250

RETURN OF SUMMER BIRDS.-HAWKS.

interrupted by apprehensions lest my eyes might undergo the same fate with those of Tobit.*

Perhaps it may be some amusement to you to hear at what times the different species of hirundines arrived this spring in three very distant counties of this kingdom. With us the swallow was seen first on April the 4th; the swift on April the 24th; the bank-martin on April the 12th; and the house-martin not till April the 30th. At South Zele, Devonshire, swallows did not arrive till April the 25th; swifts, in plenty, on May the 1st; and house-martins not till the middle of May. At Blackburn in Lancashire, swifts were seen April the 28th; swallows, April the 29th; house-martins, May the 1st. Do these different dates, in such distant districts, prove anything for or against migration?

A farmer near Weyhill fallows his land with two teams of asses, one of which works till noon, and the other in the afternoon. When these animals have done their work, they are penned all night, like sheep, on the fallow. In the winter they are confined and foddered in a yard, and make plenty of dung.

Linnæus says, that hawks "paciscuntur inducias cum avibus, quamdiu cuculus cuculat;" but it appears to me, that, during that period, many little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen by their feathers left in lanes and under hedges.

* Tobit, ii. 10.

The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, driving such birds as approach its nest, with great fury, to a distance. The Welsh call it pen y llwyn, the head, or master of the coppice. He suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird to enter the garden where he haunts; and is, for the time, a good guard to the new-sown legumens. In general he is very successful in the defence of his family: but once I observed in my garden, that several magpies came determined to storm the nest of a missel-thrush; the dams defended their mansion with great vigour, and fought resolutely pro aris et focis; but numbers at last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed the young alive.

252

TAMENESS OF BIRDS DURING NIDIFICATION.

In the season of nidification the wildest birds are comparatively tame. Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though they are continually frequented; and the missel-thrush, though most shy and wild in the autumn and winter, builds in my garden close to a walk where people are passing all day long.

Wall-fruit abounds with me this year; but my grapes, that used to be forward and good, are at present backward beyond all precedent: and this is not the worst of the story; for the same ungenial weather, the same black cold solstice, has injured the more necessary fruits of the earth, and discoloured and blighted our wheat. The crop of hops promises to be very large.

Frequent returns of deafness incommode me sadly, and half disqualify me for a naturalist; for, when those fits are upon me, I lose all the pleasing notice and little intimations arising from rural sounds; and May is to me as silent and mute with respect to the notes of birds, &c., as August. My eye-sight is, thank God, quick and good; but with respect to the other sense, I am, at times, disabled:

"And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."

LETTER XXIII.

Selborne, June 8, 1775.

ON September the 21st, 1741, being then on a visit, and intent on field-diversions, I rose before

daybreak: when I came into the enclosures, I found the stubbles and clover-grounds matted all over with a thick coat of cobweb, in the meshes of which a copious and heavy dew hung so plentifully that the whole face of the country seemned, as it were, covered with two or three setting-nets drawn one over another. When the dogs attempted to hunt, their eyes were so blinded and hoodwinked that they could not proceed, but were obliged to lie down and scrape the encumbrances from their faces with their forefeet; so that, finding my sport interrupted, I returned home, musing in my mind on the oddness of the occurrence.

As the morning advanced, the sun became bright and warm, and the day turned out one of those most lovely ones which no season but the autumn produces, cloudless, calm, serene, and worthy of the south of France itself.

About nine, an appearance very unusual began to demand our attention, a shower of cobwebs falling from very elevated regions, and continuing, without any interruption, till the close of the day.

These webs were not single filmy threads, floating in the air in all directions, but perfect flakes or rags; some near an inch broad, and five or six long, which fell with a degree of velocity, that showed they were considerably heavier than the atmosphere.

On every side, as the observer turned his eyes, he might behold a continual succession of fresh flakes falling into his sight, and twinkling like stars, as they turned their sides towards the sun.

How far this wonderful shower extended, would be difficult to say; but we know that it reached Bradley, Selborne, and Alresford, three places which lie in a sort of triangle, the shortest of whose sides is about eight miles in extent.

At the second of those places there was a gentleman (for whose veracity and intelligent turn we have the greatest veneration) who observed it the moment he got abroad; but concluded that, as soon as he came upon the hill above his house where he took his morning rides, he should be higher than this meteor, which he imagined might have been blown, like thistle-down, from the common above: but, to his great astonishment, when he rode to the most elevated part of the down, 300 feet above his fields, he found the webs in appearance still as much above him as before ;* still descending into sight in a constant succession, and twinkling in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most incurious.

Neither before nor after was any such fall observed; but on this day the flakes hung in trees and hedges so thick, that a diligent person sent out might have gathered baskets full.

The remark that I shall make on these cobweblike appearances, called gossamer, is, that strange and superstitious as the notions about them were formerly, nobody in these days doubts but that they are the

*Lister, on a day when the air was very full of gossamer, mounted to the top of the highest part of York Minster, and found, in like manner, that the webs were still exceedingly high above him. See Ray's Letters, p. 87.-L. J.