instinct, that wonderful limited faculty, which, in some instances,
raises the brute creation as it were above reason, and in others leaves
them so far below it. Philosophers have defined instinct to be chat
secret influence by which every species is impelled naturally to
pursue, at all times, The same way or track, without any teaching or
example; whereas reason, without instruction, would often vary and do
chat by many methods which instinct effects by one alone. Now this
maxim must be taken in a qualified sense; for there are instances in
which instinct does vary and conform to the circumstances of place and
convenience.
It has been remarked chat every species of bird has a mode of
nidification peculiar to itself; so that a schoolboy would at once
pronounce on the sort of nest before him. This is the case among fields
and woods, and wilds; but, in the villages round London, where mosses
and gossamer, and cotton from vegetables, are hardly to be found, the
nest of the chaffinch has not that elegant finished appearance, nor is
it so beautifully studded with lichens, as in a more rural district:
and the wren is obliged to construct its house with straws and dry
grasses, which do not give it that rotundity and compactness so
remarkable in the edifices of the little architect. Again, the regular
nest of the house-martin is hemispheric; but where a rafter, or a
joist, or a cornice may happen to stand in the way, the nest is so
contrived as to conform to the obstruction, and becomes flat or oval,
or compressed.
In the following instances instinct is perfectly uniform and
consistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse,
and the bird called the nut-hatch (sitta Europaea), which live much on
hazel nuts; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first,
after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long
fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife; the second nibbles a hole
with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so
small that one would wonder how the kernel can be extracted through it;
while the last picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill: but as
this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like
an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were in a vice, in some cleft of
a tree, or in some crevice; when, standing over it, he perforates the
stubborn shell. We have often placed nuts in the chink of a gate-post
where nut-hatches have been known to haunt, and have always found that
those birds have readily penetrated them. While at work they make a
rapping noise that may be heard at a considerable distance.
You that understand both the theory and practical part of music may
best inform us why harmony or melody should so strangely affect some
men, as it were by recollection, for days after a concert is over. What
I mean the following passage will most readily explain:
‘Praehabebat porro vocibus humanis, instrumentisque harmonicis musicam
illam avium: non quad alia quoque non delectaretur; sed quod ex musica
humana relinqueretur in animo continens qaemdam, attentionemque et
somnum conturbans agitatio; dum ascensus, exscensus, tenores, ac
mutationes illae sonorum et consonantiarum euntque redeuntque per
phantasiam: — cum nihil tale relinqui possit ex modulationibus avium,
quae, quod non sunt perinde a nobis imitabiles, non possunt perinde
internam facultatem commovere.’ — GASSENDUS in Vita Peireskii.
This curious quotation strikes me much by so well representing my own
case, and by describing what I have so often felt, but never could so
well express. When I hear fine music I am haunted with passages
therefrom night and day; and especially at first waking, which, by
their importunity, give me more uneasiness than pleasure: elegant
lessons still tease my imagination, and recur irresistibly to my
recollection at seasons, and even when I am desirous of thinking of
more serious matters.
I am, etc.
Letter LVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
A rare, and I think a new little bird frequents my garden, which I have
great reason to think is the pettichaps: it is common in some parts of
the kingdom, and I have received formerly several dead specimens from
Gibraltar. This bird much resembles the white-throat, but has a more
white or rather silvery breast and belly; is restless and active, like
the willow-wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part
for food; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and,
putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which
stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the
ground, like the hedge-sparrow, by hopping about on the grass-plots and
mown walks.
One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing man, informs me
that, in the beginning of May, and about ten minutes before eight
o’clock in the evening, he discovered a great cluster of
house-swallows, thirty at least he supposes, perching on a willow that
hung over the verge of James Knight’s upper-pond. His attention was
first drawn by the twittering of these birds, which sat motionless in a
row on the bough, with their heads all one way, and, by their weight,
pressing down the twig so that it nearly touched the water. In this
situation he watched them till he could see no longer. Repeated
accounts of this sort, spring and fall, induce us greatly to suspect
that house-swallows have some strong attachment to water, independent
of the matter of food; and though they may not retire into that
element, yet they may conceal themselves in the banks of pools and
rivers during the uncomfortable months of winter.
One of the keepers of Wolmer-forest sent me a peregrine falcon, which
he shot on the verge of that district as it was devouring a
wood-pigeon. The falco peregrinus, or haggard falcon, is a noble
species of hawk seldom seen in the southern counties. In winter 1767
one was killed in the neighbouring parish of Faringdon, and sent by me
to Mr. Pennant into North Wales.* Since that time I have met with none
till now. The specimen measured above was in fine preservation, and not
injured by the shot: it measured forty-two inches from wing to wing,
and twenty-one from beak to tail, and weighed two pounds and an half
standing weight. This species is very robust, and wonderfully formed
for rapine: its breast was plump and muscular; its thighs long, thick,
and brawny; and its legs remarkably short and well set: the feet were
armed with most formidable, sharp, long talons: the eyelids and cere of
the bill were yellow; but the irides of the eyes dusky; the beak was
thick and hooked, and of a dark colour, and had a jagged process near
the end of the upper mandible on each side: its tail, or train, was
short in proportion to the bulk of its body: yet the wings, when
closed, did not extend to the end of the train. From its large and fair
proportions it might be supposed to have been a female; but I was not
permitted to cut open the specimen. For one of the birds of prey, which
are usually lean, this was in high case: in its craw were many
barley-corns, which probably came from the crop of the wood-pigeon, on
which it was feeding when shot: for voracious birds do not eat grain;
but when devouring their quarry, with undistinguishing vehemence
swallow bones and feathers, and all matters, indiscriminately. This
falcon was probably driven from the mountains of North Wales or
Scotland, where they are known to breed, by rigorous weather and deep
snows that had lately fallen.
* See my tenth and eleventh letter to that gentleman.
I am, etc.
Letter LVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
My near neighbour, a young gentleman in the service of the East-India
Company, has brought home a dog and a bitch of the Chinese breed from
Canton; such as are fattened in the country for the purpose of being
eaten: they are about the size of a moderate spaniel; of a pale yellow
colour, with coarse bristling hairs on their backs; sharp upright ears,
and peaked heads, which give them a very fox-like appearance. Their
hind legs are unusually straight, without any bend at the hock or ham,
to such a degree as to give them an awkward gait when they trot. When
they are in motion their tails are curved high over their backs like
those of some hounds, and have a bare place each on the outside from
the tip midway, that does not seem to be matter of accident, but
somewhat singular. Their eyes are jet black, small, and piercing; the
insides of their lips and mouths of the same colour, and their tongues
blue. The bitch has a dew-claw on each hind leg; the dog has none. When
taken out into a field the bitch showed some disposition for hunting,
and dwelt on the scent of a covey of partridges till she sprung them,
giving her tongue all the time. The dogs in South America are dumb; but
these bark much in a short thick manner, like foxes; and have a surly,
savage demeanour like their ancestors, which are not domesticated, but
bred up in sties, where they are fed for the table with rice-meal and
other farinaceous food. These dogs, having been taken on board as soon
as weaned, could not learn much from their dam; yet they did not relish
flesh when they came to England. In the islands of the Pacific Ocean
the dogs are bred up on vegetables, and would not eat flesh when
offered them by our circumnavigators.
We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, upright
fox-like ears; and that hanging ears, which are esteemed so graceful,
are the effect of choice breeding and cultivation. Thus, in the Travels
of Ysbrandt Ides from Muscovy to China, the dogs which draw the Tartars
on snow-sledges near the river Oby are engraved with prick-ears, like
those from Canton. The Kamschatdales also train the same sort of
sharp-eared peak-nosed dogs to draw their sledges; as may be seen in an
elegant print engraved for Captain Cook’s last voyage round the world.
Now we are upon the subject of dogs it may not be impertinent to add,
that spaniels, as all sportsmen know, though they hunt partridges and
pheasants as it were by instinct, and with much delight and alacrity,
yet will hardly touch their bones when offered as food; nor will a
mongrel dog of my own, though he is remarkable for ending that sort of
game. But, when we came to offer the bones of partridges to the two
Chinese dogs, they devoured them with much greediness, and licked the
platter clean.
No sporting dogs will flush woodcocks till inured to the scent and
trained to the sport, which they then pursue with vehemence and
transport; but then they will not touch their bones, but turn from them
with abhorrence, even when they are hungry.
Now, that dogs should not be fond of the bones of such birds as they
are not disposed to hunt is no wonder; but why they reject and do not
care to eat their natural game is not so easily accounted for, since
the end of hunting seems to be, that the chase pursued should be eaten.
Dogs again will not devour the more rancid water-fowls, nor indeed the
bones of any wild-fowls; nor will they touch the foetid bodies of birds
that feed on offal and garbage: and indeed there may be somewhat of
providential instinct in this circumstance of dislike; for vultures,*
and kites, and ravens, and crows, etc., were intended to be messmates
with dogs** over their carrion; and seem to be appointed by nature as
fellow-scavengers to remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of
the earth.
* Hasselquist, in his Travels to the Levant, observes that the dogs and
vultures at Grand Cairo maintain such a friendly intercourse as to
bring up their young together in the same place.
** The Chinese word for a dog to an European ear sounds like quihloh.
I am, etc.
Letter LIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
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 Oakhanger 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 field, 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 watchwords 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.’
I am, etc.
Letter LX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
In reading Dr. Huxham’s Observationes de Aere, etc., written at
Plymouth, I find by those curious and accurate remarks, which contain
an account of the weather from the year 1727 to the year 1748,
inclusive, that though there is frequent rain in that district of
Devonshire, yet the quantity falling is not great; and that some years
it has been very small: for in 1731 the rain measured only 17.266 in.
and in 1741, 20.354 in.; and again in 1743 only 20.908 in. Places near
the sea have frequent scuds, that keep the atmosphere moist, yet do not
reach far up into the country; making thus the maritime situations
appear wet, when the rain is not considerable. In the wettest years at
Plymouth the Doctor measured only once 36 in.; and again once, viz.,
1734, 37.114 in.: a quantity of rain that has twice been exceeded at
Selborne in the short period of my observations. Dr. Huxham remarks,
that frequent small rains keep the air moist; while heavy ones render
it more dry, by beating down the vapours. He is also of opinion that
the dingy, smoky appearance of the sky, in very dry seasons, arises
from the want of moisture sufficient to let the light through, and
render the atmosphere transparent; because he had observed several
bodies more diaphanous when wet than dry; and did never recollect that
the air had that look in rainy seasons.
My friend who lives just beyond the top of the down, brought his three
swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with their muzzles towards the
Hanger, supposing that the report would have had a great effect; but
the experiment did not answer his expectation. He then removed them to
the Alcove on the Hanger: when the sound, rushing along the Lythe and
Combwood, was very grand: but it was at the Hermitage that the echoes
and repercussions delighted the hearers; not only filling the Lythe
with the roar, as if all the beeches were tearing up by the roots; but,
turning to the left, they pervaded the vale above Combwood-ponds; and
after a pause seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend round
Harteley-hangers, and to die away at last among the coppices and
coverts of Ward le Ham. It has been remarked before that this district
is an Anathoth, a place of responses or echoes, and therefore proper
for such experiments: we may further add that the pauses in echoes,
when they cease and yet are taken up again, like the pauses in music,
surprise the hearers, and have a fine effect on the imagination.
The gentleman above mentioned has just fixed a barometer in his parlour
at Newton Valence. The tube was first filled here (at Selborne) twice
with care, when the mercury agreed and stood exactly with my own; but
being filled again twice at Newton, the mercury stood, on account of
the great elevation of that house, three-tenths of an inch lower than
the barometers at this village, and so continues to do, be the weight
of the atmosphere what it may. The plate of the barometer at Newton is
figured as low as 27; because in stormy weather the mercury there will
sometimes descend below 28. We have supposed Newton-house to stand two
hundred feet higher than this house: but if the rule holds good, which
says that mercury in a barometer sinks one-tenth of an inch for every
hundred feet elevation, then the Newton barometer, by standing
three-tenths lower than that of Selborne, proves that Newton-house must
be three hundred feet higher than that in which I am writing, instead
of two hundred.
It may not be impertinent to add, that the barometers at Selborne stand
three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at South Lambeth;
whence we may conclude that the former place is about three hundred
feet higher than the latter; and with good reason, because the streams
that rise with us run into the Thames at Weybridge, and so to London.
Of course therefore there must be lower ground all the way from
Selborne to Sough Lambeth; the distance between which, all the windings
and indentings of the streams considered, cannot be less than an
hundred miles. I am, etc.
Letter LXI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Since the weather of a district is undoubtedly part of its natural
history, I shall make no further apology for the four following
letters, which will contain many particulars concerning some of the
great frosts and a few respecting some very hot summers, that have
distinguished themselves from the rest during the course of my
observations.
As the frost in January 1768 was, for the small it lasted, the most
severe that we had then known for many years, and was remarkably
injurious to evergreens, some account of its rigour, and reason of its
ravages, may be useful, and not unacceptable to persons that delight in
planting and ornamenting; and may particularly become a work that
professes never to lose sight of utility.
For the last two or three days of the former year there were
considerable falls of snow, which lay deep and uniform on the ground
without any drifting, wrapping up the more humble vegetation in perfect
security. From the first day to the fifth of the new year more snow
succeeded; but from that day the air became entirely clear; and the
heat of the sun about noon had a considerable influence in sheltered
situations.
It was in such an aspect that the snow on the author’s evergreens was
melted every day, and frozen intensely every night; so that the
laurustines, bays, laurels, and arbutuses looked, in three or four
days, as if they had been burnt in the fire; while a neighbour’s
plantation of the same kind, in a high cold situation, where the snow
was never melted at all, remained uninjured.
From hence I would infer that it is the repeated melting and freezing
of the snow that is so fatal to vegetation, rather than the severity of
the cold. Therefore it highly behaves every planter, who wishes to
escape the cruel mortification of losing in a few days the labour and
hopes of years, to bestir himself on such emergencies; and, if his
plantations are small, to avail himself of mats, cloths, pease-haum,
straw, reeds, or any such covering, for a short time; or, if his
shrubberies are extensive, to see that his people go about with prongs
and forks, and carefully dislodge the snow from the boughs, since the
naked foliage will shift much better for itself, than where the snow is
partly melted and frozen again.
It may perhaps appear at first like a paradox; but doubtless the more
tender trees and shrubs should never be planted in hot aspects; not
only for the reason assigned above, but also because, thus
circumstanced, they are disposed to shoot earlier in the spring, and
grow on later in the autumn than they would otherwise do, and so are
sufferers by lagging or early frosts. For this reason also plants from
Siberia will hardly endure our climate: because, on the very first
advances of spring, they shoot away, and so are cut off by the severe
nights of March or April.
Dr. Fothergill and others have experienced the same inconvenience with
respect to the more tender shrubs from North America; which they
therefore plant under north walls. There should also perhaps be a wall
to the east to defend them from the piercing blasts from that quarter.
This observation might without any impropriety be carried into animal
life; for discerning bee-masters now find that their hives should not
in the winter be exposed to the hot sun, because such unseasonable
warmth awakens the inhabitants too early from their slumbers; and, by
putting their juices into motion too soon, subjects them afterwards to
inconveniences when rigorous weather returns.
The coincidents attending this short but intense frost were, that the
horses fell sick with an epidemic distemper, which injured the winds of
many, and killed some; that colds and coughs were general among the
human species; that it froze under people’s beds for several nights;
that meat was so hard frozen that it could not be spitted, and could
not be secured but in cellars; that several redwings and thrushes were
killed by the frost; and that the large titmouse continued to pull
straw lengthwise from the eaves of thatched houses and barns in a most
adroit manner, for a purpose that has been explained already.*
* See Letter XLI to Mr. Pennant.
On the 3d of January, Benjamin Martin’s thermometer within doors, in a
close parlour where there was no fire, fell in the night to 20, and on
the 4th to 18, and the 7th to 17.5, a degree of cold which the owner
never since saw in the same situation; and he regrets much that he was
not able at that juncture to attend his instrument abroad. All this
time the wind continued north and north-east; and yet on the eighth
roost-cocks, which had been silent, began to sound their clarions, and
crows to clamour, as prognostic of milder weather; and, moreover, moles
began to heave and work, and a manifest thaw took place. From the
latter circumstance we may conclude that thaws often originate under
ground from warm vapours which arise; else how should subterraneous
animals receive such early intimations of their approach? Moreover, we
have often observed that cold seems to descend from above; for, when a
thermometer hangs abroad in a frosty night, the intervention of a cloud
shall immediately raise the mercury ten degrees; and a clear sky shall
again compel it to descend to its former gauge.
And here it may be proper to observe, on what has been said above, that
though frosts advance to their utmost severity by somewhat of a regular
gradation, yet thaws do not usually come on by as regular a declension
of cold; but often take place immediately from intense freezing; as men
in sickness often mend at once from a paroxysm.
To the great credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers, be it
remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general havoc: hence
men should learn to ornament chiefly with such trees as are able to
withstand accidental severities, and not subject themselves to the
vexation of a loss which may befall them once perhaps in ten years, yet
may hardly be recovered through the whole course of their lives.
As it appeared afterwards the ilexes were much injured, the cypresses
were half destroyed, the arbutuses lingered on, but never recovered;
and the bays, laurustines, and laurels, were killed to the ground; and
the very wild hollies, in hot aspects, were so much affected that they
cast all their leaves.