TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER EVENING WALK.

equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis

Ingenium.

VIRG. Georg.

The instructive arts that in their labours shine,

I deem inspired by energy divine.

WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam,

What time the May-fly* haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's† tale;
To hear the clamorous curlew‡ call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;
To see the swallow sweep the darkening plain,
Belated, to support her infant train;
To mark the swift, in rapid giddy ring,
Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing:
Amusive birds! say where your hid retreat,
When the frost rages and the tempests beat?
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led,
When Spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ?
Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride,
The God of Nature is your secret guide!

While deepening shades obscure the face of day,
To yonder bench, leaf shelter'd, let us stray,

The angler's May-fly, the ephemera vulgata, Linn., comes forth from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight.-See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, &c.

+Vagrant cuckoo; so called, because, being tied down by no incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without control. Charadrius ædicnemus.

Till blended objects fail the swimming sight,
And all the fading landscape sinks in night;
To hear the drowsy dorr come brushing by
With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricket* cry;
To see the feeding bat glance through the wood;
To catch the distant falling of the flood;

While o'er the cliff th' awaken'd churn-owl hung,
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song;
While, high in air, and poised upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft enamour'd woodlark+ sings:
These, Nature's works, the curious mind employ,
Inspire a soothing melancholy joy:

As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain

Steals o'er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein!
Each rural sight, each sound, each smell combine;
The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine;
The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze,
Or cottage chimney smoking through the trees.

The chilling night-dews fall:-away, retire;
For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire!‡
Thus, ere night's veil had half obscured the sky,
Th' impatient damsel hung her lamp on high:
True to the signal, by love's meteor led,
Leander hasten'd to his Hero's bed.§

LETTER XXV.

TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON.

SELBORNE, June 30, 1769.

DEAR SIR,-When I was in town last month, I partly engaged that I would some time do myself the honour to write to you on the subject of natural history; and I am the

* Gryllus campestris.

+ In hot summer nights, woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and hang singing in the air.

The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up the stalk of a grass to make herself more conspicuous) is a signal to the male, which is a slender dusky scarabæus.

§ See the story of Hero and Leander.

more ready to fulfil my promise, because I see you are a gentleman of great candour, and one that will make allowances, especially where the writer professes to be an outdoor naturalist, one that takes his observations from the subject itself, and not from the writings of others.

The following is a List of the Summer Birds of Passage which I have discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear.

It is very pleasing to see the accuracy of Mr. White's list of summer and winter birds of passage as he discovered them in his own neighbourhood. The following may comprehend all those which have hitherto been discovered in his county, and in the list are included the permanent residents and occasional visitors :

This assemblage of curious and amusing birds belongs to ten several genera of the Linnæan system; and are all of the ordo of passeres, save the jynx and cuculus, which are pice, and the charadrius (œdicnemus) and rallus (ortygometra), which are gralla.

These birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the following Linnæan genera :

Most soft-billed birds live on insects, and not on grain and seeds, and therefore at the end of summer they retire; but the following soft-billed birds, though insect eaters, stay with us the year round :

A List of the Winter Birds of Passage round this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear.

These birds, as they stand numerically, belong to the following Linnæan genera:

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Anas.

Columba.