The Natural History of Selborne Part 7

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

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

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

I am, etc.

Letter XXII To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, July 2, 1769.

Dear Sir,

As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us under the ground in rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon the reason; for, in reality, there are hardly any towers or steeples in all this country.

And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hamps.h.i.+re and Suss.e.x are as meanly furnished with churches as almost any counties in the kingdom. We have many livings of two or three hundred pounds a year, whose houses of wors.h.i.+p make little better appearance than dovecots. When I first saw Northamptons.h.i.+re, Cambridges.h.i.+re and Huntingdons.h.i.+re, and the fens of Lincolns.h.i.+re, I was amazed at the number of spires which presented themselves in every point of view. As an admirer of prospects, I have reason to lament this want in my own country; for such objects are very necessary ingredients in an elegant landscape.

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

(* James, chap. iii. 7.)

It is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has actually been procured for you in Devons.h.i.+re; 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 Devons.h.i.+re; and can suppose that district, from its southerly situation, to be a proper habitation for such animals in their best colours.

Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not forsake them against winter, our suspicions that those which visit this neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the frosts, are still more reasonable: and it will be worth your pains to endeavour to trace from whence they come, and to inquire why they make so very short a stay.

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

(* Cressi-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolns.h.i.+re .)

There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied more than that of the caplimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it is a wonderful and curious creature: but I have always found that though sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in general it utters its jarring note sitting on a bough; and I have for many an half hour watched it as it sat with its under mandible quivering, and particularly this summer. It perches usually on a bare twig, with its head lower than its tail, in an att.i.tude well expressed by your draughtsman in the folio British Zoology. This bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of day; so exactly that I have known it strike up more than once or twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which we can hear when the weather is still. It appears to me past all doubt that its notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers of the parts of its windpipe, formed for sound, just as cats pur. You will credit me, I hope, when I tell you that, as my neighbours were a.s.sembled 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 c.o.c.k has been pursuing the hen in a toying way through the boughs of a tree.

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

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

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

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

Letter XXIII To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, February 28, 1769.

Dear Sir,

It is not improbable that the Guernsey lizard and our green lizard may be specifically the same; all that I know is, that, when some years ago many Guernsey lizards were turned loose in Pembroke college garden, in the University of Oxford, they lived a great while, and seemed to enjoy themselves very well, but never bred.

Whether this circ.u.mstance 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 quant.i.ty of herons' nests; and whether the heronry consists of a whole grove or wood, or only of a few trees.

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

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

I cannot agree with those persons that a.s.sert that the swallow kind disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once: only some stragglers stay behind a long while, and do never, there is the greatest reason to believe, leave this island. Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come forth in a warm day, as bats do continually of a warm evening, after they have disappeared for weeks. For a very respectable gentleman a.s.sured me that, as he was walking with some friends under Merton-wall on a remarkably hot noon, either in the last week in December or the first week in January, he espied three or four swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of the windows of that college. I have frequently remarked that swallows are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere: is it owing to the vast ma.s.sy 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 cl.u.s.tering on the chimnies and thatch of the neighbouring cottages, I could not help being touched with a secret delight, mixed with some degree of mortification: with delight to observe with how much ardour and punctuality those poor little birds obeyed the strong impulse towards 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 embarra.s.sed to find that some do not actually migrate at all.

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

Letter XXIV To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, May 29, 1769.

Dear Sir,

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

On the thirteenth of April I went to the sheep-down, where the ring-ousels have been observed to make their appearance at spring and fall, in their way perhaps to the north or south; and was much pleased to see three birds about the usual spot. We shot a c.o.c.k and a hen; they were plump and in high condition. The hen had but very small rudiments of eggs within her, which proves they are late breeders; whereas those species of the thrush kind that remain with us the whole year have fledged young before that time. In their crops was nothing very distinguishable, but somewhat that seemed like blades of vegetables nearly digested. In autumn they feed on haws and yew-berries, and in the spring on ivy-berries. I dressed one of these birds, and found it juicy and well-flavoured. It is remarkable that they make but a few days' stay in their spring visit, but rest near a fortnight at Michaelmas. These birds, from the observations of three springs and two autumns, are most punctual in their return; and exhibit a new migration unnoticed by the writers, who supposed they never were to be seen in any of the southern counties.

One of my neighbours lately brought me a new salicaria, which at first I suspected might have proved your willow-lark,* but, on a nicer examination, it answered much better to the description of that species which you shot at Revesby, in Lincolns.h.i.+re. My bird I describe thus: 'It is a size less than the gra.s.shopper-lark; the head, back, and coverts of the wings of a dusky brown, without those dark spots of the gra.s.shopper-lark; over each eye is a milk-white stroke; the chin and throat are white, and the under parts of a yellowish white; the rump is tawny and the feathers of the tail sharp-pointed; the bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs are dusky; the hinder claw long and crooked. The person that shot it says that it sung so like a reed-sparrow that he took it for one; and that it sings all night; but this account merits further inquiry. For my part, I suspect it is a second sort of locustella, hinted at by Dr. Derham in Ray's Letters: see p. 108. He also procured me a gra.s.shopper- lark.

(* For this salicaria see letter August 30, 1769.)

The question that you put with regard to those genera of animals that are peculiar to America, viz. how they came there, and whence? is too puzzling for me to answer; and yet so obvious as often to have struck me with wonder. If one looks into the writers on that subject little satisfaction is to be found. Ingenious men will readily advance plausible arguments to support whatever theory they shall choose to maintain; but then the misfortune is, every one's hypothesis is each as good as another's, since they are all founded on conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in whom may be seen all the arguments of those that have gone before, as I remember, stock America from the western coast of Africa and the south of Europe; and then break down the Isthmus that bridged over the Atlantic. But this is making use of a violent piece of machinery: it is a difficulty worthy of the interposition of a G.o.d!

'Incredulus odi.'

To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

The Naturalist's Summer-evening Walk

... equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis Ingenium.

Virg. Georg.

When day declining sheds a milder gleam, What time the may-fly * haunts the pool or stream; When the still owl skims round the gra.s.sy 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, unsubdu'd of wing: Amusive birds!--say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ?

Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The G.o.d of Nature is your secret guide!

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

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

The chilling night-dews fall: away, retire; For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire!******

Thus, ere night's veil had half obscured the sky, Th' impatient damsel hung her lamp on high: True to the signal, by love's meteor led, Leander hasten'd to his Hero's bed.*******

I am, etc.

(*The angler's may-fly, the ephemera vulgata Linn., comes forth from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, etc.) (** Vagrant cuckoo; so called because, being tied down by no incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without control.) (*** Charadrius aedicnemus.) (**** Gryllus campetris.) (***** In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and hang singing in the air.

(****** The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up the stalk of a gra.s.s to make herself more conspicuous) is a signal to the male, which is a slender dusky scarabaeus.) (******* See the story of Hero and Leander.)