season of nidification much diversified, as I have been often assured
by a curious observer of nature, who long resided at Gibraltar, where
eagles abound. The notes of our hawks much resemble those of the king
of birds. Owls have very expressive notes; they hoot in a fine vocal
sound, much resembling the vox humana, and reducible by a pitch-pipe to
a musical key. This note seems to express complacency and rivalry among
the males: they use also a quick call and an horrible scream; and can
snore and hiss when they mean to menace. Ravens, beside their loud
croak, can exert a deep and solemn note that makes the woods to echo;
the amorous sound of a crow is strange and ridiculous; rooks, in the
breeding season, attempt sometimes in the gaiety of their hearts to
sing, but with no great success; the parrot-kind have many modulations
of voice, as appears by their aptitude to learn human sounds; doves coo
in an amorous and mournful manner, and are emblems of despairing
lovers; the wood-pecker sets up a sort of loud and hearty laugh; the
fern-owl, or goat-sucker, from the dusk till day-break, serenades his
mate with the clattering of castanets. All the tuneful passeres express
their complacency by sweet modulations, and a variety of melody. The
swallow, as has been observed in a former letter, by a shrill alarm
bespeaks the attention of the other hirundines, and bids them be aware
that the hawk is at hand. Aquatic and gregarious birds, especially the
nocturnal, that shift their quarters in the dark, are very noisy and
loquacious; as cranes, wild-geese, wild-ducks, and the like; their
perpetual clamour prevents them from dispersing and losing their
companions.
In so extensive a subject, sketches and outlines are as much as can be
expected; for it would be endless to instance in all the infinite
variety of the feathered nation. We shall therefore confine the
remainder of this letter to the few domestic fowls of our yards, which
are most known, and therefore best understood. At first the peacock,
with his gorgeous train, demands our attention; but, like most of the
gaudy birds, his notes are grating and shocking to the ear: the yelling
of cats, and the braying of an ass, are not more disgustful. The voice
of the goose is trumpet-like, and clanking; and once saved the Capitol
at Rome, as grave historians assert: the hiss also of the gander is
formidable and full of menace, and ‘protective of his young.’ Among
ducks the sexual distinction of voice is remarkable; for, while the
quack of the female is loud and sonorous, the voice of the drake is
inward and harsh and feeble, and scarce discernible. The cock turkey
struts and gobbles to his mistress in a most uncouth manner; he hath
also a pert and petulant note when he attacks his adversary. When a hen
turkey leads forth her young brood she keeps a watchful eye: and if a
bird of prey appear, though ever so high in the air, the careful mother
announces the enemy with a little inward moan, and watches him with a
steady and attentive look; but if he approach, her note becomes earnest
and alarming, and her outcries are redoubled.
No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such a variety of expression
and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or
five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it
will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of
complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note
becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger.
When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and
easy soft note. Of all the occurrences of their life that of laying
seems to be the most important; for no sooner has a hen disburdened
herself, than she rushes forth with a clamorous kind of joy, which the
cock and the rest of his mistresses immediately adopt. The tumult is
not confined to the family concerned, but catches from yard to yard,
and spreads to every homestead within hearing, till at last the whole
village is in an uproar. As soon as a hen becomes a mother her new
relation demands a new language; she then runs clucking and screaming
about, and seems agitated as if possessed. The father of the flock has
also a considerable vocabulary; if he finds food, he calls a favourite
concubine to partake; and if a bird of prey passes over, with a warning
voice he bids his family beware. The gallant chanticleer has, at
command, his amorous phrases, and his terms of defiance. But the sound
by which he is best known is his crowing: by this he has been
distinguished in all ages as the countryman’s clock or larum, as the
watchman that proclaims the divisions of the night. Thus the poet
elegantly styles him:
… the crested cock, whose clarion sounds
The silent hours.
A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost most of his chickens by a
sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between a faggot-pile and the end
of his house to the place where the coops stood. The owner, inwardly
vexed to see his flock thus diminishing, hung a setting net adroitly
between the pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed and was
entangled. Resentment suggested the law of retaliation; he therefore
clipped the hawk’s wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his
bill, threw him down among the brood-hens. Imagination cannot paint the
scene that ensued; the expressions that fear, rage, and revenge
inspired, were new, or at least such as had been unnoticed before: the
exasperated matrons upbraided, they execrated, they insulted, they
triumphed. In a word, they never desisted from buffeting their
adversary till they had torn him in an hundred pieces.
Letter XLIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
… monstrent.
* * * * *
Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
Hyberni; vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
Gentlemen who have outlets might contrive to make ornament subservient
to utility; a pleasing eye-trap might also contribute to promote
science: an obelisk in a garden or park might be both an embellishment
and an heliotrope.
Any person that is curious, and enjoys the advantage of a good horizon,
might, with little trouble, make two heliotropes; the one for the
winter, the other for the summer solstice: and these two erections
might be constructed with very little expense; for two pieces of timber
frame-work, about ten or twelve feet high, and four feet broad at the
base, and close lined with plank, would answer the purpose.
The erection for the former should, if possible, be placed within sight
of some window in the common sitting parlour; because men, at that dead
season of the year, are usually within doors at the close of the day;
while that for the latter might be fixed for any given spot in the
garden or outlet: whence the owner might contemplate, in a fine
summer’s evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to the northward
at the season of the longest days. Now nothing would be necessary but
to place these two objects with so much exactness, that the westerly
limb of the sun, at setting, might but just clear the winter heliotrope
to the west of it on the shortest day; and that the whole disc of the
sun, at the longest day, might exactly at setting also clear the summer
heliotrope to the north of it.
By this simple expedient it would soon appear that there is no such
thing, strictly speaking, as a solstice; for, from the shortest day,
the owner would, every clear evening, see the disc advancing, at its
setting, to the westward of the object; and, from the longest day,
observe the sun retiring backwards every evening at its setting,
towards the object westward, till, in a few nights, it would set quite
behind it, and so by degrees to the west of it: for when the sun comes
near the summer solstice, the whole disc of it would at first set
behind the object: after a time the northern limb would first appear,
and so every night gradually more, till at length the whole diameter
would set north of it for about three nights; but on the middle night
of the three, sensibly more remote than the former or following. When
beginning its recess from the summer tropic, it would continue more and
more to be hidden every night, till at length it would descend quite
behind the object again; and so nightly more and more to the westward.
Letter XLV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
… Mugire videbis
Sub pedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos.
When I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and implicit assent,
accounts in Baker’s Chronicle of walking hills and travelling
mountains. John Philips, in his Cyder, alludes to the credit that was
given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein of humour
peculiar to the author of the Splendid Shilling.
I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice
Of Marcley Hill: the apple no where finds
A kinder mould: yet ’tis unsafe to trust
Deceitful ground: who knows but that once more
This mount may journey, and his present site
Forsaken, to thy neighbour’s bounds transfer
Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange
For law debates!
But, when I came to consider better, I began to suspect that though our
hills may never have journeyed that far, yet the ends of many of them
have slipped and fallen away at distant periods, leaving the cliffs
bare and abrupt. This seems to have been the case with Nore and Whetham
hills; and especially with the ridge between Harteley Park and
Ward-le-ham, where the ground has slid into vast swellings and furrows;
and lies still in such romantic confusion as cannot be accounted for
from any other cause. A strange event that happened not long since,
justifies our suspicions; which, though it befell not within the limits
of this parish, yet as it was within the hundred of Selborne, and as
the circumstances were singular, may fairly claim a place in a work of
this nature.
The months of January and February, in the year 1774, were remarkable
for great melting snows and vast gluts of rain, so that by the end of
the latter month the land-springs, or lavants, began to prevail, and to
be near as high as in the memorable winter of 1764. The beginning of
March also went on in the same tenor; when, in the night between the
8th and 9th of that month, a considerable part of the great woody
hanger at Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a
high freestone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of a
chalk-pit. It appears that this huge fragment, being perhaps sapped and
undermined by waters, foundered, and was engulfed, going down in a
perpendicular direction; for a gate which stood in the field, on the
top of the hill, after sinking with its posts for thirty or forty feet,
remained in so true and upright a position as to open and shut with
great exactness, just as in its first situation. Several oaks also are
still standing, and in a state of vegetation, after taking the same
desperate leap. That great part of this prodigious mass was absorbed in
some gulf below, is plain also from the inclining ground at the bottom
of the hill, which is free and unincumbered; but would have been buried
in heaps of rubbish, had the fragment parted and fallen forward. About
an hundred yards from the foot of this hanging coppice stood a cottage
by the side of a lane; and two hundred yards lower, on the other side
of the lane, was a farm-house, in which lived a labourer and his
family; and, just by, a stout new barn. The cottage was inhabited by an
old woman and her son and his wife. These people in the evening, which
was very dark and tempestuous, observed that the brick floors of their
kitchens began to heave and part; and that the walls seemed to open,
and the roofs to crack: but they all agree that no tremor of the
ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever felt; only that the wind
continued to make a most tremendous roaring in the woods and hangers.
The miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to bed, remained in the
utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every moment to be buried
under the ruins of their shattered edifices. When day-light came they
were at leisure to contemplate the devastations of the night: they then
found that a deep rift, or chasm, had opened under their houses, and
torn them, as it were, in two; and that one end of the barn had
suffered in a similar manner; that a pond near the cottage had
undergone a strange reverse, becoming deep at the shallow end, and so
vice versa; that many large oaks were removed out of their
perpendicular, some thrown down, and some fallen into the heads of
neighbouring trees; and that a gate was thrust forward, with its hedge,
full six feet, so as to require a new track to be made to it. From the
foot of the cliff the general course of the ground, which is pasture,
inclines in a moderate descent for half a mile, and is interspersed
with some hillocks, which were rifted, in every direction, as well
towards the great woody hanger, as from it. In the first pasture the
deep clefts began: and running across the lane, and under the
buildings, made such vast shelves that the road was impassable for some
time; and so over to an arable field on the other side, which was
strangely torn and disordered. The second pasture field, being more
soft and springy, was protruded forward without many fissures in the
turf, which was raised in long ridges resembling graves, lying at right
angles to the motion. At the bottom of this enclosure the soil and turf
rose many feet against the bodies of some oaks that obstructed their
farther course and terminated this awful commotion.
The perpendicular height of the precipice, in general, is twenty-three
yards; the length of the lapse, or slip, as seen from the fields below,
one hundred and eighty-one; and a partial fall, concealed in the
coppice, extends seventy yards more: so that the total length of this
fragment that fell was two hundred and fifty-one yards. About fifty
acres of land suffered from this violent convulsion; two houses were
entirely destroyed; one end of a new barn was left in ruins, the walls
being cracked through the very stones that composed them; a hanging
coppice was changed to a naked rock; and some grass grounds and an
arable field so broken and rifted by the chasms as to be rendered, for
a time, neither fit for the plough or safe for pasturage, till
considerable labour and expense had been bestowed in levelling the
surface and filling in the gaping fissures.
Letter XLVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
… resonant arbusta …
There is a steep abrupt pasture field interspersed with furze close to
the back of this village, well known by the name of the Short Lithe,
consisting of a rocky dry soil, and inclining to the afternoon sun.
This spot abounds with the gryllus campestris, or field-cricket; which,
though frequent in these parts, is by no means a common insect in many
other counties.
As their cheerful summer cry cannot but draw the attention of a
naturalist, I have often gone down to examine the oeconomy of these
grylli, and study their mode of life: but they are so shy and cautious
that it is no easy matter to get a sight of them; for, feeling a
person’s footsteps as he advances, they stop short in the midst of
their song, and retire backward nimbly into their burrows, where they
lurk till all suspicion of danger is over.
At first we attempted to dig them out with a spade, but without any
great success; for either we could not get to the bottom of the hole,
which often terminated under a great stone; or else, in breaking up the
ground, we inadvertently squeezed the poor insect to death. Out of one
so bruised we took a multitude of eggs, which were long and narrow, of
a yellow colour, and covered with a very tough skin. By this accident
we learned to distinguish the male from the female; the former of which
is shining black, with a golden stripe across his shoulders; the latter
is more dusky, more capacious about the abdomen, and carries a long
sword-shaped weapon at her tail, which probably is the instrument with
which she deposits her eggs in crannies and safe receptacles.
Where violent methods will not avail, more gentle means will often
succeed; and so it proved in the present case; for, though a spade be
too boisterous and rough an implement, a pliant stalk of grass, gently
insinuated into the caverns, will probe their windings to the bottom,
and quickly bring out the inhabitant; and thus the humane inquirer may
gratify his curiosity without injuring the object of it. It is
remarkable that, though these insects are furnished with long legs
behind, and brawny thighs for leaping, like grasshoppers; yet when
driven from their holes they show no activity, but crawl along in a
shiftless manner, so as easily to be taken: and again, though provided
with a curious apparatus of wings, yet they never exert them when there
seems to be the greatest occasion. The males only make that shrilling
noise perhaps out of rivalry and emulation, as is the case with many
animals which exert some sprightly note during their breeding time: it
is raised by a brisk friction of one wing against the other. They are
solitary beings, living singly male or female, each as it may happen:
hut there must be a time when the sexes have some intercourse, and then
the wings may be useful perhaps during the hours of night. When the
males meet they will fight fiercely, as I found by some which I put
into the crevices of a dry stone wall, where I should have been glad to
have made them settle. For though they seemed distressed by being taken
out of their knowledge, yet the first that got possession of the chinks
would seize upon any that were obtruded upon them with a vast row of
serrated fangs. With their strong jaws, toothed like the shears of a
lobster’s claws, they perforate and round their curious regular cells,
having no fore-claws to dig, like the mole-cricket. When taken in hand
I could not but wonder that they never offered to defend themselves,
though armed with such formidable weapons. Of such herbs as grow before
the mouths of their burrows they eat indiscriminately; and on a little
platform, which they make just by, they drop their dung; and never, in
the day-time, seem to stir more than two or three inches from home.
Sitting in the entrance of their caverns they chirp all night as well
as day from the middle of the month of May to the middle of July; and
in hot weather, when they are most vigorous, they make the hills echo;
and, in the stiller hours of darkness, may be heard to a considerable
distance. In the beginning of the season, their notes are more faint
and inward; but become louder as the summer advances, and so die away
again by degrees.
Sounds do not always give us pleasure according to their sweetness and
melody; nor do harsh sounds always displease. We are more apt to be
captivated or disgusted with the associations which they promote, than
with the notes themselves. Thus the shrilling of the field-cricket,
though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously delights some hearers,
filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of everything that is
rural, verdurous, and joyous.
About the tenth of March the crickets appear at the mouths of their
cells, which they then open and bore, and shape very elegantly. All
that ever I have seen at that season were in their pupa state, and had
only the rudiments of wings, lying under a skin or coat, which must be
cast before the insect can arrive at its perfect state;* from whence I
should suppose that the old ones of last year do not always survive the
winter. In August their holes begin to be obliterated, and the insects
are seen no more till spring.
* We have observed that they cast these skins in April, which are then
seen lying at the mouths of their holes.
Not many summers ago I endeavoured to transplant a colony to the
terrace in my garden, by boring deep holes in the sloping turf. The new
inhabitants stayed some time, and fed and sung; but wandered away by
degrees, and were heard at a farther distance every morning; so that it
appears that on this emergency they made use of their wings in
attempting to return to the spot from which they were taken.
One of these crickets, when confined in a paper cage and set in the
sun, and supplied with plants moistened with water, will feed and
thrive, and become so merry and loud as to be irksome in the same room
where a person is sitting: if the plants are not wetted it will die.
Letter XLVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
Far from all resort of mirth
Save the cricket on the hearth.
MILTON’S _Il Penseroso_.
Dear Sir,
While many other insects must be sought after in fields and woods, and
waters, the gryllus domesticus, or house-cricket, resides altogether
within our dwellings, intruding itself upon our notice whether we will
or no. This species delights in new-built houses, being, like the
spider, pleased with the moisture of the walls; and besides, the
softness of the mortar enables them to burrow and mine between the
joints of the bricks or stones, and to open communications from one
room to another. They are particularly fond of kitchens and bakers’
ovens, on account of their perpetual warmth.
Tender insects that live abroad either enjoy only the short period of
one summer, or else doze away the cold uncomfortable months in profound
slumbers; but these, residing as it were in a torrid zone, are always
alert and merry: a good Christmas fire is to them like the heats of the
dog-days. Though they are frequently heard by day, yet is their natural
time of motion only in the night. As soon as it grows dusk, the
chirping increases, and they come running forth, and are from the size
of a flea to that of their full stature. As one should suppose, from
the burning atmosphere which they inhabit, they are a thirsty race, and
show a great propensity for liquids, being found frequently drowned in
pans of water, milk, broth, or the like. Whatever is moist they affect;
and therefore often gnaw holes in wet woollen stockings and aprons that
are hung to the fire: they are the housewife’s barometer, foretelling
her when it will rain; and are prognostic sometimes, she thinks, of in
or good luck; of the death of a near relation, or the approach of an
absent lover. By being the constant companions of her solitary hours
they naturally become the objects of her superstition. These crickets
are not only very thirsty, but very voracious; for they will eat the
scummings of pots, and yeast, salt, and crumbs of bread; and any
kitchen offal or sweepings. In the summer we have observed them to fly,
when it became dusk, out of the windows, and over the neighbouring
roofs. This feat of activity accounts for the sudden manner in which
they often leave their haunts, as it does for the method by which they
come to houses where they were not known before. It is remarkable, that
many sorts of insects seem never to use their wings but when they have
a mind to shift their quarters and settle new colonies. When in the air
they move ‘volatu undoso,’ in waves or curves, like wood-packers,
opening and shutting their wings at every stroke, and so are always
rising or sinking.
When they increase to a great degree, as they did once in the house
where I am now writing, they became noisome pests, flying into the
candles, and dashing into people’s faces; but may be blasted and
destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies. In
families, at such times, they are, like Pharaoh’s plague of frogs, ‘in
their bed-chambers, and upon their beds, and in their ovens, and in
their kneading-troughs.’ * Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a
brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch hearth-crickets, and,
playing with them as they do with mice, devour them. Crickets may be
destroyed, like wasps, by phials half fined with beer, or any liquid,
and set in their haunts; for, being always eager to drink, they will
crowd in till the bottles are full.
* Exod. viii. 3.
Letter XLVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
How diversified are the modes of life not only of incongruous but even
of congenerous animals; and yet their specific distinctions are not
more various than their propensities. Thus, while the field-cricket
delights in sunny dry banks, and the house-cricket rejoices amidst the
glowing heat of the kitchen hearth or oven, the gryllus gryllotalpa
(the mole-cricket) haunts moist meadows, and frequents the sides of
ponds and banks of streams, performing all its functions in a swampy
wet soil. With a pair of fore-feet, curiously adapted to the purpose,
it burrows and works under ground like the mole, raising a ridge as it
proceeds, but seldom throwing up hillocks.
As mole-crickets often infest gardens by the sides of canals, they are
unwelcome guests to the gardener, raising up ridges in their
subterraneous progress, and rendering the walks unsightly. If they take
to the kitchen quarters, they occasion great damage among the plants
and roots, by destroying whole beds of cabbages, young legumes, and
flowers. When dug out they seem very slow and helpless, and make no use
of their wings by day; but at night they come abroad, and make long
excursions, as I have been convinced by finding stragglers, in a
morning, in improbable places. In fine weather, about the middle of
April, and just at the close of day, they begin to solace themselves
with a low, dull, jarring note, continued for a long time without
interruption, and not unlike the chattering of the fern-owl, or
goat-sucker, but more inward.