&c., 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.

LETTER LV.

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 but-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 repeat. ing 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 ædicnemus). Some of them over or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the hill and North

pass

* The Chinese word for a dog to a European ear sounds like quihloh.

field away down towards Dorton, where, among the streams and meadows, they find a greater plen

ty 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 other in the dark.

The evening proceedings and manœuvres 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 re member 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."

LETTER LVI.

IN reading Dr. Huxham's Observationes de Aëre, &c., 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 17inch -266 thou; and in 1741, 20-354; and again in 1743, only 20-908. 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; and again once, viz., 1734, 37-114; a quantity of rain that has twice been exceeded at Selborne in the short period of my observations. Dr. Huxham

D D

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 in 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 Comb Wood, was very grand; but it was at the Hermitage that the echoes and the 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 Comb Wood ponds, and, after a pause, seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend round Harteley Hanger, 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 farther 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 New. ton, 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 Sel. borne, 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 South Lambeth; the distance between which, all the windings and indentings of the streams considered, cannot be less than a hundred miles.