The Natural History of Selborne Volume II Part 6

Some centuries ago this horrible distemper prevailed all Europe over: and our forefathers were by no means exempt, as appears by the large provision made for objects labouring under this calamity. There was a hospital for female lepers in the diocese of Lincoln; a n.o.ble one near Durham; three in London and Southwark; and perhaps many more in or near our great towns and cities. Moreover, some crowned heads, and other wealthy and charitable personages, bequeathed large legacies to such poor people as languished under this hopeless infirmity.

It must, therefore, in these days be to a humane and thinking person a matter of equal wonder and satisfaction, when he contemplates how nearly this pest is eradicated, and observes that a leper now is a rare sight.

He will, moreover, when engaged in such a train of thought, naturally inquire for the reason. This happy change, perhaps, may have originated and been continued from the much smaller quant.i.ty of salted meat and fish now eaten in these kingdoms; from the use of linen next the skin; from the plenty of better bread; and from the profusion of fruits, roots, legumes, and greens, so common in every family. Three or four centuries ago, before there were any enclosures, sown-gra.s.ses, field-turnips, or field-carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and were not killed for winter use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to s.h.i.+ft as they could through the dead months; so that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring. Hence the marvellous account of the vast stores of salted flesh found in the larder of the eldest Spencer in the days of Edward II., even so late in the spring as the 3rd May. It was from magazines like these that turbulent barons supported in idleness their riotous swarms of retainers ready for any disorder or mischief. But agriculture is now arrived at such a pitch of perfection that our best and fattest meats are killed in the winter, and no man need eat salted flesh, unless he prefers it, that has money to buy fresh.

One cause of this distemper might be, no doubt, the quant.i.ty of wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty at all seasons as well as in Lent, which our poor now would hardly be persuaded to touch.

The use of linen changes, s.h.i.+rts or s.h.i.+fts, in the room of sordid and filthy woollen, long worn next the skin, is a matter of neatness comparatively modern, but must prove a great means of preventing cutaneous ails. At this very time woollen, instead of linen, prevails among the poorer Welsh, who are subject to foul eruptions.

The plenty of good wheaten bread that now is found among all ranks of people in the south, instead of that miserable sort which used in old days to be made of barley or beans, may contribute not a little to the sweetening their blood and correcting their juices, for the inhabitants of mountainous districts to this day are still liable to the itch and other cutaneous disorders, from a wretchedness and poverty of diet.

As to the produce of a garden, every middle-aged person of observation may perceive, within his own memory, both in town and country, how vastly the consumption of vegetables is increased. Green-stalls in cities now support mult.i.tudes in a comfortable state, while gardeners get fortunes.

Every decent labourer also has his garden, which is half his support, as well as his delight; and common farmers provide plenty of beans, peas, and greens, for their hinds to eat with their bacon; and those few that do not are despised for their sordid parsimony, and looked upon as regardless of the welfare of their dependents. Potatoes have prevailed in this little district by means of premiums within these twenty years only, and are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarce have ventured to taste them in the last reign.

Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of cabbage, because they call the month of February "sprout-cale;" but long after their days the cultivation of gardens was little attended to. The religious, being men of leisure, and keeping up a constant correspondence with Italy, were the first people among us that had gardens and fruit-trees in any perfection within the wall of their abbeys and priories. The barons neglected every pursuit that did not lead to war or tend to the pleasure of the chase.

It was not till gentlemen took up the study of horticulture themselves that the knowledge of gardening made such hasty advances. Lord Cobham, Lord Ila, and Mr. Waller, of Beaconsfield, were some of the first people of rank that promoted the elegant science of ornamenting without despising the superintendence of the kitchen quarters and fruit walls.

A remark made by the excellent Mr. Ray, in his "Tour of Europe," at once surprises us, and corroborates what has been advanced above; for we find him observing so late as his days, that, "The Italians use several herbs for sallets, which are not yet, or have not been but lately, used in England, viz., _selleri_ (celery), which is nothing else but the sweet smallage; the young shoots whereof, with a little of the head of the root cut off, they eat raw with oil and pepper;" and further adds: "curled endive blanched is much used beyond seas; and for a raw sallet, seemed to excell lettuce itself." Now this journey was undertaken no longer ago than in the year 1663.

I am, etc.

LETTER x.x.xVIII.

SELBORNE, _Feb._ 12_th_, 1778.

"Forte puer, comitum seductus ab agmine fido, Dixerat, ecquis adest? et, adest, responderat echo, Hic stupet; utque aciem partes divisit in omnes; Voce, veni, clamat magna. Vocat illa vocantem."

Dear Sir,--In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales and hanging woods, it is no wonder that echoes should abound. Many we have discovered that return the cry of a pack of dogs, the notes of a hunting-horn, a tunable ring of bells, or the melody of birds very agreeably; but we were still at a loss for a polysyllabical articulate echo, till a young gentleman, who had parted from his company in a summer evening walk, and was calling after them, stumbled upon a very curious one in a spot where it might least be expected. At first he was much surprised, and could not be persuaded but that he was mocked by some boy; but repeating his trials in several languages, and finding his respondent to be a very adroit polyglot, he then discerned the deception.

This echo in an evening, before rural noises cease, would repeat ten syllables most articulately and distinctly, especially if quick dactyls were chosen. The last syllables of

"t.i.tyre, tu patulae recubans . . . "

were as audibly and intelligibly returned as the first; and there is no doubt, could trial have been made, but that at midnight, when the air is very elastic, and a dead stillness prevails, one or two syllables more might have been obtained; but the distance rendered so late an experiment very inconvenient.

Quick dactyls, we observed, succeeded best; for when we came to try its powers in slow, heavy, embarra.s.sed spondees of the same number of syllables,

"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens . . . "

we could perceive a return but of four or five.

All echoes have some one place to which they are returned stronger and more distinct than to any other; and that is always the place that lies at right angles with the object of repercussion, and is not too near, nor too far off. Buildings, or naked rocks, re-echo much more articulately than hanging woods or vales; because in the latter the voice is as it were entangled, and embarra.s.sed in the covert, and weakened in the rebound.

The true object of this echo, as we found by various experiments, is the stone-built, tiled hop-kiln in Gally Lane, which measures in front forty feet, and from the ground to the eaves twelve feet. The true _centrum phonic.u.m_, or just distance, is one particular spot in the king's field, in the path to Nore Hill, on the very brink of the steep balk above the hollow cart-way. In this case there is no choice of distance; but the path, by mere contingency, happens to be the lucky, the identical spot, because the ground rises or falls so immediately, if the speaker either retires or advances, that his mouth would at once be above or below the object.

We measured this polysyllabical echo with great exactness, and found the distance to fall very short of Dr. Plot's rule for distinct articulation; for the doctor, in his history of Oxfords.h.i.+re, allows a hundred and twenty feet for the return of each syllable distinctly; hence this echo, which gives ten distinct syllables, ought to measure four hundred yards, or one hundred and twenty feet to each syllable; whereas our distance is only two hundred and fifty-eight yards, or near seventy-five feet, to each syllable. Thus our measure falls short of the doctor's, as five to eight; but then it must be acknowledged that this candid philosopher was convinced afterwards, that some lat.i.tude must be admitted of in the distance of echoes according to time and place.

When experiments of this sort are making, it should always be remembered that weather and the time of day have a vast influence on an echo; for a dull, heavy, moist air deadens and clogs the sound; and hot suns.h.i.+ne renders the air thin and weak, and deprives it of all its springiness, and a ruffling wind quite defeats the whole. In a still, clear, dewy evening the air is most elastic; and perhaps the later the hour the more so.

Echo has always been so amusing to the imagination that the poets have personified her; and in their hand she has been the occasion of many a beautiful fiction. Nor need the gravest man be ashamed to appear taken with such a phenomenon, since it may become the subject of philosophical or mathematical inquiries.

One should have imagined that echoes, if not entertaining, must at least have been harmless and inoffensive; yet, Virgil advances a strange notion, that they are injurious to bees. After enumerating some probable and reasonable annoyances, such as prudent owners would wish far removed from their bee gardens, he adds--

. . . "aut ubi concava pulsu Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat imago."

This wild and fanciful a.s.sertion will hardly be admitted by the philosophers of these days, especially as they all now seem agreed that insects are not furnished with any organs of hearing at all. But if it should be urged, that though they cannot hear yet perhaps they may feel the repercussions of sounds, I grant it is possible they may. Yet that these impressions are distasteful or hurtful, I deny, because bees, in good summers, thrive well in my outlet, where the echoes are very strong; for this village is another Anathoth, a place of responses and echoes.

Besides, it does not appear from experiment that bees are in any way capable of being affected by sounds; for I have often tried my own with a large speaking-trumpet held close to their hives, and with such an exertion of voice as would have hailed a s.h.i.+p at the distance of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various employments undisturbed, and without showing the least sensibility or resentment.

Some time since its discovery this echo is become totally silent, though the object, or hop-kiln, remains; nor is there any mystery in this defect; for the field between is planted as a hop-garden, and the voice of the speaker is totally absorbed and lost among the poles and entangled foliage of the hops. And when the poles are removed in autumn the disappointment is the same; because a tall quick-set hedge, nurtured up for the purpose of shelter to the hop ground, entirely interrupts the impulse and repercussion of the voice; so that till those obstructions are removed no more of its garrulity can be expected.

Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his park or outlet a pleasing incident, he might build one at little or no expense. For whenever he had occasion for a new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the like structure, it would be only needful to erect this building on the gentle declivity of a hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hundred yards distance; and perhaps success might be the easier ensured could some ca.n.a.l, lake, or stream intervene. From a seat at the _centrum phonic.u.m_ he and his friends might amuse themselves sometimes of an evening with the prattle of this loquacious nymph; of whose complacency and decent reserve more may be said than can with truth of every individual of her s.e.x; since she is . . .

" . . . quae nec reticere loquenti, Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo."

I am, etc.

P.S.--The cla.s.sic reader will, I trust, pardon the following lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting for their causes from popular superst.i.tion:--

"Quae bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis Tute tibi atque aliis, quo pacto per loca sola Saxa paries formas verborum ex ordine reddant, Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos Quaerimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus.

s.e.x etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces Unam quom jaceres: ita colles collibus ipsis Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre.

Haec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur; Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi, Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas, Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum: Et genus agricolum late sentiscere, quom Pan Pinea semiferi capitis velamina qua.s.sans, Unco saepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis, Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam."

LUCRETIUS, Lib. iv. l. 576.

LETTER x.x.xIX.

SELBORNE, _May_ 13_th_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds the swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every year the same number of pairs invariably; at least the result of my inquiry has been exactly the same for a long time past. The swallows and martins are so numerous, and so widely distributed over the village, that it is hardly possible to recount them; while the swifts, though they do not build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The number that I constantly find are eight pairs; about half of which reside in the church, and the rest build in some of the lowest and meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight pairs, allowance being made for accidents, breed yearly eight pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase; and what determines every spring which pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy their ancient haunts?

Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have always supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange [Greek text], which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind to the most pa.s.sionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of birds over the face of the earth. Without this provision one favourite district would be crowded with inhabitants, while others would be dest.i.tute and forsaken. But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous superiority, and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes; and the rivalry of the males in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one on the other.

Whether the swallows and house-martins return in the same exact number annually is not easy to say, for reasons given above; but it is apparent, as I have remarked before in my Monographies, that the numbers returning bear no manner of proportion to the numbers retiring.

LETTER XL.

SELBORNE, _June_ 2_nd_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--The standing objection to botany has always been, that it is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without improving the mind or advancing any real knowledge; and, where the science is carried no farther than a mere systematic cla.s.sification, the charge is but too true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this aspersion should be by no means content with a list of names; he should study plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegetation, should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, should promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the husbandman, on the phytologist. Not that system is by any means to be thrown aside; without system the field of Nature would be a pathless wilderness; but system should be subservient to, not the main object of, pursuit.