO is oo ee ee SN LEZ a = ——— a ues = = ere = — Sey y wy AW == SS —————————— Sa) w——S | Ne c= == = aS iH ——— 2 "hz sa = iM eZ E = H
Win ie pM a in are i,
oe Da oh
BACK VIEW OF WHITE’S HOUSE.
presents the appearance of a manorial residence, and with its walls covered with ivy and creeping plants, and its many roofs discoloured by the lapse of time, gives just that impression which one would wish to receive of the residence of our author. At the end of the lawn, opposite the house, stands White’s sun- dial, set up and used by himself, and here also are pointed out the great oak-tree and juniper-tree referred to in his letters, The space from the lawn to the foot of the ‘Hanger’ is occupied by a park now much improved.”
It has not been mentioned by any of his later editors whether the original manuscript of White’s letters yet exist, and if so by whom they are possessed—neither are we aware of the preserva- tion of any of John’s collections, or of the correspondence of his other brothers, and if we except the remains of the old tortoise
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.
XIV
o t ee a) Pica eer 28 - Oo = 55 Qe £2 Bs > oa » TO oO ab So oO 2 3 a S oh a -* fase =e Cy © @D aa o ee so Ba or ea ¢ o O° ae oe = a & Cyl
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WHITE’S SUN-DIAL.
His worth was not known until
1cS remMaln.
tion, few personal rel
he had himself passed away, but his friends and relations may
le annals of Selborne he has left a far
hable memorial than any that could have been
the simp
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rejoice
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his mos
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WHITE’S TOMBSTONE IN CHURCHYARD.
CONTENTS.
——$——_-
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE . . . ° ° . THE ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE . . ° . . envi OBSERVATIONS ON VARIOUS PARTS OF NATURE ° ° ° ° SUMMARY OF THE WEATHER . ° | . ° ° ° ene
A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE NATURALISTS CALENDAR AS KEPT BY THE LATE GILBERT WHITE AND WILLIAM MARKWICK, ESQ.
POEMS SELECTED FROM THE MSS. OF THE REV. GILBERT WHITE .
dol
}
Be
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FRONTISPIECE—GENERAL VIEW OF SELBORNE. ‘ - PAGE OLD VIEW OF SELBORNE . . ° ° ° ee ° ° ° e °
WELL-HEAD -. *. °. ; e ; 7 P < P erie : eis 3 WYCH ELM . : is 2 4 s : “ - : : : : f f 5 OSTREA CARINATA c 5 y ‘ ° é ; 2 ets . ang 7 HOLLOW LANE-~. -. ‘%. ° : ; : . : . ° ; : 2 AG ROCKY HOLLOW LANE «. 4 P . ene P ; : ° ‘ Re oh a ie WOLMER FOREST } : Site Hi Mie , gy ane ; é } . 4-4 TEAL AND WIDGEON . i ; : d 4 ° : . F 4 Poe ipet <2 WILD BOAR 6 Rc aeatiast 3 “ 3 ‘ 2 y é . ‘ | 23 WATHER-BAW gt) es ‘i . 2 i : 3 P 7 ‘ am pi iat ie
HOOPOE . ar deh hele lee ‘ : ! : ‘ 4 2 <3 MILLER’S THUMB AND STICKLE-BACK . : : ‘ ; = 7 3 - - 28 PIPISTRELLE AND LONG-EARED BAT . é 7 ae oy 3 eee ° <0 eo HARVEST MICE Ce te - “ é ABM a aie ° Pe ars s.
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XV1il LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
1. ATHALIA CENTIFOLIA. 2. BLACK DOLPHIN. 3. HALTICA NEMORUM
HEADS OF EELS. 3 : ‘ : : 4 : easy te ; STOCK DOVE lie igs : ; ‘ Bi sale . : aca . CUCKOO . 2 ane : "4 ° : 4 ‘ e : REED-BUNTING . ° : - 5 ° 3 : . : . . SPOTTED FLYCATCHER . 4 F ; . c ‘ 2 4 4 l. HIPPOBOSCA HIRUNDINIS. 2. NIRMI . : - 4 4 . - ESCULENT SWALLOW, : t 4 a - ; : : WHITE-BELLIED SWIFT : ; A w A ; * : ns RUSH-HOLDER : { : ‘ - : : 5 a f SHIRE W-MOUSE 76586... vic AWPU oe RR ah Mee a gO Ciacci RAVEN . ; - 4 4 “| Cae 4 . ; 4 " RIVULET IN SHORT LITHE : 4 ° : ; : ‘ MOLE-CRICKET . . ° j es ih A ‘ “4 H F LONG-LEGGED PLOVER : ‘ 4 s : 4 ; . } MARTIN . ; , : ; : 2 : : - : : 5 SELBORNE CHURCH AND VICARAGE . : 4 . ; ‘ : : VILLAGE PLEYSTOW . i : ; ‘ 3 : : “| : IRON KEY OF ANCIENT CONSTRUCTION . 5 . : 4 4
STEEL HINGE WITH GRIFFIN ON IT ° rie e e ° e e OLD COINS e e e e e e ° e e e ° e e ENCAUSTIC TILES, NOW FORMING THE FLOOR OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
FARM-HOUSE GARDEN . : “ : : 5 “ set igs STONE COFFIN, KEPT IN THE FARM-HOUSE GARDEN : é “ LEADEN TAP . : ; A . : Q $ . A PRIORY FARM-HOUSE , ° . - ; A : . . e 5 PRIORY SEAL . A 5 A 4 5 ; f : x 4 ° COCKCHAFFER . . ; Me. A : : : ; PHALEZNA QUERCUS . 4 “ - 4 . : S : - ; SPHYNX OCELLATA ; - A A . > A A - . GLOW-WORMS . : : : 5 4 : : fi : : 3 PLATES.
GREAT BAT—HONEY BUZZARD.
PEREGRINE FALCON—HYBRID PHEASANT. VIPER’S HEAD—TORTOISE.
FALLOW DEER—RED DEER—STONE CURLEW.
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THE
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
LETTER I*
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.
Tuer parish of Selborne lies in the extreme eastern corner of the county of Hampshire, bordering on the county of Sussex, and not far from the county of Surrey; is about fifty miles south-west of London, in latitude fifty-one, and near mid-way between the towns of Alton and Petersfield. Being very large and extensive it abuts on twelve parishes, two of which are in Sussex, viz., Trotton and Rogate. If you begin from the south
* The first series of Mr. White’s Letters are addressed to Pennant, and run over a period of several years, during which that gentleman was engaged in writing his British Zoology; whether they were originally. commenced as real letters between friends and naturalists, and were afterwards brought together for publication we are unable to say. Some bear the stamp of replies to actual letters, but when the idea of publication was fixed upon, it is probable that others may have been introduced, and such as this first one written as intro- ductory to his parochial history. Mr. White tells us that they are published with the view of ‘“‘laying before the public his idea of a Parochial History, which he thinks ought to consist of natural productions and occurrences as well as antiquities.” (See Advertisement.) It is from such materials and records as these
that the most complete County Histories might be drawn, aud he remarks that
such are still wanting in several parts of the kingdom. In 1853 the same remark would continue to apply. The parish registers do not always go so far back, and have not always at an early period been kept with that exactness which - White would have recommended, and itis often difficult to trace the origin of
some old custom or pastime, or the etymology of some of the apparently now meaningless names of places, farms, or villages. Accordingly, in this his first letter, he at once goes into the necessary, though to some the dry and more tedious information, of the boundaries and situation of the parish; some of its statistics, produce, springs, with a slight sketch of its geology and physical character.
This is one of the few letters where the geology of the district is touched upon, and in only one of the numerous editions has this been explained ; Mr. Bennet is the only editor who seems to have examined it for himself and to him, as others have done we must. apply for information. This is necessary, as upon the explanation depends the proper understanding of several
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2 : NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
and proceed westward, the adjacent parishes are Emshot, Newton Valence, Faringdon, Harteley Mauduit, Great Ward le ham, Kingsley, Hadleigh, Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lyffe, and Greatham. ‘The soils of this district are almost as various and diversified as the views and aspects. The high part of the south-west consists of a vast hill of chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village, and is divided into a Sheep-down, the high wood and a long hanging wood, called The Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech, the most lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or bark,
‘its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The down, or sheep-
walk, is a pleasing park-like spot, of about one mile by half that space,
jutting out on the verge of the hill-country, where it begins to break
down into the plains, and commanding a very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, wood-lands, heath, and water. The prospect is bounded to the south-east and east by the vast range of mountains called the Sussex Downs, by Guild-down near Guildford, and by the Downs round Dorking, and Ryegate in Surrey, to the north-east, which altogether, with the country beyond Alton and Barnham, form a noble and extensive outline.
At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the uplands, lies the village, which consists of one single straggling street, three quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running parallel with The Hanger. The houses are divided from the hill by a vein of stiff clay (good wheat-land), yet stand on a rock of white stone, little in appear- ance removed from chalk; but seems so far from being calcareous, that it endures extreme heat. Yet that the freestone still preserves some- what that is analogous to chalk, is plain from the beeches which descend as low as those rocks extend, and no farther, and thrive as well on them, where the ground is steep, as on the chalks.
~The cart-way of the village divides, in a remarkable manner, two
very incongruous soils. To the south-west is a rank clay, that requires
of White’s remarks and expressions in the other parts of his work. Mr. Bennet writes in his note to page 5 of his edition; ‘‘The parish of Selborne is situated in the lower part of the chalk formation, and embraces within it the upper
members of the Weald. These are well displayed as they occur in suecession,
forming strips which run along the parish from north to south: in crossing it from east to west each of the strata is visited in the order of their superposition. They are four in number; comprising the chalk, the upper green-sand, the gault, and the lower green- ‘sand. The chalk constitutes the mass of the Selborne bill, which is covered towards the village by the Hanger. Next in succession to the chalk is the formation technically known as the upper green-sand, designated
in the text, ‘ freestone, or firestone.’ Below the rock of the upper green-sand
formation is the gault, generally presenting a uniform level, of the most fertile character; within Selborne it exists only as a perfect flat, but to the north in the forest of the Holt, it rises into hills. Last of the Selborne strata is the lower green-sand, which rises immediately east of the gault into ridges of various elevations, having usually a direction not very dissimilar to that of the Hanger.”
White also in this letter shows his appreciation of the beautiful, in celebrating the appearance of the beech tree, which grows with such peculiar. erace or elegance on the chalk or oolite formations, and in spring forms groves of the freshest green. We have elsewhere stated that we thought other trees possessed more elegance of form, but this is a matter of mere taste and opinion, and need
not be entered upon here ; ; certainly in spring it is preeminent for its enlivening
green, and in autumn it exhibits a foliage of the warmest tints.
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NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 3
the labour of years to render it mellow ; while the gardens to the north-
east, and small enclosures behind, consist of a,warm, forward, crumbling mould, called black malm, which seems highly saturated with vegetable and animal manure; and these may perhaps have been the original site of the town; while the woods and coverts might extend down to the opposite bank.
At each end of the village, which runs from south-east to north-west, arises a small rivulet: that at the north-west end frequently fails ; but the other is a fine perennial spring, little influenced by drought or wet seasons, called Well-head.* This breaks out of some high grounds join-
WELL-HEAD.
ing to Nore Hill, a noble chalk promontory, remarkable for sending
forth two streams into two different seas. The one to the south becomes a branch of the Arun, running to Arundel, and so sailing into the British Channel: the other to the north. The Selborne stream makes one branch of the Wey ; and, meeting the Black-down stream at
* This spring produced, September 10, 1781, after a severe hot summer, and a precéding dry spring and winter, nine gallons of water in a minute, which is 540 in an hour, and 12,960, or 216 hogsheads, in twenty-four hours, or one natural day. At this time many of the wells failed, and all the ponds in the vale were dry.
The ‘‘ Well Head,” as represented in the vignette, ‘‘ breaks out of the land at | the foot of the Hanger, and spreadirg into a picturesque pond contracts again into a narrow stream, which flows past the Village, and swells into a river at Godalming.” :
B 2
4 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
Hedleigh, and the Alton and Farnham stream at Tilford-bridge, swells. into a considerable river, navigable at Godalming; from whence it passes to Guilford, and so into the Thames at Weybridge; and thus at the Nore into the German Ocean. ,
Our wells, at an average, run to about sixty-three feet, and when sunk to that depth seldom fail; but produce a fine limpid water, soft to the taste, and much commended by those who drink the pure element, but which does not lather well with soap. .
To the north-west, north and east of the village, is a range of fair enclosures, consisting of what is called a white malm, a sort of rotten or rubble stone, which, when turned up to the frost and rain, moulders to pieces, and becomes manure to itself.*
Still on to the north-east, and a step lower, isa kind of white land, neither chalk nor clay, neither fit for pasture nor for the plough, yet kindly for hops, which root deep in the freestone, and have their poles and wood for charcoal growing just at hand. The white soil produces the brightest hops.
As the parish still inclines down towards Wolmer-forest, at the juncture of the clays and sand the soil becomes a wet, sandy loam, remarkable for timber, and infamous for roads. The oaks of Temple and Blackmoor stand high in the estimation of purveyors, and have furnished much naval timber; while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shaky, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing. Beyond the sandy loam the soil becomes a hungry lean sand, till it mingles with the forest ; and will produce little without the assistance of lime and turnips.
LETTER II.
TO THE SAME.
In the court of Norton farm-house, a manor farm to the north-west of the village, on the white malms, stood within these twenty years a broad-leaved elm, or wych hazel, ulmus folio latissimo scabro of Ray, which, though it had lost a considerable leading bough in the great storm in the year 1703, equal to a moderate tree, yet, when felled, contained eight loads of timber; and, being too bulky for a carriage, was sawn off at seven feet above the butt, where it measured near eight feet in the diameter. This elm I mention to show to what a bulk planted elms may attain; as this tree must certainly have been such from its situation. t
* This soil produces good wheat and clover. 4)
+ Mr. White seems to have adopted no plan or rule in arranging the subjects of these letters. They are taken up as they occur or have been observed. This may have its advantages, as recording the observations when freshly made, or before the memory had failed, but a correspondence or journal kept in this way would almost require for the sake of convenience to have the subjects brought more together. Thus there are frequent observations afterwards upon the
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 5
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WYCH ELM. In the centre of the village, and near the church, is a square piece of
forestry of Selborne, while here we have now only some of the more remarkable trees noted.
The wych elm, the first tree alluded to has been a subject always annotated upon, this species being far less commonly grown in England than in Scotland. In the former country it is supplanted almost entirely by the small-leaved or English elm, as it is commonly named, a tree which reaches a large size, and of which there are magnificent specimens in our public parks or promenades ; but it produces a wood of inferior quality, and as it is now planted in the hedge- rows of the small enclosures of the south, it must very materially injure the crops by its spreading roots, which shoot up and would soon cover the ground. The tree mentioned in this letter is the wlmus campestris, Linn. it yields a timber valuable for various agricultural purposes, and is esteemed for making naves for cart-wheels ; it is of a more spreading character than the others, and often attains to a large size. The Selborne elm, though of less size than some others, the eee ements of which have been recorded, must have been a large and very
ne tree.
The oak trees mentioned in the latter part of this letter gained their peculiar character by being very thickly planted, and as it might be called “‘ neglected.” According to our notion of timber management thinning is indispensable, but to. obtain trees of the kind alluded to, the thicker they can be grown, the better. Beech trees with a clean stem of from fifty to seventy feet are very valuable for keel pieces, but the practice of growing wood of any kind in this way has scarcely been practised. Larch planted for hop-poles, or sweet chesnut grown for the same purpose, are treated in this manner; and what in commerce is called Norway poles, are I believe the first thinnings of the Baltic forests, which
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6 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
ground surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called “The Plestor.”* In the midst of this spot stood, in old times, a vast oak, with a short squat body, and huge horizontal arms extending ‘almost to the extremity of the area. This venerable tree, surrounded with stone steps, and seats above them, was the delight of old and young, and a place of much resort in summer evenings; where the former sat in grave debate, while the latter frolicked and danced before them. Long might it have stood, had not the amazing tempest in 1703 overturned it at once, to the infinite regret of the inhabitants, and the vicar, who bestowed several pounds in setting it in its place again: but all his care could not avail; the tree sprouted for a time, then withered and died. This oak I mention to show to what a bulk planted oaks also may arrive : and planted this tree must certainly have been, as will appear from what will be said farther concerning this area, when we enter on the antiquities of Selborne.
On the Blackmoor estate there isa small wood called Losel’s, of a few acres, that was lately furnished with a set of oaks of a peculiar growth and great value; they were tall and taper like firs, but standing near together had very small heads, only a little brush without any large limbs. About twenty years ago the bridge at the Toy, near Hampton Court, being much decayed, some trees were wanted for the repairs that were fifty feet long without bough, and would measure twelve inches diameter at the little end. Twenty such trees did a purveyor find in this little wood, with this advantage, that many of them answered the description at sixty feet. These trees were sold for twenty pounds apiece.
In the centre of this grove there stood an oak, which, though shapely and tall on the whole, bulged out into a large excrescence about the middle of the stem. On this a pair of ravens had fixed their residence for such a series of years, that the oak was distinguished by the title of the Raven Tree. Many were the attempts of the neighbouring youths to get at this eyry: the difficulty whetted their inclinations, and each was ambitious of surmounting the arduous task. But, when they arrived at the swelling, it jutted out so in their way, and was so far beyond their grasp, that the most daring lads -were awed, and acknowledged the undertaking to be too hazardous: so the ravens built on, nest upon nest, in perfect security, till the fatal day arrived in which the wood was to be levelled. It was in the month of February, when these birds usually sit. The saw was applied to the butt,—the wedges were inserted into the opening,—the woods echoed to the heavy blow of the beetle or malle or mallet,— the tree nodded to its fall; but still the dam sat on. At last, when it gave way, the bird was flung from her nest; and, though her parental affection deserved a better fate, was whipped down by the twigs, which brought her dead to the ground.
have been spindled up by the more vigorous trees to great length and uniformity of thickness, and which in all probability would have been ultimately killed.
* Vide the plate in the antiquities. :
t+ We have always found the raven, whether nesting upon a rock or upon tree, most unapproachable after she had been disturbed or alarmed.
7 »
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NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNHKE. 7
| LETTER IU.
TO THE SAME.
Tue 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 Linnean Genus of Mytilus
OSTREA CARINATA.
and the species of Crista Galli; called by Lister, Rastellum ; by Rumphius, Ostreum plicatum minus ; by D’Argenville, Auris Porci, s. Crista Galli; and by those who make collections, Cock’s Comb. Though I applied to several such in London, I never could meet with an entire specimen; nor could I ever find in books any engraving from a perfect one. In the superb museum at Leicester House permission was given me to examine for this article; and, though I was disap- pointed as to the fossil, I was highly gratified with the sight of several of the shells themselves in high preservation. This bivalve is only known to inhabit the Indian ocean, where it fixes itself to a zoophyte, known by the name Gorgonia. The curious foldings of the suture the one into the other, the alternate 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.*
* Our author was mistaken in referring this fossil to the Mytilus crista galli of Linneus. Mr. Bennet, who has explained the subject in a note to his edition
8 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE,
Cornua Ammonis are very common about this village. As we were cutting an inclining path up the Hanger, the labourers found them frequently on that steep, just under the soil, in the chalk, and of a . considerable size. In the lane above Wall-head, in the way to Emshot, they abound in the bank in a darkish sort of marl; and are usually very small and soft: but in Clay’s Pond, a little farther on, at the end of the pit, where the soil is dug out for manure, I have occasionally observed them of large dimensions, perhaps fourteen or sixteen inches in diameter. But as these did not consist of firm stone, but were formed of a kind of terra lapidosa, or hardened clay, as soon as they were exposed to the rains and frost they mouldered away. These seemed as if they were a very recent production. In the chalk-pit, at the north-west end of the Hanger, large nautili are sometimes observed.
In the very thickest strata of our freestone, and at considerable depths, well-diggers often find large scallops or pectines, having both shells deeply striated, and ridged and furrowed alternately. They are highly impregnated with, if not wholly composed of, the stone of the quarry. |
LETTER IY.
TO THE SAME.
As in a former letter the freestone of this place has been only mentioned incidentally, I shall here become more particular.
This stone is in great request for hearth-stones, and the beds of ovens: and in lining of lime-kilns it turns to good account; for the workmen use sandy loam instead of mortar; the sand of which fluxes,* and runs by the intense heat, and so cases over the whole face of the kiln with a strong vitrified coat-like glass, that it is well preserved from injuries of weather, and endures thirty or forty years. When chiseled smooth, it makes elegant fronts for houses, equal in colour and grain to the Bath stone; and superior in one respect, that, when seasoned, it does not scale. Decent chimney-pieces are worked from it ° of much closer and finer grain than Portland; and rooms are floored with it; but it proves rather too soft for this purpose. It is a freestone cutting in all directions; yet has something of a grain parallel with the horizon, and therefore should not be surbedded, but laid in the same position that it grows in the quarry.| On the ground abroad this
of Selborne, refers it to the Ostrea carinata of Lamarck, a species peculiar to the green-sand formation, upon which the village of Selborne is built, and which from its white colour would be easily confounded with the chalk, especially at a time when geology was much less attended to than at present.
* There may probably be also in the chalk itself that is burnt for lime a proportion of sand: for few chalks are so pure as to have none.
+ To surbed stone is to set it edgewise, contrary to the posture it had in the quarry, says Dr Plot, ‘‘Oxfordshire,” p. 77. But surbedding does not succeed in our dry walls; neither do we use it so in ovens, though he says it is best for - Teynton stone.
\ ‘
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 9
firestone will not succeed for pavements, because, probably some degree of saltness prevailing within it, the rain tears the slabs to pieces.* Though this stone is too hard to be acted on by vinegar, yet both the white part, and even the blue rag, ferments strongly in mineral acids. Though the white stone will not bear wet, yet in every quarry at intervals there are thin strata of blue rag, which resist rain and frost ; and are excellent for pitching of stables, paths and courts, and for building of dry walls against banks, a valuable species of fencing much in use in this village, and for mending of roads. This rag is rugged and stubborn, and will not hew to a smooth face, but is very durable ; yet, as these strata are shallow and lie deep, large quantities cannot be procured but at considerable expense. Among the blue rags turn up some blocks tinged with a stain of yellow or rust colour, which seem to be nearly as lasting as the blue; and every now and then balls of a friable substance, like rust of iron, called rust balls.
In Wolmer Forest I see but one sort of stone, called by the workmen sand, or forest-stone. This is generally of the colour of rusty iron, and might probably be worked as iron ore; is very hard and heavy, and of a firm, compact texture, and composed of a small roundish crystalline grit, cemented together by a brown, terrene, ferruginous matter; will not cut without difficulty, nor easily strike fire with steel. Being often found in broad flat pieces, it makes good pavement for paths about houses, never becoming slippery in frost or rain; is excellent for dry walls, and is sometimes used in buildings. In many parts of that waste it lies scattered on the surface of the ground; but is dug on Weaver’s Down, a vast hill on the eastern verge of that forest, where the pits are shallow and the stratum thin. This stone is imperishable.
From a notion of rendering their work the more elegant, and giving it a finish, masons chip this stone into small fragments about the size of the head of a large nail, and then stick the pieces into the wet mortar along the joints of their freestone walls; this embellishment carries an odd appearance, and has occasioned strangers sometimes to ask us pleasantly, “whether we fastened our walls together with ten- penny nails.”
* ** Firestone is full of salts, and has no sulphur: must be close-grained, and have no interstices. Nothing supports fire like salts; saltstone perishes exposed to wet and frost.”—Puot’s Staff. p. 152.
10 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
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HOLLOW LANE.
LETTER V. TO THE SAME. ‘
Amone the singularities of this place the two rocky hollow lanes, the one to Alton, and the other to the forest, deserve our attention. These roads, running through the malm lands, are, by the traffic of ages, and the fretting of water, worn down through the first stratum of our freestone, and partly through the second; so that they look more like water-courses than roads; and are bedded with naked rag for furlongs together. In many places they are reduced sixteen or eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields; and after floods, and in frosts, exhibit very grotesque and wild appearances, from the tangled roots that are twisted among the strata, and from the torrents rushing down their broken sides; and especially when those cascades are frozen into icicles, hanging in all the fanciful shapes of frost-work. These rugged gloomy scenes affright the ladies when they peep down into them from the paths above, and make timid horsemen shudder while they ride
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 1]
along them; but delight the naturalist with their various botany, and particularly with their curious filices with which they abound.
The manor of Selborne, was it strictly looked after, with all its kindly aspects, and all its sloping coverts, would swarm with game ; even now hares, partridges, and pheasants abound; and in old days woodcocks were as plentiful. There are few quails, because they more affect open fields than enclosures; after harvest some few land- rails are seen.
The parish of Selborne, by taking in so much of the forest, is a vast district. 'Those who tread the bounds are employed part of three days -in the business, and are of opinion that the outline, in all its curves and indentings, does not comprise less than thirty miles.
The village stands in a sheltered spot, secured by the Hanger from the strong westerly winds. The air is soft, but rather moist from the effluvia of so many trees; yet perfectly healthy and free from agues.
The quantity of rain that falls on it is very considerable, as may be supposed in so woody and mountainous a district. As my experience in measuring the water is but of short date, I am not qualified to give the mean quantity.* I only know that
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The village of Selborne, and large hamlet of Oakhanger, with the single farms, and many scattered houses along the verge of the forest, contain upwards of six hundred and seventy inhabitants.
* A very intelligent gentleman! assures me (and he speaks from upwards of forty years experience), that the mean rain of any place cannot be ascertained till a person has measured it fora 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 164 inches for the year; if from 1740 to 1750, 185 inches. The mean rain before 1763 was 204 inches, from 1763 and since 254 inches, from 1770 to 1780, 26 inches. If only 1773, 1774 and 1775, had been measured, Lyndon mean rain would have been called 32 inches.
+ Mr. Bennet has given a continuation of the register of the rain-gauge up to 1793. Some of the years show a greater quantity than any of the previous ones, except 1782. Three of them considerably above 40, the last 48°56. " ~ A STATE OF THE PARISH OF SELBORNE, TAKEN OCTOBER 4, 1783.
The number of tenements or families, 136. The number of inhabitants in the street is 313 ) Total 676; near five inhabitants In the rest of the parish . : : . 863) to each tenement. In the time of the Rev. Gilbert White, Vicar, who died in 1727-8, the number of inhabitants was computed at about 500.
1 The intelligent gentleman, referred to in the author’s note to this letter, was Thomas Barker, of an ancient and respectable family in the county of Rutland, _ brother-in-law to Mr. White.
The vignettes at commencement and conclusion of the letter represent those ‘ hollow lanes so quaintly alluded to in its first paragraph.
12 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
We abound with poor; many of whom are sober and industrious, and live comfortably in good stone or brick cottages, which are glazed, and
Average of baptisms for 60 years.
From 1720 to Males 6, Bil From 1740 M. 9, 2 From 1760 M. 5,8 to F.
1729, both to years inclus. Fem. 6, 0 J 1749 incl. F. 6,6 1769 incl.
From 1730 to From 1750 From 1770 Males . 9 M. 7, 6 M.10,5 :
years inclus, 1759 inel. 1779 incl. d Total of baptisms of Males. ¥) Ou 640 rh Females . . 465 Total of Bauanel from 1720 to 1779, both inclusive, 60 years . . 980
Average of burials for 60 years.
From 1720 to) 45 Pig From 1740 M. 4,6 From 1760 M. 6, 9)
1729, both Bom ised 9,9 to F. 3.8 8 to F654 13,4 years inclus. Zien 1749 incl. pie 1769 incl. voi From 1730 to Males 4, 8 From 1750 M. 4,9 From 1770 M.5.5
1732, both idna Eas 10 to Fo5l to F. 6 2 11,7 years inclus. at ase 1759 incl. aid 1779 incl. ?
Total of burials of Males . By eile) \ 640 Ba Females oho SOO Total of burials Fon 1720 to 1779, both inclusive, 60 years : . 640
Baptisms exceed burials by more than one third. Baptisms of Males exceed Females by one tenth, or one in ten. Burials of Females exceed Males by one in thirty. It appears that a child, born and bred in this parish, has an equal chance to live above forty years. ras thirteen times, many of whom dying young have lessened the chance for ife. 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. BURIALS. MAR, M. F. Tot. M. F. Tot. 1761 . 5 8 10 18 2 4 6 D 1762 -. ; . 7 8 15 10 14 24 6 1763 3 4 8 10 18 3 4 ‘oo 8 1764 . 11 9 20 10 8 18 6 1765 12 6 18 9 4 16 6 1766 . 9 13 22 10 6 16 4: 1767 14 5 19 6 5 11 2 1768 . 7 6 13 2 5 7 6 1769 * : : ie) 14 23 6 5 11 2 1770 . A : wee 10 13 a 4 7 11 3 1771 A ‘ tO 6 16 3 4 "4 4 Lh Cee ALE 10 21 6 10 16 3 1773 8 5 3 7 5 12 3 A 6 13 19 2 8 10 1 1775 20 i¢ 20 1s Sag RR Pal 6 1776 . 11 10 21 4 6 10 6 ieee 8 13 aL 7 3 10 4 L778. i 13 20 23 4 6 5 1779 14 8 22, 5 6 11 5 1780 . 8 9 17 11 4 15 3
|
198 188 386 | 123 123 246 | 83
During this per ot of twenty years the births of males exceeded those of emales , The burials of each sex were equal. And the births exceeded the deaths . ; : ; . 140
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 13
have chambers above ‘stairs: mud buildings we have none. Besides the employment from husbandry, the men work in hop-gardens, of which we have many; and fell and bark timber. In the spring and summer the women weed the corn; and enjoy a second harvest in September by hop-picking. Formerly, in the dead months they availed themselves greatly by spinning wool, for making of barragons, a genteel corded stuff, much in vogue at that time for summer wear ; and chiefly manufactured at Alton, a neighbouring town, by some of the people called Quakers: but from circumstances this trade is at an end.* The inhabitants-enjoy a good share of health and longevity ; and the parish swarms with children.
* Since the passage above was written, I am’ happy in being able to say that the spinning employment is a little revived, to the no small comfort of the industrious housewife.
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ROCKY HOLLOW LANE.
14 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
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WOLMER FOREST.
LETTER VI. 4 TO THE SAME.
SHoutpD I omit to describe with some exactness the forest of Wolmer, of which three-fifths perhaps le 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
* See his ‘‘ History of Staffordshire.”’
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 15
district, whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or some such instruments: but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so well examined, that none has been found of late.* Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants called fir: but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them ; and therefore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic tree.
This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the,winter, but breed there in the summer ; such as lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered within these few years, teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good seasons on the verge of this forest, into which they love to make excursions: and in particular, in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they swarmed to such a degree that parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a day.
But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting flying became so common, and that was the heath-cock, black-game, or grouse. When I wasa 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 ane assured me that it was a greyhen.+
* Old people have assured me, that on a winter’s morning they have discovered these trees, in the bogs, by the hoar frost, which lay longer over the space where they are concealed than in the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem to be a fanciful notion, but consistent with true philosophy. Dr. Hales saith, ‘“‘That | the warmth of the earth, at some depth under ground, has an influence in promoting a thaw, as well as the change of the weather from a freezing to a | thawing state, is manifest, from this observation, viz., Nov. 29, 1731, a little snow having fallen in the night, it was, by eleven the next morning, mostly melted away on the surface of the earth, except in several places in Bushy Park, where there were drains dug and covered with earth, on which the snow continued to lie, whether those drains were full of water or dry ; as also where elm-pipes lay under ground: a plain proof this, that those drains intercepted the warmth of the earth from ascending from greater depths bélow 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 ‘‘Heemastatics,” p. 360. QUERY, Might not such observations be reduced to domestic use, by: promoting the discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about houses; and in Roman stations and camps lead to the finding of pavements, baths and graves, and other hidden relics of curious antiquity?
+ The vignette at the head of Letter VI., represents a view of Wolmer Forest as it now appears, taken from the grt of Temple Farm House. Wolmer Pond is seen upon the right.
This letter with the next altuded to subjects of far more interest to the naturalist than would be at first supposed. At the time when White wrote, it may have been considered that a wild ‘‘ tract,” seven miles by two-and-a-half in extent, consisting of moss and muir, heath and fern, would not be worthy of much remark. Fortunately our author viewed it differently, and it was, we have no doubt, one of his “charming places ;” he writes, ‘‘it has often afforded
-
16 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the Fauna Selborniensis; for another beautiful link in the chain of beings is wanting, I mean the red deer, which toward the beginning of this century amounted to about five hundred head, and made a stately appearance. ‘There is an old keeper, now alive, named Adams, whose great grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation taken in 1635), grand- father, father and self, enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer Forest in succession for more than an hundred years. This person assures me, that his father has often told him, that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the Portsmouth road, did not think the forest of Wolmer beneath her royal regard. For she came out of the great road at Lippock, which is just by, and, reposing herself on a bank smoothed for that purpose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer Pond, and still called Queen’s Bank, saw with great complacency and satisfaction the whole herd of red deer brought by the keepers along the vale before her, consisting then of about five hundred head. A sight this, worthy the attention of the greatest sovereign! But he farther adds that, by means of the Waltham blacks or, to use his own expression, as soon as
me much entertainment both as a sportsman and as a naturalist.” With how much interest will the present proprietor of Selborne, or any one who can follow the feeling of these letters, now visit Wolmer Forest, and compare its present state with the above description. Such facts as those recorded by White, are invaluable to either zoologist or botanist, and the reclamation there, with the great changes which have taken place incident to the increase of population and other causes,—the change almost from desolation to cultivation, must have materially affected the existence and distribution of the wild animals and plants. In a series of years where attention has been given to the results of these unavoidable changes, we have seen some species extirpated and others assume their places. The influence of population on the existence and geographical distribution of animal and vegetable life, with all its attendant circumstances of commerce, and the necessity for increasing human food by cultivation, though comparatively unperceived, is not so very slow in its results; fifty years may almost entirely change the zoology and botany of a district, and within such limited bounds as Wolmer Forest, the extirpation of the black game would easily occur, though cultivation, particularly on the borders of a sub-alpine county, is rather favourable than the reverse for this game. Drainage makes a most important change on the wild vegetation: a large extent of new plantation in the growth of half a century will materially affect the character of a county, by rendering it a suitable abode for animals, birds, and insects before unknown to it, and so would the cutting down of extensive old woods destroy or drive away other species that delighted only in them. But population and cultivation bring other evils attendant upon themselves. They extirpate or reduce the numbers of the rapacious animals, and allow the increase of others, which naturally follow and accommodate themselves to the circumstances, finding a more abundant supply of food. Rabbits have followed cultivation, and are often exceedingly injurious, their rapid increase rendering their extirpation no easy matter. Rooks accom- pany cultivation, are familiar birds, and accommodate themselves easily ; they are of immense utility in keeping under various entomological pests that annoy the farmer, but they have in some parts increased most rapidly, and finding in the produce of the land a sure and ample supply of food, they have resorted to that and do occasionally much damage, so much so that in some districts anti-crow associations have been formed for their destruction, and many thousands are annually killed. The indiscriminate destruction of rapacious animals and birds by game-keepers has led to the increase of other species, and of one in particular, the common wood-pigeon ; this bird in some localities has become exceedingly numerous, assembling in flocks of many hundreds, and in winter doing very great injury to the turnip crops; anti-pigeon associations have also been formed, and in Berwickshire no less than 8000 were destroyed in one year.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 17
they began blacking, they were reduced to about fifty head, and so continued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumberland. It is now more than thirty years ago that his highness sent down an huntsman, and six yeoman-prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with gold, attended by the stag-hounds ; ordering them to take every deer in this forest alive, and to convey them in carts to Windsor. In the course of the summer they caught every stag, some of which showed extraordi- nary diversion: but in the following winter, when the hinds were also carried off, such fine chases were exhibited as served the country people for matter of talk and wonder for years afterwards. I saw myself one of the yeoman-prickers single out a stag from the herd, and must confess that it was the most curious feat of activity I ever beheld, superior to anything in Mr. Astley’s riding-school. The exertions made by the horse and deer much exceeded all my expectations; though the former greatly excelled the latter in speed. When the devoted deer was separated from his companions, they gave him, by their watches, law, as they called it, for twenty minutes; when, sounding their horns, the stop-dogs were permitted to pursue, and a most gallant scene ensued.
LETTER VII. TO THE SAME. —
THovuaH large herds of deer do much harm to the neighbourhood, yet the injury to the morals of the people is of more moment than the loss of their crops. The temptation is irresistible ; for most men are sportsmen by constitution: and there is such an inherent spirit for hunting in human nature, as scarce any inhibitions can restrain. Hence, towards the beginning of this century all this country was wild about deer-steeling. Unless he was a hunter, as they affected to call themselves, no young person was allowed to be possessed of manhood or gallantry. The Waltham blacks at length committed such enor- mities, that government was forced to interfere with that severe and — sanguinary act called the “ Black Act,’* which now comprehends more felonies than any law that ever was framed before. And, therefore, a | late Bishop of Winchester, when urged to re-stock Waltham Chase,*+ refused, from a motive worthy of a prelate, replying “that it had done mischief enough already.” {
Our old race of deer-stealers are hardly extinct yet: it was but a
* Statute 9 Geo. I. cap. 22.
+ This chase remains un-stocked to this day ; the bishop was Dr. Hoadly.
t Poaching and its effects are deplored in Letter VII., and the reduction of the stock of deer kept in the forest, the maintenance of which could not be of any very great public or private utility, was then in consequence resolved upon. The propriety of keeping up of the large stock of deer in the royal forests being for these and other reasons at the present time questionable, a reduction was
C
&
18 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
little while ago that, over their ale, they used to recount the exploits of their youth ; such as watching the pregnant hind to her lair, and, when the calf was dropped, paring its feet with a penknife to the quick to prevent its escape, till it was large and fat enough to be killed ;-the shooting at one of their neighbours with a bullet in a turnip-field by moonshine, mistaking him for a deer; and the losing a dog in the following extraordinary manner :—Some fellows, suspecting that a calf new-fallen was deposited in a certain spot of thick fern, went, with a lurcher, to surprise it; when the parent-hind rushed out of the brake, and, taking a vast spring with all her feet close together, pitched upon the neck of the dog, and broke it short in two.
- Another temptation to idleness and sporting was a number of rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks and dry places: but these being incon- venient to the huntsmen, on account of their burrows, when they came to take away the deer, they permitted the country-people to destroy them all. :
Such forests and wastes, when their allurements to irregularities are removed, are of considerable service to neighbourhoods that verge upon them, by furnishing them with peat and turf for their firing ; with fuel for the burning 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.” *
contemplated a few years since; and a Bill was lately proposed to be introduced into Parliament ‘‘to extinguish the right of the crown to stock the New Forest in Hampshire with deer and other wild beasts of the forest, and to empower her Majesty to enclose the several portions of the said Forest.” This would have been regretted by White, for the wild and natural character of the county will be changed, and with that a corresponding variation will occur in its inhabitants. On the continent this is carried to a greater and more serious extent. Ina book lately published, ‘‘Chamois Hunting in Bavaria,” it is stated that by the increase of poaching, and the assumed right of the peasantry to consider the game as their own, brought on probably by the excessive preservation, and therefore temptation, it has been deemed necessary to extirpate it. In one chase of a circumference of about 60 English miles, a sporting count calculated that he would be able every year to kill 300 roebucks, 80 stags, and 100 chamois, but this was done at some cost. The count kept twenty-four game-keepers picked men, at the
' commencement of their preservation they shot seven poachers, and one of the
keepers who had killed four was himself shot. Where the game was thus abundant
_ and kept up at such a price! one of those political changes took place which gave
the right of shooting to every individual of the community, and the count, some- what to diminish his pecuniary losses, ordered the game to be destroyed. This was done by proprietors and people, and in a very short period the extermination was almost completed. In another chapter the same author writes: ‘‘ The noble proprietors of the forests bordering the Danube, in the neighbourhood of Donan Stauf, paid every year a considerable sum to the peasants, as indemnity for the damage done to their crops by the game; and according as the price of corn rose these sums were increased. As the money received was generally more than adequate to the loss sustained, the peasantry were satisfied, and found in the arrangement no cause of complaint; when suddenly, in 1848, although the preceding years the indemnity received by them had been nearly doubled, they discovered that such a state of things could exist no longer; and thus, supreme authority ceding to popular will, a general extermination of the game took place throughout the land.” ;
* For this privilege the owners of that estate used to pay to the king annually seven bushels of oats.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 19
The reason, I presume, why sheep* are excluded, is, because, being such close grazers, they would pick out all the finest grasses, and hinder the deer from thriving.
Though (by statute 4 and 5 W. and Mary, c. 23) “to burn on any | waste, between Candlemas and Midsummer, any grig, ling, heath and furze, goss or fern, is punishable with whipping and confinement in the house of correction ;” yet, in this forest, about March or April, according to the dryness of the season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up, that they often get to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes been communicated to the underwoods, woods, and coppices, where great damage has ensued. The plea for these burnings is, that, when the old coat of heath, &., is consumed, young will sprout up, and afford much tender brouze for cattle; but, where there is large old furze, the fire, following the roots, consumes the very ground; so that for hundreds of acres nothing is to be seen but smother and desolation, the whole circuit round looking like the cinders of a volcano; and, the soil being quite exhausted, no traces of vegetation are to be found for years. These conflagrations, as they take place usually with a north- east or east wind, much annoy this village with their smoke, and often alarm the country ; and, once in particular, | remember that a gentle- man, who lives beyond Andover, coming to my house, when he got on the downs between that town and Winchester, at twenty-five miles distance, was surprised much with smoke and a hot smell of fire; and concluded. that Alresford was in flames; but, when he came to that town, he then had apprehensions for the next village, and so on to the end of his journey. 4
On two of the most conspicuous eminences of this forest stand two arbours or bowers, made of the boughs of oaks; the one called Waldon Lodge, the other Brimstone Lodge: these the keepers renew annually on the feast of St. Barnabas, taking the old materials for a perquisite. The farm called Blackmoor, in this parish, is obliged to find the posts and brush-wood for the former ; while the farms at Greatham, in rotation, furnish for the latter; and are all enjoined to cut and deliver the materials at the spot. This custom 1 mention, because I look upon it to be of very remote antiquity.
* In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept up till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day.
20 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
LETTER VIII. TO THE SAME.
On the verge of the forest, as it is now circumscribed, are three considerable lakes, two in Oakhanger, of which I have nothing particular to say; and one called Bin’s, or Bean’s Pond, which is worthy the attention of a naturalist or a sportsman. For, being crowded at the upper end with willows, and with the carex cespitosa,* it affords such a safe and pleasing shelter to wild ducks, teals, snipes, &c., that they breed there. In the winter this covert is also frequented by foxes, and sometimes by pheasants; and the bogs produce many curious plants. (For which consult Letter XLI. to Mr. Barrington.) +
By a perambulation of Wolmer Forest and the Holt, made in 1635, and the eleventh year of Charles the First (which now lies before me), it appears that the limits of the former are much circum- scribed. For, to say nothing of the farther side, with which I am not so well acquainted, the bounds on this side, in old times, came into Binswood; and extended to the ditch of Ward le Ham Park, in which stands the curious mount called King John’s Hill, and Lodge Hill; and to the verge of Hartley Mauduit, called Mauduit Hatch ; comprehending also Short Heath, Oakhanger, and Oakwoods; a large district, now private property, though once belonging to the royal domain.
It is remarkable that the term purlieu is never once mentioned in this long roll of parchment. It contains, besides the perambulation, a rough estimate of the value of the timbers, which were consider- able, growing at that time in the district of the Holt; and enumerates the officers, superior and inferior, of those joint forests, for the time being, and their ostensible fees and perquisites. In those days, as at present, there were hardly any trees in Wolmer Forest.
Within the present limits of the forest are three considerable lakes, Hogmer, Cranmer, and Wolmer ; all of which are stocked with carp,
* I mean that sort which, rising into tall hassocks, is called by the foresters torrets ; a corruption, I suppose, of turrets.
Nore. In the beginning of the summer 1787, the royal forests of Wolmer and Holt were measured by persons sent down by government.
+ Here is one of those records so useful in a local history. We learn from Mr. Bennet’s edition, that Bin’s Pond has been drained, and that cattle now graze upon its bed. The character of the place, so correctly yet simply described in this letter, has thus been completely altered, and we see improvement working out the changes alluded to in the note to p. 15. It would be in vain now to look for the plants, or for the water-fowl that found there a ‘“‘pleasing shelter.” The hassocks of carex alluded to, form a very marked feature in such a place ; they are ‘most uncomfortable to walk among, and form a complete cover and shelter to various animals and birds. From age and successive growths, they form high “torrets” with a solid base. The foliage hangs down, and a covered way is formed underneath, where young water-fowl,- water-rails, &c., can run and escape detection for a long time, even from a dog.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 21
tench, eels, and perch: but the fish do not thrive well, because the water is hungry, and the bottoms are a naked sand.
A circumstance respecting these ponds, though by no means peculiar to them, I cannot pass over in silence; and that is, that instinct by which in summer all the kine, whether oxen, cows, calves, or heifers, retire constantly to the water during the hotter hours ; where, being more exempt from flies, and inhaling the coolness of that element, some belly deep, and some only to mid-leg, they ruminate and solace themselves from about ten in the morning till four in the afternoon, and then return to their feeding. During this great proportion of the day they drop much dung, in which insects nestle; and so supply food for the fish, which would be poorly subsisted but from this contingency. Thus Nature, who is a great economist, converts the recreation of one animal to the support of another! Thomson, whe 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 he; while others stand Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip
The circling surface.”
Wolmer Pond, so called, I suppose, for eminence sake, is a vast lake for this part of the world, containing, in its whole circumfereuce, 2646 yards, or very near a mile and an half. The length of the north-west and opposite side is about 704 yards, and the breadth of the south-west end about 456 yards. This measurement, which I caused to be made with good exactness, gives an area of about sixty-six acres, exclusive of a large irregular arm at the north-east corner, which we did not take into the reckoning.
\ SANK. Y NW AGS
= Ze PZ * Z. VA Sasa I) ZA i) 1 E é 5 ws af ; < } 1 a ee =—
hi ie BS
TEAL AND WIDGEON.
On the face of this expanse of waters, and perfectly secure from fowlers, lie all day long, in the winter season, vast flocks of ducks, teals,
22 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
and widgeons, of various denominations ; where they preen and solace, and rest themselves, till towards sunset, when they issue forth in little parties (for in their natural state they are all birds of the night) to feed in the brooks and meadows; returning again with the dawn of the morning. Had this lake an arm or two more, and were it planted round with thick covert (for now it is perfectly naked), it might makea 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 THE SAME.
By way of supplement, I shall trouble you once more on this subject, to inform you that Wolmer, with her sister forest Ayles Holt, alias Alice Holt,* as it is called in old records, is held by grant from the erown for a term of years.
The grantees that the author Srasainees are Brigadier-General Emanuel Scroope Howe, and his lady, Ruperta, who was a natural daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughes; a Mr. Mordaunt, of the Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pembroke ; Henry Bilson Legge and lady ; and now Lord Stawell, their son.
The lady of General Howe lived to an advanced age, long surviving her husband; and, at her death, left behind her many curious pieces of mechanism of her father’s constructing, who was a distinguished mechanic and artist, as well as warrior; and among the rest, a very complicated clock, lately in possession of Mr. Elmer, the celebrated game painter at Farnham, in the county of Surrey.
Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow range of enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different ; for the Holt consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, carrying a good turf, and abounding with oaks that grow to be large timber; while Wolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste.
The former being all in the parish of Binsies is about two miles in extent from north to south, and near as much from east to west; and
* “Tn Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest. in Scaccar. 36 Edw. IIl., it is called Aisholt.”
In the same, ‘‘Tit. Woolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. Dominus Rex habet unam eapellam in haia sua de Kingesle.” ‘‘Haia, sepes, sepimentum, parcus; a Gall. haie and haye.”—SPELMAN’Ss Glossary.
; This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 23
contains within it many woodlands and lawns, and the great lodge where the grantees reside, and a smaller lodge called Goose Green; and is abutted on by the parishes of Kingsley, Frinsham, Farnham, and Bentley ; all of which have right of common. ,
One thing is remarkable, that though the Holt has been of old well stocked with fallow-deer, unrestrained by any pales or fences more than a common hedge, yet they were never seen within the limits of Wolmer; nor were the red deer of Wolmer ever known to haunt the thickets or glades of the Holt.
At present the deer of the Holt are much thinned and reduced by the night hunters, who perpetually harass them in spite of the efforts of numerous keepers, and the severe penalties that have been put in force against them as often as they have been detected, and rendered liable to the lash of the law. Neither fines nor imprisonments can deter them ; so impossible is it to extinguish the spirit of sporting which seems to be inherent in human nature.
General Howe turned out some German wild boars and sows in his forests, to the great terror of the neighbourhood, and, at one time, a wild bull or buffalo; but the country rose upon them and destroyed them,*
42 Ea = i = = sent ahi, Vi ‘ \ NX Y) \tt i ~ 4 VEN AW Mi ) ee nae e \ " ( i NS \ i" \ SA), RAN A, Ag WIN SOS YG \ Hyg.) ONIN, SW SEAN My i) eR Se WT A| OX Mi My O VEDI LZ? EP GEL Sh WO ee han) YP od PUI or CA I M
Vier hid IG
PN KS 9 rast A, WILD BOAR,
A very large fall of timber, consisting of about one thousand oaks, has been cit this spring (viz., 1784) in the Holt forest: one fifth of | which, it is said, belongs to the grantee, Lord Stawell. He lays claim also to the bp and top; but the poor of the parishes of Binsted and Frinsham, bentley and Kingsley, assert that it belongs to them, and assembling m a riotous manner, have actually taken it all away. One man, who kseps a team, has carried home for his share forty stacks of wood. Forty-five of these people his lordship has served with actions.
* “German boars and sows were also turned out by Charles I. in the New Forest, whichbred and increased. Their stock is supposed to exist now, remark- able for the snallness of their hind-quarters.”—MuitTrorp’s Edit.
24 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
These trees, which were very sound and in high perfection, were winter- cut, viz., in February and March, before the bark would run. In old times the Holt was estimated to be eighteen miles, computed measure from water-carriage, viz., from the town of Chertsey, on the Thames ; but now it is not half that distance, since the Wey is made navigable up to the town of Godalming in the county of Surrey.
PEPE xX
TO THE SAME. August 4th, 1767,
Ir 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 rustice) being found in a torpid state during the winter in the Isle of Wight or any part of this country, I never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergyman, of an inquisitive turn, assures me, that when he was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts (hirundines apodes) among the rubbish, which were at first appearance dead, but on being carried towards the fire revived. He told me, that out of his great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated.
* This letter is extremely interesting in many points, itis the earli¢st in date, and as such tends to confirm what we suggested in the note to p. 1, that the first letter of this series was written at a later date as introductory. Its early date also accounts for the apologetical expression in the first paragraph, ¢nd in it we find mentioned the two subjects for which White always entertained jhe greatest interest: these were migration and hybernation.
White at the commencement of his meditations on this subject was inclined to the belief of a partial hybernation taking place among birds) which Mr. Barrington, with whom he was also corresponding, tended to confim. Neither could he get rid of the various accounts in circulation, in regard/to swallows
not divest them of all foundation. Birds migrate, and the implanted may be looked upon generally as the provision to supplythe wants of a peculiar season. All those summer visitants that have been foind after the usual period of their departure, have been detained by other caus to remain, and as the season advanced and the supplies of foodiand warmth failed, they sought retreats which by-and-by they were as aed unable to leave. Some found in such places have been dead at the time or have died almost immediately after being discovered, and a few have revived just acwrding to the time they were concealed, or were able to withstand the cold or want )f sustenance. Our winter visitants are in the same way occasionally detained ;/a short time since we took a woodcock which had the tip of the wing slightly inured, it could perhaps fly about thirty yards. This bird could not have migratid, but it had not the scarcity of food to contend with that a summer visitant would incur, and there is no doubt it would have lived through the season, as it was perfectly healthy and in good condition.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 25
Another intelligent person has informed me, that while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people found swallows among the rubbish; but, on my questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small disappoint- ment, he answered me in the negative; but that others assured him they did.
Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the llth, and young martins (hirundines urbice) were then fledged in their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see by my fauna of last year, that young broods came forth so late as September the 18th. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so late as September the 29th; and yet they totally dis- appeared with us by the 5th of October.
How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly the
same life with the swallow and house martin, should leave us before the °
middle of August invariably ! while the latter stay often till the middle of October ; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the 7th of November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in sight together, an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds !
A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the alauda trivialis, or rather perhaps of the motacila 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
A
zoology the fly-catcher.+ There is one circumstance characteristic of |
this bird which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together.
I perceive there are more than one species of the motacilla trochilus. Mr. Derham supposes, in “ Ray’ s Philos. Letters, ” that he has discovered three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds that have as yet no English name.
Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the black-cap (motacilla atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not: I think there is no doubt of it: for, in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping, all at once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They are delicate songsters.t
Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes.
I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which
* The woodwren or warbler, yellow-willow wren, of British authors, Sylvia sibilatrix, Latham, frequents old woods, and is easily ‘known by the peculiar note alluded to.
+ The spotted-flycatcher of British authors, Muscicapa grisola, Linn.
{ The black-cap warbler, Sylvia atricapilla, Latham, is a rather late summer visitant, and his arrival is immediately betrayed either by his song, or by the few peculiar notes warbled as he flits from bush to bush. The voice is much
26 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
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 Linnzeus 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 Linneeus (see Syst. Nat.) which he says “natat im fossis et urinatur.”, I should be glad to procure one “ plantis palma- tis.”* Linneeus seems to be in a puzzle about his mus amphibius, and to doubt whether it differs from his
TH TACT mus terrestris ; which
; if it be, as he allows,
the “ mus agrestis cqpite 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 tome. Though mutilated “qualem dices... antehac fuisse, tales cum sint reliquice !”
It haunted a marshy piece of ground in quest of wild-ducks and snipes; but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was tearing in pieces. I cannot make it answer to any of our English
clearer in tone than any of the other warblers, the nightingale excepted ; he is a delightful addition to our summer songsters. The black-cap has a very extensive geographical distribution, reaching northward to Norway and Lapland, and we have good authorities for its occurrence in Africa, Japan, Java, Madeira, and the Azores. Mr. Bennet has copied a note from Mr. Rennie’s edition, in which the latter states: ‘Dr. Heineken informs us, that it (the black-cap) is stationary in Madeira, consequently Sir W. Jardine is wrong in thinking our birds retire thither.”” We have no doubt whatever in Dr. Heineken being right, but it does not follow from that, that some do not migrate there also. The song-thrush generally is stationary in Great Britain, but hundreds migrate to and from every year, so do goldcrests, and many other species. ‘‘ Where it is probable they partly retire,” are the words of the original note.
* There is only one species of water-rat in Great Britain, Arvicola amphibius, . Desmarest. The feet are not webbed or palmated. The black coloured water- rat of the north is now considered as a variety only.
+ In the short-tailed field-mouse, or field-vole, Arvicola agrestis of Fleming and Ball. The Rey. Leonard Jenyns has given the distinctions of the British arvicole in ‘‘ Annals of Natyral History,” vol. vii.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 27
hawks ; neither could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed birds in Spring Gardens. I found it nailed up at the end of a barn, which is the countryman’s museum.
The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds.
LETTER XI.
TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, September Oth, 1767.
Ir will not be without impatience that I shall wait for your thoughts with regard to the falco ; as to its weight, breadth, &c., I wish I had set them down at the time; but, to the best of my remembrance, it weighed two pounds and eight ounces, and measured, from wing to wing, thirty-eight inches. Its cere and feet were yellow, and the circle of its eyelids a bright yellow. As it had been killed some days, and the eyes were sunk, I could make no good observation on the colour of the pupils and the irides.*
The most unusual birds I ever observed in these parts were a pair of hoopoes (upupa), which came several years ago in the summer, and frequented an ornamented piece of - ground, which joins to my garden, for some weeks. They used to march about in a stately manner, feeding in the walks, many times in the day ; and seemed disposed to breed in my outlet; but were frighted and persecuted by idle boys, who would never let them be at rest.
Three gyrossbeaks (loxia cocco- thraustes ) appeared some years ago in my fields, in the winter; one of which I shot. Since that, now and then, one is occasionally seen in the same dead season. .
A crossbill (loxia curvirostra) was killed last year in this neigh- bourhood.
Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the village, yield nothing but the bull’s head or miller’s thumb (gobius fluviatilis
HOOPOE.
* Mr. Bennet states that the falco, proved to be the F. peregrinus, or peregrine falcon, and the authority given is W. Y. The yellow ‘‘circle of its eyelids” does not refer to the irides as we had imagined, when remarking upon this passage in another edition. White states he could not “make a good observation.” The irides of the British species of falcons (and we know of no foreign exception) are all dark brown. Mr. Pennant states that it was a variety differing, in having the whole under side of the body a dirty, deep yellow.
28 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
capitatus), the trout (trutta fluviatilis), the eel (anguilla), the lampern (lampetra parva 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 teems of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed; and multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard weather fre- quent our lakes in the forest.
Having some ac- quaintance with a
MILLER’S THUMB AND STICKLE-BACK. tame brown owl, I
find that it casts up
the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner of hawks ; when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot eat.
The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a constant supply of fresh mice; whereas the young of the brown owl will eat indiscriminately all that is brought; snails, rats, kittens, puppies, magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.
The house-martins have eggs still, and squab young. The last swift I observed was about the 21st of August: it was a straggler.
Red-stars, fly-catchers, white-throats, and reguli non cristati, still appear : but I have seen no black-caps lately.
I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College quad- rangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house-martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the 20th of November.
At present I know only two species of bats, the common vespertilio murinus and the vespertilio auribus.*
I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take flies out of a person’s hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its ‘head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects
cz
* It is to be desired that the fishes mentioned in a previous paragraph, as well as the bats were identified. There are at least three British species of eels, and itis more than probable that two of these are found at Selborne. There are also several species of stickle-back found in our fresh waters, one of the most common, and to which Ray’s name as applied belongs, is the smooth-tailed stickle-back, gasterosteus leiwrus, Cuvier. Of the bats Professor Bell describes seventeen British species. The first noted by White was most probably the pipistrelle. The true vespertilio murinus being one of the most rare. The other would be the common long-eared bat, plecotus awritus.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 29
seemed to be most acceptable, though it did. not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men’s bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon a flat surface cannot geton the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, | with more dispatch than I was aware of; but in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner.
Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as they play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, not only
PIPISTRELLE. LONG-EARED BAT.
for the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which are found over them inthe 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. | Tam, &e.
LETTER XII.
TO THE SAME. November, 4th, 1767.
Srr,—It gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the falco * turned out an uncommon cne. I must confess I should have been better pleased to have heard that I had sent you a bird that you had never seen before; but that, I find, would be a difficult task.
I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters, a young one and a female with young, both of which I have preserved in brandy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no doubt but that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller, and more slender, than the mus domesticus medius of Ray ; and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour ; their belly is white, a straight
line along their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. They
* This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus ; a variety.
30 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. :
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 Ss A] AA AK SSS was so compact and SS . A SF We) ON well filled, that it
NAA ix» Yip would roll across the table without being discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that were naked and blind. As | this nest was per-
HARVEST MICE. fectly 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
* This is the harvest-mouse, mus messorius, of Shaw ; and it is to Mr. White that we are indebted for the first notice and description of it as a British species, which he communicated to Mr. Pennant, who introduced it in the British zoology: upon that authority. It is not unfrequent in some of the southern English counties, but becomes more rare northward. In Scotland it occasionally occurs, and on the authority of the late Professor Macgillivray, has been obtained in Aberdeenshire. It is the smallest of our British mammalia, and its habits are very interesting.
The nests are very curious structures, and instead of being formed upon the ground, as those of most of the species, the ball or nest is suspended from the stems of grain or other high vegetation. One is described in the Memoir of Dr. Gloger, “Tt was in skilfulness of construction fully equal to that of most birds, was suspended from the summit of three straws of the common reed (Arundo phr ag- mites), and was entirely composed of the pannicles and leaves of the plants slit longitudinally, and intricately platted and matted together. Its internal cavity was small and round, and accessible only by a harrow lateral opening.”
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 31 ‘>
tags or points which it carries at the ends of five of the short remiges. It cannot, I suppose, with any propriety, be called an English bird ; and yet I see, by Ray’s “ Philoso- phical Letters,” that great. flocks of them, feeding on haws, appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685.*
The mention of haws puts me in mind that there is a total failure of that wild fruit, so con- ducive to the support of many of the winged nation. For the same severe weather, late in the spring, which cut off all the pro- duce of the more tender and curious trees, destroyed also that of the more hardy and common. BOHEMIAN WAX-WING.
Some birds, haunting with the missel-thrushes, and feeding on the berries of the yew tree, which answered to the description of the merula torquata, or ring-ouzel, were lately seen in this neighbourhood. I employed some people to procure me a specimen, but without success. (See Letter VIII.)
Query.— Might not canary birds be naturalised to this climate, provided their eggs were put, in the spring, into the nests of some of their congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, &c.? Before winter perhaps they might be hardened, and able to shift for themselves.
About ten years ago I used to spend some weeks yearly at Sunbury, which is one of those pleasant villages lying on the Thames, near Hampton Court. In the autumn, I could not help being much amused with those myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But what struck me most was, that, from the time they began to congregate, forsaking the chimnies and houses, they roosted every night in the osier-beds of the aits of that river. Now this resorting towards that element, at that season of the year, seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks, in his calendar of Flora, as familiarly of the swallow’s
* The letter alluded to was from Mr. Johnson to Mr. Ray, in 1686. ‘‘On the backside you have the description of a new English bird. They came near us in great flocks like fieldfares, and fed upon haws as they do.” And in another letter from Mr. Thoresby to Mr. Ray, 1703, it is said, ‘‘I am tempted to think the German silk-tail is become natural to us, there being no less than three killed nigh this town the last winter.” Thus has the wax-wing occurred occasionally in this county, but there is no record of any great numbers appearing together since Ray’s time, until in 1849-50, when an unusual number visited us. The direction of the flight was from east to west, and the principal localities where they occurred were the eastern or coast districts of Durham and Yorkshire in the north, and of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Kent in the south. Their appearance reached over a period from November 1849, to March 1850, January being the principal month of their appearance; no fewer than 429 are recorded to have been killed in that month, and during the whole time they were observed, 586 specimens were known to have been obtained—a very wanton destruction.
*
32 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
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 an house-martin, on the twenty-third of last October, flying in and out of its nest in the Borough. And I myself, on the twenty-ninth of last October (as I was travelling through Oxford), saw four or five swallows hovering round and settling on the roof of the county hospital.
Now is it likely that these poor little birds (which perhaps had not been hatched but a few weeks) should, at that late season of the year, and from so midland a county, attempt a voyage to Goree or Senegal, almost as far as the equator ?*
I acquiesce entirely in your opinion—that, though most of the swallow kind may migrate, yet that some do stay behind and hide with us during the winter.
As to the short- winged soft-billed birds, which come trooping in such numbers in the spring, I am at a loss even what to suspect about them. I watched them narrowly this year, and saw them abound till about Michaelmas, when they appeared no longer. Subsist they cannot openly among us, and yet elude the eyes of the inquisitive : and, as to their hiding, no man pretends to have found any of them ina torpid state in the winter. But with regard to their migration, what diffi- culties 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 !
y
LETTER XIII,
TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Jan. 22nd, 1768.
Sir, —As in one of your former letters you expressed the more satisfaction from my correspondence on account of my living in the most southerly county; so now I may return the compliment, and expect to have my curiosity gratified by your living much more to the North.
For many years past I have observed that towards Christmas vast flocks of chaffinches have appeared in the fields; many more, I used to think, than could be hatched in any one neighbourhood. But, when I came to observe them more narrowly, I was amazed to find that they seemed to me to be almost all hens. I communicated my suspicions to some intelligent neighbours, who, after taking pains about the matter, declared that they also thought them all mostly females,—at least fifty to one. This extraordinary occurrence brought to my mind the remark of Linneus; that “before winter all their hen chaffinches migrate
* See ‘‘ Adanson’s Voyage to Senegal.”
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 33
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, Hmberiza miliaria, does not leave this county in the winter. In January, 1767, I saw several dozen of them, in the midst of a severe frost, among the bushes on
the downs near Andover: in our woodland enclosed district it is a rare bird.
Wagtails, both white and yellow, are with us all the winter.‘ Quails
crowd to our southern coast, and are often killed in numbers by people that go on purpose.
* This is another letter, just such as might have been written from one country friend and naturalist to another, not stating facts, as if for press or publication, but simply as they occurred, and with the impress of truth and reality about them. No doubt the correspondence of a friend of congenial mind in some different locality, and a comparison of his annual calendar, is not only a great incitement to prosecute our observations, but aids our insight into the variations produced by locality and climate’; and persons fond of the study of natural history, but who do not possess the entire scientific acquirements, nor all the facilities for research or reference may be of the greatest use in recording facts as they occur, and in comparing them with those of other correspondents. Some species are numerously, others locally, distributed, and because one observer finds either of these to be the case in his vicinity, the conclusion is not to be all at once jumped at, that the species is generally abundant or the reverse. Some localities may have a species resident, others may have the same only migratory, or partially so. In others, a species may have been, from change of circumstances, extirpated, and old authors who have recorded that such was abundant, are not to be doubted, because at the time of modern examination circumstances have changed.
es birds are always gregarious, and are constantly seen in large flocks, and breed in colonies, but the greater proportion disperse during the breeding season, pair and seek their separate retreats to nest andrear their young. When this great object is accomplished and winter approaches, they join and congregate together in large parties, but the migratory birds, at the time of their moving, appear to assemble in sexes, for we know that the males of many of our summer birds of passage arrive before the females. The remark of Linnzeus that is quoted may be correct; it is probable that we receive an addition to the numbers of the chaffinch in the end of autumn, and Mr. Thompson is disposed to believe that some of those that flock together in Ireland have migrated from more northern latitudes. The evidence from British ornithologists of the separation of the sexes of the chaffinch is at variance, and we think that the division has been overrated. The young males not having attained their full plumage may have been one cause of deception, and may have, without a minute examination, been assumed. to be females.
+ White must have had in view the grey wagtail, Motacilla boarula, many pairs of which remain during winter, and these wanting the dark throat of the breeding plumage are nearly all yellow on the under parts. The yellow wagtail, Budytes fava, is a regular summer visitant, arriving rather late, and leaving us about the end of August or middle of September.
D
34 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
Mr. Stillingfleet, in his Tracts, says that “if the wheatear (enanthe) 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 Iam sure; because I see a few stragglers in many counties, at all times of the year, especially about warrens and stone quarries.
I have no acquaintance, at present, among the gentlemen of the navy; but have written to a friend, who was a sea-chaplain in the late war, desiring him to look into his minutes, with respect to birds that settled on their rigging during their voyage up or down the channel. What Hasselquist says on that subject is remarkable; there were little short-winged birds frequently coming on board his ship all the way from our channel quite up to the Levant, especially before squally weather.
What you suggest, with regard to Spain, is highly probable. The winters of Andalusia are so mild, that, in all likelihood, the soft-billed birds that leave us at that season may find insects sufficient to support them there.
Some young man, possessed of fortune, health, and leisure, should make an autumnal voyage into that kingdom; and should spend a year there, investigating the natural history of that vast country. Mr. Willughby * passed through that kingdom on such an errand; but he seems to have skirted along in a superficial manner and an ill-humour, being much disgusted at the rude dissolute manners of the people. | |
I have no friend left now at Sunbury to apply to about the swallows roosting on the aits of the Thames: nor can I hear any more about those birds which I suspected were Merule torquate.
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 half- penny, which is about the third of an ounce avoirdupois: so that I suppose they are the smallest quadrupeds in this island. A full-grown
* See “‘Ray’s Travels,” p. 466.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 35 \
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.*
Iam, &c. &e.
LETTER XIV.
TO THE SAME.
SELBORNE, March 12th, 1768.
Dear Sizr,—If some curious gentleman would procure the head of a fallow-deer, and have it dissected, he would find it furnished with two spiracula, or breathing-places, besides the nostrils ; probably analogous to the puncta lachrymalia | | in the human head. When deer are thirsty they plunge their noses, like some horses, very deep under water, while in the act of drinking, and continue them in that situa- tion for a considerable time : but, to obviate any incon- veniency, they can open two vents, one at the inner cor- ner of each eye, having a communication with the -nose.t Here seems to be an extraordinary provision of nature worthy our atten- tion; and which has not, that I know of, been noticed | by any naturalist. For it ORIFICE IN FALLOW-DEER. 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
WV, fie
f VAAL y WV { y f | WLP WY a ~ LZ LN ee ZL :
* See Letters LXI., LXII. to Mr. Barrington. _ + This short letter is devoted entirely to one subject, to which White’s attention was most probably directed by his visits to the deer in Woolmer Forest ; it is one of those which requires explanation, especially in a popular work so much read as ‘‘Selborne,” and the very error into which White has fallen with his remarks will lead to the future explanation of a structure which even at this time is not completely understood. The statement in the letter, ‘‘When deer
Dd 2
~ *
36 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
to beasts of chase, by affording them free respiration : and no doubt these additional nostrils are thrown open when they are hard run.* Mr. Ray observed that at Malta, the owners slit-up the nostrils of such asses as were hard worked : for they, being naturally straight or small, did not admit air sufficient to serve them when they travelled, or laboured, in that hot climate. And we know that grooms, and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and running horses.
Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had some notion that stags have four spiracula: t
‘<Tergadupcos pives, rioyets wvoimos Sievdo.”
‘‘Quadrifidz nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales.” Opp.Cyn. Lib. 1. 181:
Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say that goats breathe at their ears; whereas he asserts just the contrary :—*AAk- fawy yap ovk adnOyn Aeyel, Pauevos avamvew Tas aryas KaTA Ta wTa.” “ Alemeeon does not advance what is true, when he avers that goats breathe through their ears.” — “History of Animals.” ° Book I. chap. xi.
“LETTER XY.
TO THE SAME. — SELBORNE, March 30th, 1768.
Dear Str,—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 fieid-mouse, but much longer, which they call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended on; but farther inquiry may be made.*t
are thirsty,” d&c., is quite correct so far as ‘‘they plunge their noses,” but the nostril is then not used, and the whole will is exerted in quenching a thirst at the
time excessive. These other orifices are glandular cavities, and so far as we know . |
or can judge, have reference to the season of rutting, and have no connexion whatever with respiration. They exist in greater or less development in all the deer and antelopes, and also in the common sheep, and a peculiar secretion may be seen to exude from it, having also a peculiar odour. Some animals have glandular secretions in other parts of the body—musk, civet, zibet, &c.—known as perfumes, and the peculiar utilities of these glands, except in secreting a strong scent, is unknown.
* 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 also has a long slit beneath each eye, which can be opened and shut at pleasure. On holding an orange to one, the creature made as much use of those orifices as of his nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and seeming to smell it through them.”
+ Such is the case at the present time. Most game-keepers insist that there is another beast different from the weasel or stoat; young and female weasels appear very small when running, and in reality look searcely bigger than a large mouse,
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 37
A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milkwhite 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 hig rookery. 1 saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a
barn, and was sur- prised to find that their bills, legs, feét, and claws were milk- white.* WEASEL,
A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down above my house. this winter : were not these the Hmberiza nivalis, the snow-flake of the Brit. Zool.? No doubt they were.
A few years ago I saw a cock bullfinch in a cage, which had been caught in the fields after it was come to its full colours. In about a year it began to look dingy ; and, blackening every succeeding year, it became coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was hempseed. Such influence has food on the colour of animals! The pied and mottled colours of domes- ticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual food.
I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint (arwm) 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 arwm is remarkably warm and pungent.t ARUM.
the form being a little more lengthened. These do not agree with the weasels: and stoats taken in traps, &c., and hence the delusion is kept up.
Mitford has the following note in his edition. ‘‘This I believe to be a pretty general error among the county-people, also in other counties. This imaginary animal in Suffolk is called the ‘mouse hunt,’ from its being supposed to live on mice. To discover the truth of this report, I managed to have several of these
‘ animals brought to me; all of which I find to be the common weasel. The error I conceive partly to have arisen from this animal, like most others, appearing less than its real size, when running or attempting to escape, a circumstance well-known to the hunters of India, with respect to larger animals, as the tiger,” &e.
* We possess a large rookery, and although we have never had an entire white- or cream coloured variety, scarcely a year passes without some young being ‘observed with more or less white in the plumage, and in these the bill and feet, as well as the claws, are also white.
+ We have not observed the roots of the arum scratched for as mentioned,
38 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.,
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 some- times 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 edicnemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird: it abounds inall 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. Linneus perhaps would call the species Mus minimus.
LETTER XVI.
TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, April 18th, 1768.
Dear Srr,—The history of the stone-curlew, Charadrius edicnemus, is as follows. It lays its eggs, usually two, never more than three, on the bare ground, without any nest, in the field ;.so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The young run immediately from the egg like partridges, &c., and are withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, where they sculk 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
but it is not generally a very common plant in Scotland. The circumstance mentioned above is worth attending to, and observers who may read this edition should now notice and corroborate, if they can, White’s remarks. |
* The winter habits of the stone-curlew have not been described, and White knew it only during the breeding time. Most of the plovers and their allies congregate after breeding, and delight in the vicinity of water. Any one de- scribing the winter habits of the common curlew frequenting the seashore, and going inland to feed at high tide, would find the picture very different from that which he would draw when he saw them in their subalpine breeding-grounds, having at the same time a different call and flight. It was nevertheless a very natural commentary upon Ray’s words, and we now require a good descrip- tion of their habits during winter, after they have returned from their breeding- grounds.
RED DEER
DEER
FALLOW
ISS SES eas et reer
Sz
SS <=>
STONE-CURLEW
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, 39
the young bird, may be eluded. The eggs are short and round; of a dirty white, spotted with dark bloody blotches. Though ! 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 swoln like those of a gouty man. After harvest [ have shot them before the pointers in turnip-fields.
I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow-wrens ; * two I know perfectly, but have not been able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constantly, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has a Joyous, easy, laughing note, the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half, while the latter weighs but two; so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer-bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck sometimes excepted) begins his two notes in the middle of March, and continues them through the spring and summer till the end of August, as appears by my journals. The legs of the larger of these two are flesh-coloured ; of the less black.
The grasshopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields last Saturday. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of this little bird, which seems to be close by though at 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.
* There are just three of the British warblers which are liable to be confounded with one another; at the same time they are very distinct, and a little attention to their habits alone would easily distinguish them. They are—
The Woop-WReEN, or warbler, Sylvia sibilatrix referred to before at page 25. In its habits it is distinguished by frequenting old woods, being very partial to those of oak, and being seldom seen among low or young plantations like the next. Mr. Selby writes, ‘‘in a living state, it is easily recognised by its peculiar song, which resembles the word twee, repeated twice or thrice rather slowly, concluding with the same notes hurriedly delivered, and accompanied by a singular shake of the wings.” In form this is the largest species, it has a bright yellow eye- streak, and the upper parts have a tint of sulphur-yellow, wanting in the others. ihe belly and under tail-covers are pure white.
The WILLOW-WREN or warbler, Sylvia trochilus, Selby, is one of our most common and generally distributed warblers ; itis also one of our earliest sylvan visitants, appearing almost with the first leaves of spring, and frequenting young woods and plantations. It has a lively but limited song of a few notes, which is constantly repeated. In size it nearly equals that of the wood-warbler. The streak over the eye is indistinct, the upper plumage is of an oil-green or brownish tint, and the upper parts are tinted with yellow, particularly the under tail- covers.
The CuirF-CHAFF warbler or Lesser pettychaps, Sylvia hippolais, is very common in the greater part of England, but becomes less common towards the north, and does not extend far in that direction. It arrives very early, and is imme- diately betrayed by its peculiar often-repeated note of chiff-chaff, which has given to it its provincial name. It frequents old woods, as well as others of lower growth. In size it is the least of the three, the eye-streak is very indistinct, the upper parts oil-green tinged with grey, and the belly, vent, and under tail-covers are primrose-yellow. The legs are blackish brown, whereas in the otner t.vo they are yellowish-brown. This is the ‘‘ chirper.”’
40 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a bird. Itis a most artful creature, sculking in the thickest part of a bush ; and will sing at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on the other side of the hedge where it haunted, and then it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us for an hundred yards 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 regult non cristati, from which it is very distinct. See Ray’s “‘ Philos. Letters,” p. 108.*
The fly-catcher (stoparola) has not yet appeared; it usually breeds in myvine. The redstart begins to sing, its note is short and imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. The willow-wrens (the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the peas, cherries, currants, &c.; and are so tame that a gun will not scare them.
A List or tHe Summer Brrps or PAssaGE DISCOVERED IN THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD, RANGED SOMEWHAT IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY APPEAR.
LINNZI NOMINA.
Smallest willow-wren, Motucilla trochilus. Wryneck, Jynx torquilla. House-swallow, Hirundo rustica. Martin, Hirundo urbiea. Sand-martin, Hirundo riparia. Cuckoo, Cuculus canorus. Nightingale, Motekilla luscinia. Blackeap, Motucilla atricapilla. Whitethroat, Motacilla sylvia. Middle willow-wren, Motacilla trochilus. Swift, Hirundo apus. Stone-curlew ? Charadrius edicnemus ? Turtle-dove? Turtur aldrovandi? Grasshopper-lark, Alauda trivialis. Landrail, Rallus crex.
Largest willow-wren, Motaeilla trochilus. Redstart, Motacilla phenicurus. Goat-sueker, or fern-owl, Caprimulgus europerus. 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 europea (the nuthatch.) Mr. Ray says that the less spotted
* This passage in Ray’s correspondence (Ray Society, p. 96), to which the above alludes, appears to occur in one of Mr. Johnson’s letters to Ray, March 1672, and refers to the grasshopper-warbler, .Salicaria locustella, and which is White’s ‘‘ grasshopper-lark,” it is as follows: ‘‘I have sent you the little yellow-bird you called regulus non cristatus, what bird it is I know not; but we have great store of them (Brignall, Greta Bridge), each morning about sunrise, and many times a-day ; besides she mounts to the highest branch in the bush, and there with bill erect, and wing hovering, she sends forth a sibilous noise like that of the grasshopper, but much shriller.”—(See also Letter XXIV.)
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 41
™”
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 distinc- tion of genus, species, or sex.
In breeding-time snipes play over the moors, piping and humming: they al- ways hum as they are descending. Is not. their hum ventriloquous like that of the turkey? Some suspect it is made by their wings.
This morning I saw the golden- crowned wren, whose crown glitters like burnished gold. It often hangs like a titmouse, with its back downwards. Yours, &. &e.
THE NUTHATCH.
LETTER XVII.
TO. THE SAME. SELBORNE, June 18th, 1768.
Dar 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, J am not acquainted with, so well as I could wish, with regard to their natural history. There is a degree of dubiousness and obscurity attending the propagation of this class of animals, something analogous to that of the cryptogamia in the sexual system of plants: and the case is the same with regard to some of the fishes ; as the eel, &c.
The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to be very much in the dark. Some authors say that they are 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 may be éow wey woTdxol, iw Se (wordko, as is known to be the case with the viper.
The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it; for Swammerdam proves that the male has no penis intrans) is notorious to everybody : because we see them sticking upon each others backs for a month together in the spring: and yet I never saw, or read of toads being observed in the same situation. It is strange that the matter with regard to the venom of toads has not been yet settled.
42 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
That they are not noxious to some animals is plain: for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone curlews, and snakes, eat them, to my knowledge, with impunity. And I well remember the time, but was not eye- witness to the fact (though numbers of persons were) when a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make the country-people stare ; afterwards he drank oil.* 7
I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, for many years, till he grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh-flies. The reptile used to come forth‘every evening from a hole under the garden-steps ; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished for some time and died.
I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of the ' excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, in Ray’s “ Wisdom of God in the Creation,” (p. 865), concerning the migration of frogs from their breeding ponds. In this account he at once subverts that foolish opinion of their dropping from the clouds in rain; showing that it is from the grateful coolness and moisture of those showers that they are tempted to set out on their travels, which they defer till those fall. Frogs are as yet in their tadpole state; but, in a few weeks, our lanes, paths, fields, will swarm for a few days with myriads of those emigrants, no larger than my little finger nail. Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the method and situation in which the male
* This is a letter upon reptiles, the natural history of which, as well as that of fishes, White had little opportunity of studying. Toads procreate exactly in the same manner as frogs, and both are oviparous, the bead-like chains which are often seen in pools in spring, as if they were looped over each other, is the newly deposited spawn of the former. The venom of toads is discarded as a fable, but there is an excretion from the skin which can be exuded upon irritation, and serves for protection. It causes the excessive secretion of saliva in the mouth of a dog, and evidently gives pain. Mr. Herbert says a pike will seize a toad, but immediately disgorges it, while a frog is swallowed.
There has always been an aversion or disgust at toads. The older poets clothed him in a garb “ugly and venemous,” and one of our master-bards has likened the Evil Spirit to him, as a semblance of all that is devilish or disgusting.
Him they found Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying with all his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy.
Thus we are taught, and the feeling is handed down from family to family, to loath a harmless animal. The bite is innocent of any after consequences, and we never saw a toad attempt to bite. The exudation of the skiu is only used in self- defence. They are extremely useful in the destruction of insects, and they will be found to be valuable as well as amusing assistants in a greenhouse or con- servatory. Sir Joseph Banks wrote—‘‘I have from my childhood, in conformity with the precepts of a mother void of all imaginary fear, been in the constant habit of taking toads in my hand, holding them there some time, and applying them to my face and nose, as it may happen. My motive for doing this very frequently is to inculcate the opinion I have held, since I was told by my mother, that the toad is actually a harmless animal; and to whose manner of life man is certainly under some obligation, as its food is chiefly those insects which devour his crops and annoy him in various ways.”
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 43
impregnates the spawn of the female. How wonderful is the economy of Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile! While it is an aquatic it has a fish-like tail, and no legs: as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as useless, and the animal betakes itself to the land !
\ Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that the Rana arborea is an English reptile; it abounds in Germany and Switzerland.
It is to be remembered that the Salamandra aquatica of Ray (the water-newt or eft) will frequently bite at the angler’s bait, and is often eaught on his hook. I used to take it for granted that the Sa- lamandra aquatica was hatched, lived, and died, in the ie water. But John \ \\" Ellis, Esq., F.R.S. i\& (the coralline Ellis)
asserts, in a letter to VN \ << the Royal Society, Uo) NZ dated June the 5th, a) mn hos 1766, in his account =" SAY ANN GA
of the mud inguana, an amphibious bipes fa oe — from South Carolina, WATER-NEWTS.
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 bis own words. Speaking of the opercula or coverings to the gills of the mud inguana, he proceeds to say that, “The form of these pennated coverings approach very near to what I have some time ago observed in the larva or aquatic state of our English /acerta, 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 | have observed, by keeping them alive for some time myself.” !
Linneeus, in his “ Systema Nature,” hints at what Mr. Ellis advances more than once.
Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one venemous reptile of the serpent kind in these kingdoms, and that is the viper. As you propose the good of mankind to be an object of your publications, you will not omit to mention common salad-oil as a sovereign remedy against the bite of the viper. As to the blind worm (Anguis fragilis, so called because it snaps in sunder witha small blow), I have found, on examination, that it is perfectly innocuous. A neigh- bouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper about the 27th of May: he found her filled with a chain of eleven eggs, about the size of those of a blackbird ; but
44 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
none of them were advanced so far towards:.a state of maturity as
contain any rudiments of young. Though they are oviparous, yet th
are viviparous also, hatch-
ing their young within their bellies, and then bringing., ' —% them forth. Whereas snakes
lay chains of eggs every ;. summer in my melon beds, in spite of'-all that my people can do to prevent them; which eggs do not hatch till the spring - fol-
4
rl
lowing, as I have often éx- ry * perienced. Several intelli- — BLIND WORM. | gent folks assure me that
| they have seen the, viper
open her mouth and admit her helpless young down her throat on sudden surprises, just as the female opossum does her brood into the pouch under her belly, upon the like emergencies; and yet the London viper-catchers insist on it, to Mr. Barrington,\that no such thing ever happens.* The serpent kind eat, I believe; but. once in a year; or rather, but only just at one season of’ the year. - Country people talk much of a water-snake, but, I am-~-pretty sure, without any reason; for the common snake (Coluber natric) delights. much to sport in the Waiter, perhaps with a view to procure frogs and other food. Rann
I cannot well guess how you are to aes out your twelve. species of reptiles, unless it be by the various species, or rather varieties, of our lacerti, of which Ray enumerates five. I have not had opportunity of
* This question remains, we believe, nearly as it did in White’s time. There have been statements upon both sides, and some time since it gave rise to a very © long discussion in the “ Gardener’s Chronicle,” but which, with the others, ended in nothing that could be taken as undoubted proof of the fact. We have ‘always: A looked upon this as a popular delusion, and the supposed habit is so much at variance with what we know of the general manners and instincts of animals — that, without undoubted proof of its occurrence, we incline still to consider it as such. Something always occurs to prevent the adder that has swallowed her young being captured, and the evidence rests on such an one having seen the young enter the mouth of the parent. Now, we donot mean to call in question the veracity of the observers reporting what they at the time believed to be the case, but we know how easy it is to be deceived, and how difficult it is to observe correctly. Mr. Bennet leaves the question open ; but in the latest edition of ‘‘ Selborne,” in Bohn’s Illus- trated Library, the following note by the editor occurs: — Having taken much pains to ascertain the fact of young vipers entering the mouth of their mother, I can now have little doubt but that such is the case, after the evidence of persons who assured me that they had seen it. I also found young vipers in the stomach of the mother of a much larger size than they would be when first ready to be excluded.” We presume that the young vipers in the stomach of the mother were found alive; it is not so stated. Could the Zoological Society not do something to solve this problem ? A comparatively trifling expense would procure a good collection of adders were it known they were wanted, and among them a female might be found and watched. See also Mr. White’ 8 remarks, Letter XXXI., to Mr. Barrington, where he cut up an adder, and found young in the ‘ “abdomen,” by which term he evidently means the uter us Or ovarium, for he adds, ‘‘ there was little room to suppose they were taken in for refuge.” Letter XXXI. should be turned to and read with this one to Pennant.
4
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 45
ascertaining these ; but remember well to have seen, formerly, several beautiful green lacerti on the sunny sand-banks near Farnham, in Surrey ; and Ray admits there are such in Ireland.*
LETTER XVIII.
TO THE SAME. | SELBORNE, July 27th, 1768.
Dear Srr,—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. Say oe |
A person, by my order, has searched our brooks, but could find no such fish as the Gasterosteus pungitius: he found the Gasterosteus aculeatus in plenty. This morning, in a basket, I packed a little earthen pot full of wet moss, and in it some sticklebacks, male and female; the females big with spawn: some lamperns ; some bull’s heads; but I could procure no minnows. This basket will be in Fleet Street by eight this evening ; so I hope Mazel will have them fresh and fair to-morrow morning. I gave some directions, in a letter, to what particulars the engraver should be attentive.+
Finding, while I was on a visit, that I was within a reasonable distance of Ambresbury, I sent a servant over to that town, and procured several living specimens of loaches, which he brought, safe and brisk, in a glass decanter. They were taken in the gullies that - were cut for watering the meadows. From these fishes (which measured from two to four inches in length) I took the following description : “‘The loach, in its general aspect, has a pellucid appearance ; its back is mottled with irregular collections of small black dots, not reaching much below the linea lateralis, as are the back and tail fins; a black line runs from each eye down to the nose; its belly is of a silvery white; the upper jaw projects beyond the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller; the fin behind its anus small; its dorsal-fin large, containing eight spines; its tail, where it joins to the tail-fin, remarkably broad, without any taperness, so as to be characteristic of this genus; the tail-fin is broad, and square at the end. From the
* In Mr. Bell’s work on British Reptiles, fourteen species may be said to be given. Two of these, however, are Chelonians, or tortoises, and of accidental occur- rence only, so that Mr. White’s difficulty is not unnatural, considering the general state of information when he wrote.
+ The obliging and anxious disposition of Mr. White to forward the views and studies of his correspondent are here shown, as also his own homely manner, and without attributing any merit to himself of giving his opinion of such remedies as curing cancers by toads. Mazel, the person to whom the specimens were addressed, was Pennant’s engraver, and his name also stands as the artist upon some of the plates of antiquities in the original 4to edition.
46 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
breadth and muscular strength of the tail it appears to be an active nimble fish.” |
In my visit I was not very far from Hungerford, and did not forget to make some inquiries concerning the wonderful method of curing cancers by means of toads. Several intelligent persons, both gentry and clergy, do I find give a great deal of credit to what is asserted in the papers, and.I myself dined with a clergyman who seemed to be persuaded that what is related is matter of fact; but, when I came to attend to his account, I thought I discerned circumstances which did not a little invalidate the woman’s story of the manner in which she came by her skill. She says of herself “that, labouring under a virulent cancer, she went to some church where there was a vast crowd ; on going into a pew, she was accosted by a strange clergyman, who, after expressing compassion for her situation, told her that if she would make such an application of living toads as is mentioned she would be well.” Now is it likely that this unknown gentleman should express so much tenderness for this single sufferer, and not feel any for the many thousands that daily languish under this terrible disorder? Would he not have made use of this invaluable nostrum for his own emolument ; or at least, by some means of publication or other, have found a method of making it public for the good of mankind? In short, this woman (as it appears to me) having set up for a cancer-doctress, finds it expedient to amuse the country with this dark and mysterious . relation.
The water-eft has not, that I can discern, the least appearance of any gills; for want of which it is continually rising to the surface of the water to take in fresh air. I opened a big-bellied one indeed, and found it full of spawn. Not that this circumstance at all invalidates the assertion that they are larve; for the /arve of insects are full of egos, which they exclude the instant they enter their last state. The water-eft is continually climbing over the brims of the vessel, within which we keep it in water, and wandering away; and people every summer see numbers crawling out of the pools where they are hatched up the dry banks. There are varieties of them, differing in colour; and some have fins up their tail and back, and some have not.*
_ * The fins or membrane upon the tail and back are an appendage to the males only, and are developed at the season of their breeding.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. ‘47
LETTER XIX.
TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, August 17th, 1768.
Dear S1r,—I have now, past dispute, made out three distinct species of the willow-wrens (motacille trochili) which constantly and invariably use distinct notes. But at the same time I am obliged to confess that I know nothing of your willow-lark.* In my letter of April the 18th, I had told you peremptorily that I knew your willow-lark, but had not seen it then; but when I came to procure it, it proved in all respects a very motacilla trochilus, only that it is a size larger than the two other, and the yellow-green of the whole upper part of the body is more vivid, and the belly of a clearer white. I have specimens of the three sorts now lying before me, and can discern that there are three gradations of sizes, and that the least has black legs, and the other two flesh-coloured ones. The yellowest bird is considerably the largest, and has its quill-feathers and secondary feathers tipped with white, which the others have not. This last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise, now and then, at short intervals, shivering a little with its wings when it sings; and is, I make no doubt now, the regulus non cristatus of Ray, which he says “ cantat voce stridula locuste.” Yet this great ornithologist never suspected that there were three species.
LETTER XX.
TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, October 8th, 1768.
Iv is I find in zoology as it is in botany ; all nature is so full that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined. Several birds, which are said to belong to the north only, are it seems often in the south. I have discovered this summer three species of birds with us, which writers mention as only to be seen in the northern counties. The first that was brought me (on the 14th of May), was the sandpiper, tringa hypoleucus : it was a cockbird, and haunted the banks of some ponds near the village; and, as it had a companion, doubtless intended to have bred near that water. Besides, the owner has told me Since, that on recollection, he has seen some of the same birds round his ponds in former summers.*
* *« Brit. Zool.” edit. 1776, 8vo, p. 381. + Of the sandpiper we may remark that it would be the unfavourable localities in the vicinity of Selborne that caused its scarcity. The common sandpiper, totanus (tringa of Linnzeus) hypoleucus, is not particularly a northern bird. It has
48 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
The next bird that I procured (on the 21st of May) was a male red- backed butcher bird, lanius collurio. My neighbour, who shot it, says | that it might easily have escaped his notice, had not the outcries and chattering of the white- throats and other small birds drawn his atten- tion 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 we i some ring-ousels, turd
ee torquati.
SANDPIPER. This week twelve
months a gentleman
from London, being with us, was amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told us, on an old yew hedge where there were berries some birds like blackbirds, with rings of white round their necks: a neighbouring farmer also at the same time observed the same; but, as no specimens were procured, little notice was taken. I mentioned this circumstance to you in my letter of November the 4th, 1767 (you, however, paid but small regard to what I said, as I had not seen these birds myself); but last week the aforesaid farmer, seeing a large flock, twenty or thirty of these birds, shot two cocks and two hens, and says, on recollection, that he remembers to have observed these birds again last spring, about Lady-day, as it were on their return to the north. Now perhaps these ousels are not the ousels of the north of England, but belong to the more northern parts of Europe; and may retire before the excessive rigour of the frosts in those parts, and return to breed in the spring, when the cold abates. If this be the case, here is discovered a new bird of winter passage, concerning whose migrations the writers are silent ; but if these birds should prove the ousels of the north of England, then here is a migration disclosed within our own kingdom never before remarked. It does not yet appear whether they retire beyond the bounds of our island to the south; but it is most probable that they usually do, or else one cannot suppose that they would have continued so long unnoticed in the southern countries. The ousel is larger than a black-bird, and feeds on haws; but last autumn (when there were no haws) it fed on yew-berries: in the spring it feeds
a very extensive foreign range, as well as British, and in this country frequents, during the breeding season, lakes with gravelly margins, or clear rocky streams, where it arrives in spring and remains until its broods are ready to remove. It is a regular summer visitant, and to the angler is a pleasant companion, enlivening the: streams with its shrill whistle, and by its active motions. During winter there seems to be a partial as well as general migration, some leaving the country altogether, others retiring only to the sea-shores.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 49
on ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March and April.*
I must not omit to tell you (as you have been so lately on the study of rep- tiles) that my people, every now and then of late, draw up with a bucket of water from my well, which is sixty-three feet deep, a large black warty lizard with a fin-tail and yellow belly. How they first LED came down at that RING OUSEL, depth, and how they were ever to have got out thence without help, is more than I am able to say.
My thanks are due to you for your trouble and care in the examina- tion of a buck’s head. As far as your discoveries reach at present, they seem much to corroborate my suspicions; and I hope Mr. may find reason to give his decision in my favour; and then, I think, we may advance this extraordinary provision of nature as a new instance of the wisdom of 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 XXTI.
TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Wov. 28th, 1768.
Dear Srr,—With regard to the oedicnemus, or stone-curlew, I intend to write very soon to my friend near Chichester, in whose neighbourhood these birds seem most to abound ; and shall urge him to take particular
* White’s observations upon the ring-ousel, at the time he wrote, were very important, and made with great accuracy. As in other matters, it will be very interesting for Professor Bell to give his attention to their present habits in the vicinity of Selborne, to ascertain if their numbers continue as many, and their appearance as regular. In Scotland the ring-ousel is a regular summer visitant, extending from the English border to Sutherlandshire ; in the rocky districts of the latter county it is tolerably frequent. In autumn and before their departure - they visit the lower country, and remain a day or a week according to circum- stances, feeding at this time upon various berries, and occasionally visiting gardens. The broods are now joined and mixed together, and the young appeaz in their imperfect mottled dress.
&
50 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
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), [ 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 monedule) build every year in the rabbit-burrows under ground. The way he and his brothers used to take their nests, while they were boys, was by listening at the mouths of the holes; and, ‘if they heard the young ones cry, they twisted the nest out with a forked stick. Some water-fowls (viz. the puffins) breed, I know, in that manner ; but I should never have suspected the daws of building in holes on the flat ground. |
Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of antiquity : which circumstance alone speaks the pro- digious height of the upright stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of shepherd-boys, who are always idling round that place.
One of my neighbours last Saturday, November the 26th, saw a martin in a sheltered bottom: the sun shone warm, and the bird was hawking briskly after flies. I am now perfectly satisfied that they do not all leave this island in the winter.
You judge very right, J think, in speaking with reserve and caution concerning the cures done by toads: for, let people advance what they will on such subjects, yet there is such a propensity in mankind towards deceiving and being deceived, that one cannot safely relate anything from common report, especially in print, without expressing some degree of doubt and suspicion.
Your approbation, with regard to my new discovery of the migration of the ring-ousel, gives me satisfaction ; and I find you concur with me in suspecting that they are foreign birds which visit us. You will be sure, I hope, not to omit to make inquiry whether your ring-ousels leave your rocks in the autumn. What puzzles me most, is the very short stay they make with us; for in about three weeks they are all | gone. I shall be very curious to remark whether they will call on us at their return in the spring, as they did last year.
I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. If fortune had settled me near the sea-side, or near some great river, my natural propensity would soon have urged me to have made myself acquainted
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOKRNE, 51 with their productions: but as I have lived mostly in inland parts, and
in an upland district, my knowledge of fishes extends little farther than © to those common sorts which our brooks and lakes produce.
I am, &e.
LETTER XXII.
TO THE SAME.*
*
SELBORNE, Jan. 2nd, 1769.
Dear Srr,—As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us under the ground in rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon the reason ; for, in reality, there are hardly any towers or steeples in all this country. And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as meanly furnished with churches as almost any counties in the king- dom. We have many livings of two or three hundred pounds a year, whose houses of worship make little better appearance than dovecots, When I first saw Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdon- shire, and the fens of Lincolnshire, I was amazed at the number of spires which presented themselves in every point of view. As an admirer of prospects, I have reason to lament this want in my own
_ country ; for such objects are very necessary ingredients in an elegant
landscape.
What you mention with respect to reclaimed toads raises my curiosity. An ancient author, though no naturalist, has well remarked that “ Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed, of mankind.” +
It is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has actually been procured for you in Devonshire ; because it corroborates my discovery, which I made many years ago, of the same sort, on a sunny sandbank near Farnham, in Surrey. I am well acquainted with the South Hams of Devonshire; and can suppose that district, from its southerly situation, to be a proper habitation for such animals in their best colours.
Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not forsake them against winter, our suspicions that those which visit this neigh- bourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the frosts, are still more reasonable ;
* This letter with the preceding one are as usual full of observation, and might have been written to any correspondent without the view of publication. _ The jackdaw is one of those familiar birds which accommodates its habits to circumstances. In Great Britain it may be said to be altogether in an artificial condition incidental to population and commerce, and the works of man. form, very convenient retreats to sleep or nestle in, which it would otherwise have had to discover in some natural locality. In an entirely natural state the rugged precipices and caves on the sea-coast, mountainous rocks abounding with holes and fissures and clothed with ivy, are the places resorted to, or in a woodland district an aged
~ and hollow tree may be chosen. The selection of rabbit burrows is accidental, and
{
they are used instead of natural or scraped holes, sometimes by a very miscellaneous assemblage; rabbits and jackdaws, sheldrakes and puffins are sometimes to be found in the same warren, and not very far from each other.
+ James, chap. ili. 7.
E 2
52 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
and it will be worth your pains to endeavour to trace from whence they come, and to inquire why they make so very short a stay.
In your account of your error with regard to the two species of herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your description of the heronry at Cressi Hall; which is a curiosity I never could manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on one tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have a sight of. Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressi Hall is, and near what toWn it lies.* I have often thought that those vast extents of fens have never been sufficiently explored. If half a dozen gentlemen, furnished with a good strength of water-spaniels, were to beat them over for a week, they would certainly find more species.
There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied more than that of the caprimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it is a wonderful and curious creature ; but I have always found that though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting on a bough; and I have for many an half hour watched it as it sat with its under mandible quivering, and particularly this summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, with its head lower than _ its tail, in an attitude well expressed by your draughtsman in the folio — “British Zoology.” This bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day ; so exactly that I have known it strike up more than once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which we can hear when the weather is still. It appears to me past all doubt that its notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe, formed for sound, just as cats pur. You will credit me, I hope, when I assure you that, as my neighbours were assembled in an hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we drink tea, one of these churn-owls came and settled on the cross of that little straw edifice and began to chatter, and continued his note for many minutes; and we were all struck with wonder to find that the organs of that little animal, when put in motion, gave a sensible vibration to the whole building! This bird also sometimes makes a small squeak, repeated four or five times; and I have observed that to happen when the cock has been pursuing the hen in a toying way through the boughs of a tree.
It would not be at all strange if your bat, which you have procured, should prove a new one, since five species have been found in a neighbouring kingdom. The great sort that I mentioned is certainly a non-descript; I saw but one this summer, and that I had no opportunity of taking.t
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 1—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 knowiedge; I may now and then perhaps be able to furnish you with a little information.
* Cressi Hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. + See Letters XXVI., XXXVI., and note.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 53
The vast rains ceased with us much about the same time as with |
you, and since we have had delicate weather. Mr. Barker, who has ©
measured the rain for more than thirty years, says, in a late letter, that, —
more has fallen this year than in any he ever attended to; though
from July 1763 to January 1764, more fell than in any seven months of this year.
LETTER XXJIL
TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Feb. 28th, 1769.
Drar Srr,—It is not improbable that the Guernsey lizard and our green lizards may be specifically the same; all that I know is, that, ‘when some years ago many Guernsey lizards were turned loose in Pembroke college garden, in the University of Oxford, they lived a great while, and seemed to enjoy themselves very well, but never bred. Whether this circumstance will prove anything either way I shall not pretend to say.
I return you thanks for your account of Cressi Hall; but recollect, not without regret, that in June 1746 I was visiting for a week together at Spalding, without ever being told that such a curiosity was just at hand. Pray send me word in your next what sort of tree it is that contains such a quantity of herons’ nests; and whether the heronry consists of a whole grove of wood, or only of a few trees.
It gave me satisfaction to find we accorded so well about the caprimulgus; all I contended for was to prove that it often chatters sitting as well as flying; and therefore the noise was voluntary, and from organic impulse, and not from the resistance of the air against the hollow of its mouth and throat.
If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last Michaelmas Day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning; at first there was a vast fog; but, by the time that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath or common, and I could discern, as the mist began to break away, great numbers of swallows (hirundines rustice) clustering on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As soon as,the air became clear and pleasant they all were on the wing at once; and, by a placid and easy flight, proceeded on southward towards the sea; after this 1 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. Fora very respectable gentleman assured me that, as he was walking with some friends under Merton Wall on a remarkably hot noon, either in the last week in December or the first
54 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE,
week in January, he espied three or four swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of the windows of that college. I have frequently remarked that swallows are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere; is it owing to the vast massy buildings of that place, to the many waters round it, or to what else ?*
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.
* This letter is a reply to some of Mr. Pennant’s inquiries, and is remarkable for the very distinct observations made upon the swallows. In a small pamphlet printed at Rotherham in 1815, the author of which we never ascertained, there are some observations made that agree with many of those recorded by Mr. White. These were also made by a clergyman, as it is told in his short preface, ‘‘to rescue a beautiful and instructive phenomenon from oblivion, and to render it subservient to the moral improvement of his numerous and highly respected charge.”
** Karly in the month of September, 1815, the swallows began to assemble in the neighbourhood of Rotherham, at the willow ground near the glass-house on the banks of the canal, preparatory to their migration to a warmer climate, and their numbers were daily augmented until they became a vast flock which no man could easily number. It was their manner while there, to rise from the willows in the morning a little before six o’clock, when their thick columns literally darkened the sky. In the evening, about five o’clock, they began to return to their station, and continued coming in from all quarters until nearly dark.” The year advanced, and ‘“‘accordingly their mighty army broke up their encamp- ment, debouched from their, retreat, and rising covered the heavens with their legions; then directed by an unerring guide took their trackless way. On the day of their flight they left behind them about a hundred of their companions, after these a few stragglers only remained. These might be the sick or too young to attempt so great an expedition; whether this was the fact or not they did not remain aiter the next day.” The common house swallow is seen every autumn to congregaie in large bodies as above described. The willow aits in the Thames are very favourite resorts, and we have no doubt that similar localities will, in like manner, be taken advantage of. They also assemble on some bare tree, upon raiis and house-tops, making excursions therefrom as if to exercise their young broods in flying, and at this autumnal period we have often seen them assemble and roost upon the alders fringing the side of a river. While at Malvern, some years since, in the month of September, the little white-rumped martin (Z. urbica) congregated in hundreds upon the roof, cornices, and window tops of Mr. Wilson’s large house there. This was continued daily until the great departure took place, and in twenty-four hours only a few stragglers remained of the large concourse. The balcony and windows beneath that part of the building where they generally assembled, were covered with specimens of the swallow fly (see woodcut, p. 116). We have never scen, nor do we recollect it recorded, that swifts congregate in this manner before migration,
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 55
LETTER XXIV.
TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, May 29th, 1769.
Dear Siz,—The scarabeus fullo 1 know very well, having seen it in collections; but have never been able to discover one wild in its natural state. Mr. Banks told me he thought it might be found on the seacoast.*
On the thirteenth of April I went to the sheep-down, where the ring-ousels have been observed to make their appearance at spring and fall, in their way perhaps to the north or south; and was much pleased to see these birds about the usual spot. We shot a cock and a hen; they were plump and in high condition. The hen had but very COCKCHAFER, small rudiments of eggs within her,
* Melalontha fullo, Fasrictus. Chafer or cock-chafer, but not the species that is so well known co schoolboys. This species is a rare British insect, very local in its distribution, being hitherto chiefly found in Kent; it is remarkable for the large size and development of the antennz. These insects are almost all extremely destruc- tive, feeding voraciously on the leaves of shrubs and trees. The common cockchafer, sometimes called May bug (woodcut), often appears in immense numbers, and commits great havoc. On the continent they are even more destructive than in this country, and governments have directed their attention to the best mode of compassing their destruction. In the larva state they are vegetable eaters, feeding upon the roots of plants, while in the perfect or beetle state they attack the foliage. Itisin this condition they are most easily destroyed ; being a large insect they can be collected by labourers or children, and in some parts they are so numerous that oil is extracted from them by boiling. There are several allusions to this insect in the ancient writers, and. we are indebted to W. B. Macdonald of Rammerscales for selecting the following quotations—
The “yAcaovty is mentioned by Aristophanes, ‘‘ Clouds,” n. 761. Socrates log. :-—
wi yy TEE) TUUTOY EIAAE ONY YuapEnY ceéEl, HAN KeroyKda Tiv DeovTid sis Tov cea, Aivoderov woree yAcAdyOyy TOU TODOS. ‘ Do not now always revolve your thoughts around yourself, but set your medi- tation (give rein to your meditation) free into the air, fastened with a strong thread to its foot like a cockchafer.”
Greek boys, without the fear of Martin’s act before their eyes, were wont thus to amuse themselves with cockchafers chained by a thread. Madame Dacier however here supposes an allusion to an opinion of Socrates that the human soul had wings. The scholiast to Aristophanes remarks that it is Cwtgieyv yevasSov ravleew opclov—earrws tov xevooncvlagor, Cuvay Br., 0 rots covbeosy ersxccebeCercei—aéyes 02 Tov yevooxavievov.—i.e. A little animal of goldish hue like a cantharus, otherwise a chrysocantharus ; in barbaric Greek ‘‘ Zina,”—which rests upon flowers—and some call it a ‘“‘ golden cantharus.”
Aristophanes in his ‘‘ Wasps,” 1342, calls a young glee-maiden xeuropenrcrcrisoy **a little golden cock-chafer.”’
56 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.
which proves they are late breeders; whereas those species of the thrush kind that remain with us the whole year have fledged young before that time. In their crops was nothing very distinguishable, but somewhat that seemed like blades of vegetables nearly digested. In autumn they feed on haws and yew-berries, and in the spring on ivy-berries. I dressed one of these birds, and found it juicy and well flavoured. It is remark- able that they make but a few days’ stay in their spring visit, but rest near a fortnight at Michaelmas. These birds, from the observations of three springs and two autumns, are most punctual in their return; and exhibit a new migration unnoticed by the writers, who supposed they never were to be seen in any southern countries.
One of my neighbours lately brought me a new salicaria, which at first I suspected might have proved your willow-lark,* but, on a nicer examination, it answered much better to the description of that species which you shot at Revesby,+ in Lincolnshire. My bird I describe thus: “It is a size less than the grasshopper-lark ; the head, back, and coverts of the wings, of a dusky brown, without those dark spots of the grasshopper-lark; over each eye is a milkwhite stroke ; the chin and throat are white, and the under parts of a yellowish white; the rump is tawny, and the feathers of the tail sharp-pointed ; the bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs are dusky; the hinder claw long and crooked.” The person that shot it says that it sung so like a reed- sparrow that he took it for one; and that it sings all night: but this account merits farther inquiry. For my part, I suspect it is a second sort of locustela, hinted at by Dr. Derham in Ray’s Letters: see p. 108.4 He also procured me a grasshopper-lark.
The question that you put with regard to those genera of animals that are peculiar to America, viz., how they came there, and whence ? is too puzzling for me to answer ; and yet so obvious as often to have struck me with wonder. If one looks into the writers on that subject little satisfaction is to be found. Ingenious men will readily advance plausible arguments to support whatever theory they shall choose to maintain; but then the misfortune is, every one’s hypothesis is each as good as another’s, since they are all founded on conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in whom may be seen all the arguments of those that have gone before, as I remember, stock America from the western coast of Africa and the south of Europe; and then break down the Isthmus that bridged over the Atlantic. But this is making use of a
Julius Pollux, B. Oeieh. 7, says, N O€ wear orbvOy, Savoy arnvoy eo Thy, ny was WnArAoAg Oxy xaedovary, NTOb Ex TIS eb aaeuc Tay wnawy y ovv y &vOGoEL yivonevov. “The melolonthe is a winged animal, which they also call melolanthe, either from the bloom of
pples, or its occurr ing with this bloom.”
Stobecus quotes from Herodes (Sermo 76), the boys’ game with the melolonthze, thus—7 rasos nrorovins aupmar earray tod xeoxéov, Leak Toy yeoovTe Awpnres. — “Or tieing strings of tow to the cockchafers, jeer at the old man for me.’
* For this Salicaria see next letter. + The seat of Sir Joseph Banks.
t Dr. Derham writes—‘‘ Doubtless this bird was the locustela in Willoughby’s ornithology, and not the regulus non-cristatus, which I call the yellow wren, and of which I have discovered three distinct species, but not one of them that sings as here described, and as I have seen two sorts (if I mistake not) of locustele birds do.”—W. D.—Corres. of Ray, Ray Society, p. 96.
The bird here meant is “the titlark that sings like a grasshopper.’ ’——WILLOUGHBY, p. 207; and the Salicaria locustella (Selby) alluded to Letter XVI.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE., 57
violent piece of machinery: it is a difficulty worthy of the interposition of agod! “ Incredulus od.” *
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.
THE NATURALISTS SUMMER-EVENING WALK.
equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis Ingenium. ViRG. Georg.
Wuen day declining sheds a milder gleam, What time the may-fly + haunts the pool or stream ; When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed ; Then be the time to steal adown the vale, And listen to the vagrant cuckoo’s tale ; To hear the clamorous§ curlew call his mate, - Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; To see the swallow sweep the dark’ning plain Belated, to support her infant train ; To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing : Amusive birds !—say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat ; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ? Such baffled searches mock man’s prying pride, The Gop of Naturz is your secret guide !
While deep’ning shades obscure the face of day To yonder bench leaf-shelter’d let us stray,
* The zoology of the New World is essentially distinct from that of the old, so is that of Africa from India, and both the latter from those of Australia and the Pacific. There may be a few forms common to some of these divisions, but the great type of the zoology of each is distinct. That of the western coast of Africa is quite distinct from that of America; among the birds, for instance, which possess the greatest amount of locomotive power, none of the migratory species travel from continent to continent, and the generic forms even are almost entirely different. In later times, where there is a much more frequent communication between Europe and the west coast of Africa, and by means of the slave trade between that country and South America and the West Indian islands, there have been various introductions from the one country to the other, and particularly of the Vegetable Kingdom, but even with these the great mass of both Faunaand Flora continue distinct. There is no more interesting study than that of the geographical distribution of animals and plants, and of the very remarkable incidents which sometimes occur to effect the transportation of some which are almost entirely without the power of crossing seas or oceans.
+ The angler’s may-fly, the ephemera vulgata LInN., comes forth from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, &c.
{ Vagrant cuckoo; so called because, being tied down by no incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without control.
§ Charadrius oedicnemus.
58 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE,
"Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, And all the fading landscape sinks in night ; To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by With buzzing wing, or the shrill* cricket ery; To see the feeding bat glance through the wood ; To catch the distant falling of the flood ; While o’er the cliff th’ awaken’d churn-owl hung Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song ; While high in air, and poised upon his wings, Unseen, the soft enamour’d + woodlark sings: These, Naturn’s works, the curious mind employ, Inspire a soothing melancholy joy : As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain Steals o’er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein !
Each rural sight, each sound, each smell, combine ; The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine ; The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze, Or cottage-chimney smoking through the trees.
The chilling night-dews fall :—away, retire! For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire ! + Thus, ere night’s veil had half obscured the sky, Th’ impatient damsel hung her lamp on high : True to the signal, by love’s meteor led, Leander hasten’d to his Hero’s bed. $
I am, &e,
LETTER XXY.,
TO THE SAME. SELBORNE, Aug. 30th, 1769.
Dear Sirz,—lIt gives me satisfaction to find that my account of the ousel migration pleases you. You put a very shrewd question when you ask me how I know that their autumnal migration is southward ? Was not candour and openness the very life of natural history, I should pass over this query just as a fly commentator does over a crabbed passage in a classic; but common ingenuousness obliges me to confess, not without some degree of shame, that I only reasoned in that case from analogy. For as all other autumnal birds migrate from the northward to us, to partake of our milder winters, and return to the northward again when the rigorous cold abates, so I concluded that the ring-ousels did the same, as well as their congeners the fieldfares; and especially as ring-ousels are known to haunt cold mountainous countries :
* Gryllus campestris.
+ In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and hang singing