more distinct than to any other; and that is always the place that lies
at right angles with the object of repercussion, and is not too near,
nor too far off. Buildings, or naked rocks, re-echo much more
articulately than hanging wood or vales; because in the latter the
voice is as it were entangled, and embarrassed in the covert, and
weakened in the rebound.
The true object of this echo, as we found by various experiments, is
the stone-built, tiled hop-kiln in Galleylane, which measures in front
40 feet, and from the ground to the eaves 12 feet. The true centrum
phonicum, or just distance, is one particular spot in the King’s-field,
in the path to Nore-hill, on the very brink of the steep balk above the
hollow cart way. In this case there is no choice of distance; but the
path, by mere contingency, happens to be the lucky, the identical spot,
because the ground rises or falls so immediately, if the speaker either
retires or advances, that his mouth would at once be above or below the
object.
We measured this polysyllabical echo with great exactness, and found
the distance to fall very short of Dr. Plot’s rule for distinct
articulation: for the Doctor, in his history of Oxfordshire, allows 120
feet for the return of each syllable distinctly: hence this echo, which
gives ten distinct syllables, ought to measure 400 yards, or 120 feet
to each syllable; whereas our distance is only 258 yards, or near 75
feet, to each syllable. Thus our measure falls short of the Doctor’s,
as five to eight: but then it must be acknowledged that this candid
philosopher was convinced afterwards, that some latitude must be
admitted of in the distance of echoes according to time and place.
When experiments of this sort are making, it should always be
remembered that weather and the time of day have a vast influence on an
echo; for a dull, heavy, moist air deadens and clogs the sound; and hot
sunshine renders the air thin and weak, and deprives it of all its
springiness; and a ruffling wind quite defeats the whole. In a still,
clear, dewy evening the air is most elastic; and perhaps the later the
hour the more so.
Echo has always been so amusing to the imagination, that the poets have
personified her; and in their hands she has been the occasion of many a
beautiful fiction. Nor need the gravest man be ashamed to appear taken
with such a phenomenon, since it may become the subject of
philosophical or mathematical inquiries.
One should have imagined that echoes, if not entertaining, must at
least have been harmless and inoffensive; yet Virgil advances a strange
notion, that they are injurious to bees. After enumerating some
probable and reasonable annoyances, such as prudent owners would wish
far removed from their bee-gardens, he adds
… aut ubi concava pulsu
Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat image.
This wild and fanciful assertion will hardly be admitted by the
philosophers of these days; especially as they all now seem agreed that
insects are not furnished with any organs of hearing at all. But if it
should be urged, that though they cannot hear yet perhaps they may feel
the repercussion of sounds, I grant it is possible they may. Yet that
these impressions are distasteful or hurtful, I deny, because bees, in
good summers, thrive well in my outlet, where the echoes are very
strong: for this village is another Anathoth, a place of responses or
echoes. Besides, it does not appear from experiment that bees are in
any way capable of being affected by sounds: for I have often tried my
own with a large speaking-trumpet held close to their hives, and with
such an exertion of voice as would have hailed a ship at the distance
of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various employments
undisturbed, and without showing the least sensibility or resentment.
Some time since its discovery this echo is become totally silent,
though the object, or hop-kiln remains: nor is there any mystery in
this defect, for the field between is planted as an hop-garden, and the
voice of the speaker is totally absorbed and lost among the poles and
entangled foliage of the hops. And when the poles are removed in autumn
the disappointment is the same; because a tall quick-set hedge,
nurtured up for the purpose of shelter to the hop ground, entirely
interrupts the impulse and repercussion of the voice: so that till
those obstructions are removed no more of its garrulity can be
expected.
Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his park or outlet a
pleasing incident, he might build one at little or no expense. For
whenever he had occasion for a new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the
like structure, it would be only needful to erect this building on the
gentle declivity of an hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a
few hundred yards distance; and perhaps success might be the easier
ensured could some canal, lake, or stream, intervene. From a seat at
the centrum phonicum he and his friends might amuse themselves
sometimes of an evening with the prattle of this loquacious nymph; of
whose complacency and decent reserve more may be said than can with
truth of every individual of her sex; since she is
… quæ nec reticere loquenti,
Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo.
I am, etc.
P.S. — The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the following lovely
quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting
for their causes from popular superstition:
Quæ bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis
Tute tibi atque alus, quo pacto per loca sola
Saxa pareis formas verborum ex ordine reddant,
Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos
Quaerimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus.
Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces
Unam quom jaceres: ita colles collibus ipsis
Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre.
Haec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere
Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur;
Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti
Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi,
Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas,
Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum:
Et genus agricolum late sentiscere, quom Pan
Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans,
Unco saepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis,
Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam.
Lucretius, lib. iv. 1. 576.
Letter XXXIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 13, 1778.
Dear Sir,
Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds the swifts,
I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every year the same
number of pairs invariably; at least the result of my inquiry has been
exactly the same for a long time past. The swallows and martins are so
numerous, and so widely distributed over the village, that it is hardly
possible to recount them; while the swifts, though they do not all
build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and
rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The number that I
constantly find are eight pairs; about half of which reside in the
church, and the rest build in some of the lowest and meanest thatched
cottages. Now as these eight pairs, allowance being made for accidents,
breed yearly eight pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase;
and what determines every spring which pairs shall visit us, and
reoccupy their ancient haunts ?
Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have always
supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange
ἀντιστοργὴ, which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind to the
most passionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of
birds over the face of the earth. Without this provision one favourite
district would be crowded with inhabitants, while others would be
destitute and forsaken. But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous
superiority, and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes: and the
rivalry of the males, in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one on
the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins return in the same
exact number annually is not easy to say, for reasons given above: but
it is apparent, as I have remarked before in my Monographies, that the
numbers returning bear no manner of proportion to the numbers retiring.
Letter XL
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, June 2, 1778.
Dear Sir,
The standing objection to botany has always been, that it is a pursuit
that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without improving the
mind or advancing any real knowledge: and where the science is carried
no farther than a mere systematic classification, the charge is but too
true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this aspersion
should be by no means content with a list of names; he should study
plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegetation,
should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, should
promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the
husbandman, on the phytologist. Not that system is by any means to be
thrown aside; without system the field of nature would be a pathless
wilderness: but system should be subservient to, not the main object
of, pursuit.
Vegetation is highly worthy of our attention; and in itself is of the
utmost consequence to mankind, and productive of many of the greatest
comforts and elegancies of life. To plants we owe timber, bread, beer,
honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, etc., what not only strengthens our
hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but what secures from inclemencies
of weather and adorns our persons. Man, in his true state of nature,
seems to be subsisted by spontaneous vegetation: in middle climes,
where grasses prevail, he mixes some animal food with the produce of
the field and garden: and it is towards the polar extremes only that,
like his kindred bears and wolves, he gorges himself with flesh alone,
and is driven, to what hunger has never been known to compel the very
beasts, to prey on his own species.*
* See the late Voyages to the South-seas.
The productions of vegetation have had a vast influence on the commerce
of nations, and have been the great promoters of navigation, as may be
seen in the articles of sugar, tea, tobacco, opium, ginseng, betel,
paper, etc. As every climate has its peculiar produce, our natural
wants bring on a mutual intercourse; so that by means of trade each
distant part is supplied with the growth of every latitude. But,
without the knowledge of plants and their culture, we must have been
content with our hips and haws, without enjoying the delicate fruits of
India and the salutiferous drugs of Peru.
Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various species
of each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to make himself
acquainted with those that are useful. You shall see a man readily
ascertain every herb of the field, yet hardly know wheat from barley,
or at least one sort of wheat or barley from another.
But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be most neglected;
neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distinguish the annual from
the perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the succulent and
nutritive from the dry and juiceless.
The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a northerly and
grazing kingdom. The botanist that could improve the sward of the
district where he lived would be an useful member of society; to raise
a thick turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of systematic
knowledge; and he would be the best commonwealth’s man that could
occasion the growth of ‘two blades of grass where one alone was seen
before.’
I am, etc.
Letter XLI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, July 3, 1778.
Dear Sir,
In a district so diversified with such a variety of hill and dale,
aspects, and soils, it is no wonder that great choice of plants should
be found. Chalks, clays, sands, sheep-walks and downs, bogs, heaths,
woodlands, and champaign fields, cannot but furnish an ample flora. The
deep rocky lanes abound with filices, and the pastures and moist woods
with fungi. If in any branch of botany we may seem to be wanting, it
must be in the large aquatic plants, which are not to be expected on a
spot far removed from rivers, and lying up amidst the hill country at
the spring heads. To enumerate all the plants that have been discovered
within our limits would be a needless work; but a short list of the
more rare, and the spots where they are to be found, may be neither
unacceptable nor unentertaining:
Helleborus foetidus, stinking hellebore, bear’s foot, or setterworth, —
all over the High-wood and Coney-croft-hanger: this continues a great
branching plant the winter through, blossoming about January, and is
very ornamental in shady walks and shrubberies. The good women give the
leaves powdered to children troubled with worms; but it is a violent
remedy, and ought to be administered with caution.
Helleborus viridis, green hellebore, — in the deep stony lane on the
left hand just before the turning to Norton-farm, and at the top of
Middle Dorton under the hedge: this plant dies down to the ground early
in autumn, and springs again about February, flowering almost as soon
as it appears above ground.
Vaccinium oxycoccos, creeping bilberries or cranberries, — in the bogs
of Bin’s-pond.
Vaccinium myrtillus, whortle, or bleaberries, — on the dry hillocks of
Wolmer-forest.
Drosera rotundifolia, round-leaved sun-dew. Drosera longifolia,
long-leaved ditto. In the bogs of Bin’s-pond.
Comarum palustre, purple comarum, or marsh cinquefoil, — in the bogs of
Bin’s-pond.
Hypericon androsaemum, tutsan, St. John’s wort, — in the stony, hollow
lanes.
Vinca minor, less periwinkle, — in Selborne Hanger and Shrubwood.
Monotropa hypopithys, yellow monotropa, or bird’s nest, — in Selborne
Hanger under the shady beeches, to whose roots it seems to be
parasitical — at the north-west end of the Hanger.
Chlora perfoliata, Blackstonia perfoliata, Hudsoni, perfoliated
yellow-won, — on the banks in the King’s-field.
Paris quadrifolia, herb Paris, true-love, or one-berry, — in the Church
Litten coppice.
Chrysosplenium oppositifolium, opposite golden saxifrage, — in the dark
and rocky hollow lanes.
Gentiana amarella, autumnal gentian or fellwort, — on the Zig-zag and
Hanger;
Lathraea squamaria, tooth-wort, — in the Church Litten coppice under
some hazels near the foot-bridge, in Trimming’s garden-hedge, and on
the dry wall opposite Grange-yard.
Dipsacus pilosus, small teasel, — in the Short and Long Lith.
Lathyrus sylvestris, narrow-leaved, or wild lathyrus, — in the bushes
at the foot of the Short Lith, near the path.
Ophrys spiralis, ladies’ traces, — in the Long Lith, and towards the
south-corner of the common.
Ophrys nidus avis, birds’ nest ophrys, — in the Long Lith under the
shady beeches among the dead leaves; in Great Dorton among the bushes,
and on the Hanger plentifully.
Serapias latifolia, helleborine, — in the High-wood under the shady
beeches.
Daphne laureola, spurge laurel, — in Selborne Hanger and the High-wood.
Daphne mezereum, the mezereon, — in Selborne Hanger among the shrubs at
the south-east end above the cottages.
Lycoperdon tuber, truffles, — in the Hanger and High-wood.
Sambucus ebulus, dwarf elder, walwort, or danewort, — among the rubbish
and ruined foundations of the Priory.
Of all the propensities of plants none seem more strange than their
different periods of blossoming. Some produce their flowers in the
winter, or very first dawnings of spring; many when the spring is
established; some at midsummer, and some not till autumn. When we see
the helleborus foetidus and helleborus niger blowing at Christmas, the
helleborus hyemalis in January, and the helleborus viridis as soon as
ever it emerges out of the ground, we do not wonder, because they are
kindred plants that we expect should keep pace the one with the other.
But other congenerous vegetables differ so widely in their time of
flowering that we cannot but admire. I shall only instance at present
in the crocus sativus, the vernal, and the autumnal crocus, which have
such an affinity, that the best botanists only make them varieties of
the same genus, of which there is only one species; not being able to
discern any difference in the corolla, or in the internal structure.
Yet the vernal crocus expands its flowers by the beginning of March at
farthest, and often in very rigorous weather; and cannot be retarded
but by some violence offered: — while the autumnal (the saffron) defies
the influence of the spring and summer, and will not blow till most
plants begin to fade and run to seed. This circumstance is one of the
wonders of the creation, little noticed, because a common occurrence:
yet ought not to be overlooked on account of its being familiar, since
it would be as difficult to be explained as the most stupendous
phaenomenon in nature.
Say, what impels, amidst surrounding snow,
Congealed, the crocus’ flamy bud to grow?
Say, what retards, amidst the summer’s blaze,
Th’ autumnal bulb till pale, declining days ?
The GOD of SEASONS; whose pervading power
Controls the sun, or sheds the fleecy shower:
He bids each flower His quickening word obey;
Or to each lingering bloom enjoins delay.
Letter XLII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Omnibus animalibus reliquis certus et uniusmodi, et in suo cuique
genere incessus est: aves solae vario meatu feruntur, et in terra, et
in äere.—PLIN. Hist. Nat. lib. x. cap. 38.
Selborne, Aug. 7, 1778.
Dear Sir,
A good ornithologist should be able to distinguish birds by their air
as well as by their colours and shape; on the ground as well as on the
wing, and in the bush as well as in the hand. For, though it must not
be said that every species of birds has a manner peculiar to itself,
yet there is somewhat in most genera at least, that at first sight
discriminates them, and enables a judicious observer to pronounce upon
them with some certainty. Put a bird in moron
… Et verâ incessu patuit….
Thus kites and buzzards sail round in circles with wings expanded and
motionless; and it is from their gliding manner that the former are
still called in the north of England gleads, from the Saxon verb glidan
to glide. The kestrel, or wind-hover, has a peculiar mode of hanging in
the air in one place, his wings all the while being briskly agitated.
Hen-harriers fly low over heaths or fields of corn, and beat the ground
regularly like a pointer or setting-dog. Owls move in a buoyant manner,
as if lighter than the air; they seem to want ballast. There is a
peculiarity belonging to ravens that must draw the attention even of
the most incurious — they spend all their leisure time in striking and
cuffing each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish; and, when
they move from one place to another, frequently turn on their backs
with a loud croak, and seem to be falling to the ground. When this odd
gesture betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and
thus lose the centre of gravity. Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a
frolicsome manner; crows and daws swagger in their walk; wood-peckers
fly volatu undoso, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and
so are always rising or falling in curves. All of this genus use their
tails, which incline downward, as a support while they run up trees.
Parrots, like all other hook-clawed birds, walk awkwardly, and make use
of their bill as a third foot, climbing and ascending with ridiculous
caution. All the gallinae parade and walk gracefully, and run nimbly;
but fly with difficulty, with an impetuous whirring, and in a straight
line. Magpies and jays flutter with powerless wings, and make no
dispatch; herons seem incumbered with too much sail for their light
bodies; but these vast hollow wings are necessary in carrying burdens,
such as large fishes, and the like; pigeons, and particularly the sort
called smiters, have a way of clashing their wings the one against the
other over their backs with a loud snap; another variety called
tumblers turn themselves over in the air. Some birds have movements
peculiar to the season of love: thus ring-doves, though strong and
rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the wing in a
toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while breeding,
forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the wind-hover; and the
green-finch in particular exhibits such languishing and faltering
gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird; the king-fisher
darts along like an arrow; fern-owls, or goat-suckers, glance in the
dusk over the tops of trees like a meteor; starlings as it were swim
along, while missal-thrushes use a wild and desultory flight; swallows
sweep over the surface of the ground and water, and distinguish
themselves by rapid turns and quick evolutions; swifts dash round in
circles; and the bank-martin moves with frequent vacillations like a
butterfly. Most of the small birds fly by jerks, rising and falling as
they advance. Most small birds hop; but wagtails and larks walk, moving
their legs alternately. Skylarks rise and fall perpendicularly as they
sing: woodlarks hang poised in the air; and titlarks rise and fall in
large cubes, singing in their descent. The white-throat uses odd jerks
and gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes. All the
duck-kind waddle; divers and auks walk as if fettered, and stand erect
on their tails: these are the compedes of Linnaeus. Geese and cranes,
and most wild-fowls, move in figured flights, often changing their
position. The secondary rerniges of tringae, wild-ducks, and some
others, are very long, and give their wings, when in motion, an hooked
appearance. Dab-chicks, moor-hens, and coots, fly erect, with their
legs hanging down, and hardly make any dispatch; the reason is plain,
their wings are placed too forward out of the true centre of gravity;
as the legs of auks and divers are situated too backward.
Letter XLIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 9, 1778.
Dear Sir,
From the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough to their
notes and language, of which I shall say something. Not that I would
pretend to understand their language like the vizier of the
_Spectator_, who, by the recital of a conversation which passed between
two owls, reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and
devastation; but I would be thought only to mean that many of the
winged tribes have various sounds and voices adapted to express their
various passions, wants, and feelings; such as anger, fear, love,
hatred, hunger, and the like. All species are not equally eloquent;
some are copious and fluent as it were in their utterance, while others
are confined to a few important sounds: no bird, like the fish kind, is
quite mute, though some are rather silent. The language of birds is
very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical:
little is said, but much is meant and understood.
* See Spectator, Vol. VII., No. 512.