The fossil wood buried in the bogs of Wolmer Forest is not yet all
exhausted, for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a log. I have
just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of Oak Hanger to a
carpenter of this village; this was the butt-end of a small oak, about
five feet long, and about five inches in diameter. It had apparently
been severed from the ground by an axe, was very ponderous, and as black
as ebony. Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had procured it,
he told me that it was to be sent to his brother, a joiner at Farnham,
who was to make use of it in cabinet-work, by inlaying it along with
whiter woods.
Those that are much abroad on evenings after it is dark, in spring and
summer, frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing by on the wing, and
repeating often a short, quick note. This bird I have remarked myself,
but never could make out till lately. I am assured now that it is the
stone-curlew (_Charadrius oedicnemus_). Some of them pass over or near
my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the
hill and North Fields, away down towards Dorton, where, among the streams
and meadows, they find a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night
are obliged to be noisy; their notes often repeated become signals or
watch-words to keep them together, that they may not stray or lose each
the other in the dark.
The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious and
amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long strings from
the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over Selborne Down,
where they wheel round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful
manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing,
which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village
are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding, or rather a pleasing
murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a
pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in
tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this
ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night
to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little
girl who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an occurrence,
in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the rooks were saying their
prayers; and yet this child was much too young to be aware that the
Scriptures have said of the Deity, that "He feedeth the ravens who call
upon Him."