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Some address is required in dipping these rushes in the scalding fat
or grease; but this knack also is to be attained by practice. The
careful wife of an industrious Hampshire labourer obtains all her
fat for nothing; for she saves the scumrnings of her bacon-pot for
this use; and, if the grease abounds with salt, she causes the salt to
precipitate to the bottom, by setting the scummings in a warm
oven. Where hogs are not much in use, and especially by the sea-
side, the coarser animal oils will come very cheap. A pound of
common grease may be procured for four pence; and about six
pounds of grease will dip a pound of rushes; and one pound of
rushes may be bought for one shilling: so that a pound of rushes,
medicated and ready for use, will cost three shillings. If men that
keep bees will mix a little wax with the grease, it will give it a
consistency, and render it more cleanly, and make the rushes burn
longer: mutton-suet would have the same effect.
A good rush, which measured in length two feet four inches and an
half, being minuted, burnt only three minutes short of an hour: and
a rush still of greater length has been known to burn one hour and a
quarter.
These rushes give a good clear light. Watch-lights (coated with
tallow), it is true, shed a dismal one, 'darkness visible'; but then the
wicks of those have two ribs of the rind, or peel, to support the
pith, while the wick of the dipped rush has but one. The two ribs
are intended to impede the progress of the flame, and make the
candle last.
In a pound of dry rushes, avoirdupois, which I caused to be
weighed and numbered, we found upwards of one thousand six
hundred individuals. Now suppose each of these burns, one with
another, only half an hour, then a poor man will purchase eight
hundred hours of light, a time exceeding thirty-three entire days,
for three shillings. According to this account each rush, before
dipping, costs 1/33 of a farthing, and 1/11 afterwards. Thus a poor
family will enjoy 5&1/2 hours of comfortable light for a farthing.
An experienced old housekeeper assures me that one pound and a
half of rushes completely supplies his family the year round, since
working people burn no candle in the long days, because they rise
and go to bed by daylight.
Little farmers use rushes much in the short days, both morning and
evening in the dairy and kitchen; but the very poor, who are always
the worst economists, and therefore must continue very poor, buy
an halfpenny candle every evening, which, in their blowing open
rooms, does not burn much more than two hours. Thus have they
only two hours' light for their money instead of eleven.
While on the subject of rural oeconomy, it may not be improper to
mention a pretty implement of housewifery that we have seen no
where else; that is, little neat besoms which our foresters make
from the stalk of the polytricum commune, or great golden maiden-
hair, which they call silk-wood, and find plenty in the bogs. When
this moss is well combed and dressed, and divested of its outer
skin, it becomes of a beautiful bright chestnut colour; and, being
soft and pliant, is very proper for the dusting of beds, curtains,
carpets, hangings, etc. If these besoms were known to the
brushmakers in town, it is probable they might come much in use
for the purpose above-mentioned.*
(*A besom of this sort is to be seen in Sir Ashton Lever's Museum.)
I am, etc.
Letter XXVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, December 12, 1775.
Dear Sir,
We had in this village more than twenty years ago an idiot-boy,
whom I well remember, who, from a child, showed a strong
propensity to bees; they were his food, his amusement, his sole
object. And as people of this cast have seldom more than one point
in view, so this lad exerted all his few faculties on this one pursuit.
In the winter he dosed away his time, within his father's house, by
the fireside, in a kind of torpid state, seldom departing from the
chimney-corner; but in the summer he was all alert, and in quest of
his game in the fields, and on sunny banks. Honeybees, humble-
bees, and wasps, were his prey wherever he found them: he had no
apprehensions from their stings, but would seize them nudis
manibus, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and suck their
bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would fill
his bosom between his shirt and his skin with a number of these
captives; and sometimes would confine them in bottles. He was a
very merops apiaster, or bee-bird; and very injurious to men that
kept bees; for he would slide into their bee-gardens, and, sitting
down before the stools, would rap with his finger on the hives, and
so take the bees as they came out. He has been known to overturn
hives for the sake of honey, of which he was passionately fond.
Where metheglin was making he would linger round the tubs and
vessels, begging a draught of what he called bee-wine. As he ran
about he used to make a humming noise with his lips, resembling
the buzzing of bees. This lad was lean and sallow, and of a
cadaverous complexion; and, except in his favourite pursuit, in
which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of
understanding. Had his capacity been better, and directed to the
same object, he had perhaps abated much of our wonder at the
feats of a more modern exhibitor of bees; and we may justly say of
him now,
... Thou,
Had thy presiding star propitious shone,
Should'st Wildman be. ...
When a tall youth he was removed from hence to a distant village,
where he died, as I understand, before he arrived at manhood.
I am, etc.
Letter XXVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Jan. 8, 1776.
Dear Sir,
It is the hardest thing in the world to shake off superstitious
prejudices: they are sucked in as it were with our mother's milk;
and growing up with us at a time when they take the fastest hold
and make the most lasting impressions, become so interwoven into
our very constitutions, that the strongest good sense is required to
disengage ourselves from them. No wonder therefore that the lower
people retain them their whole lives through, since their minds are
not invigorated by a liberal education, and therefore not enabled to
make any efforts adequate to the occasion.
Such a preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on the
superstitions of this district, lest we should be suspected of
exaggeration in a recital of practices too gross for this enlightened
age.
But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to
remember, that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within
twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated
wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a
suspicion of witchcraft; and, by trying experiments, drowned them
in a horse-pond.
In a farm-yard near the middle of this village stands, at this day, a
row of pollard-ashes, which, by the seams and long cicatrices down
their sides, manifestly show that, in former times, they have been
cleft asunder. These trees, when young and flexible, were severed
and held open by wedges, while ruptured children, stripped naked,
were pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion that, by
such a process, the poor babes would be cured of their infirmity.
As soon as the operation was over, the tree, in the suffering part,
was plastered with loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts
coalesced and soldered together, as usually fell out, where the feat
was performed with any adroitness at all, the party was cured; but,
where the cleft continued to gape, the operation, it was supposed,
would prove ineffectual. Having occasion to enlarge my garden not
long since, I cut down two or three such trees, one of which did not
grow together.
We have several persons now living in the village, who, in their
childhood, were supposed to be healed by this superstitious
ceremony, derived down perhaps from our Saxon ancestors, who
practiced it before their conversion to Christianity.
At the south corner of the Plestor, or area, near the church, there
stood, about twenty years ago, a very old grotesque hollow pollard-
ash, which for ages had been looked on with no small veneration as
a shrew-ash. Now a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches,
when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve
the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse
over the part affected: for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so
baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a
beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted
with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the
limb. Against this accident, to which they were continually liable,
our provident fore-fathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which,
when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-
ash was made thus: * -- Into the body of the tree a deep hole was
bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in
alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations
long since forgotten. As the ceremonies necessary for such a
consecration are no longer understood, all succession is at an end,
and no such tree is known to subsist in the manor, or hundred.
(* For a similar practice, see Plot's Staffordshire.)
As to that on the Plestor,
The late vicar stubb'd and burnt it,
when he was way-warden, regardless of the remonstrances of the
by-standers, who interceded in vain for its preservation, urging its
power and efficacy, and alleging that it had been
Religione patrum multos servata per annos.
I am, etc.
Letter XXIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Feb. 7, 1776.
Dear Sir,
In heavy fogs, on elevated situations especially, trees are perfect
alembics: and no one that has not attended to such matters can
imagine how much water one tree will distil in a night's time by
condensing the vapour, which trickles down the twigs and boughs,
so as to make the ground below quite in a float. In Newton-lane, in
October 1775, on a misty day, a particular oak in leaf dropped so
fast that the cart-way stood in puddles and the ruts ran with water,
though the ground in general was dusty.
In some of our smaller islands in the West-Indies, if I mistake not,
there are no springs or rivers; but the people are supplied with that
necessary element, water, merely by the dripping of some large tall
trees, which, standing in the bosom of a mountain, keep their heads
constantly enveloped with fogs and clouds, from which they
dispense their kindly never-ceasing moisture; and so render those
districts habitable by condensation alone.
Trees in leaf have such a vast proportion more of surface than
those that are naked, that, in theory, their condensations should
greatly exceed those that are stripped of their leaves; but, as the
former imbibe also a great quantity of moisture, it is difficult to say
which drip most: but this I know, that deciduous trees that are
entwined with much ivy seem to distil the greatest quantity. Ivy-
leaves are smooth, and thick, and cold, and therefore condense
very fast; and besides evergreens imbibe very little. These facts
may furnish the intelligent with hints concerning what trees they
should plant round small ponds that they would wish to be
perennial; and show them how advantageous some trees are in
preference to others.
Trees perspire profusely, condense largely, and check evaporation
so much, that woods are always moist: no wonder therefore that
they contribute much to pools and streams.
That trees are great promoters of lakes and rivers appears from a
well-known fact in North America; for, since the woods and forests
have been grubbed and cleared, all bodies of water are much
diminished; so that some streams, that were very considerable a
century ago, will not now drive a common mill.* Besides, most
woodlands, forests, and chases with us abound with pools and
morasses; no doubt for the reason given above.
(* Vide Kalm's Travels to North America.)
To a thinking mind few phenomena are more strange than the state
of little ponds on the summits of chalk-hills, many of which are
never dry in the most trying droughts of summer. On chalk-hills I
say, because in many rocky and gravelly soils springs usually break
out pretty high on the sides of elevated grounds and mountains; but
no person acquainted with chalky districts will allow that they ever
saw springs in such a soil but in valleys and bottoms, since the
waters of so pervious a stratum as chalk all lie on one dead level,
as well-diggers have assured me again and again.
Now we have many such little round ponds in this district; and one
in particular on our sheep-down, three hundred feet above my
house; which though never above three feet deep in the middle,
and not more than thirty feet in diameter, and containing perhaps
not more than two or three hundred hogsheads of water, yet never
is known to fail, though it affords drink for three hundred or four
hundred sheep, and for at least twenty head of large cattle beside.
This pond, it is true, is over-hung with two moderate beeches, that,
doubtless, at times afford it much supply: but then we have others
as small, that, without the aid of trees, and in spite of evaporation
from sun and wind, and perpetual consumption by cattle, yet
constantly maintain a moderate share of water, without
overflowing in the wettest seasons, as they would do if supplied by
springs. By my journal of May 1775, it appears that 'the small and
even considerable ponds in the vales are now dried up, while the
small ponds on the very tops of hills are but little affected.' Can this
difference be accounted for from evaporation alone, which
certainly is more prevalent in bottoms ? or rather have not those
elevated pools some unnoticed recruits, which in the night time
counterbalance the waste of the day; without which the cattle alone
must soon exhaust them ? And here it will be necessary to enter
more minutely into the cause. Dr. Hales, in his Vegetable Statics,
advances, from experiment, that 'the moister the earth is the more
dew falls on it in a night: and more than a double quantity of dew
falls on a surface of water than there does on an equal surface of
moist earth.' Hence we see that water, by its coolness, is enabled to
assimilate to itself a large quantity of moisture nightly by
condensation; and that the air, when loaded with fogs and vapours,
and even with copious dews, can alone advance a considerable and
never-failing resource. Persons that are much abroad, and travel
early and late, such as shepherds, fishermen, etc., can tell what
prodigious fogs prevail in the night on elevated downs, even in the
hottest parts of summer; and how much the surfaces of things are
drenched by those swimming vapours, though, to the senses, all the
while, little moisture seems to fall.
I am, etc.
Letter XXX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, April 3, 1776.
Dear Sir,
Monsieur Herissant, a French anatomist, seems persuaded that he
has discovered the reason why cuckoos do not hatch their own
eggs; the impediment, he supposes, arises from the internal
structure of their parts, which incapacitates them for incubation.
According to this gentleman, the crop or craw of a cuckoo does not
lie before the sternum at the bottom of the neck, as in the gallinae
columbae, etc., but immediately behind it, on and over the bowels,
so as to make a large protuberance in the belly.*
(* Histoire de l'Academie Royale, 1752.)
Induced by this assertion, we procured a cuckoo; and, cutting open
the breast-bone, and exposing the intestines to sight, found the crop
lying as mentioned above. This stomach was large and round, and
stuffed hard like a pin-cushion with food, which, upon nice
examination, we found to consist of various insects; such as small
scarabs, spiders, and dragon-flies; the last of which we have seen
cuckoos catching on the wing as they were just emerging out of the
aurelia state. Among this farrago also were to be seen maggots, and
many seeds, which belonged either to gooseberries, currants,
cranberries, or some such fruit; so that these birds apparently
subsist on insects and fruits: nor was there the least appearance of
bones, feathers, or fur to support the idle notion of their being birds
of prey.
The sternum in this bird seemed to us to be remarkably short,
between which and the anus lay the crop, or craw, and immediately
behind that the bowels against the backbone.
It must be allowed, as this anatomist observes, that the crop placed
just upon the bowels must, especially when full, be in a very
uneasy situation during the business of incubation; yet the test will
be to examine whether birds that are actually known to sit for
certain are not formed in a similar manner. This inquiry I proposed
to myself to make with a fern-owl, or goat-sucker, as soon as
opportunity offered: because, if their information proves the same,
the reason for incapacity in the cuckoo will be allowed to have
been taken up somewhat hastily.
Not long after a fern-owl was procured, which, from its habit and
shape, we suspected might resemble the cuckoo in its internal
construction. Nor were our suspicions ill-grounded; for, upon the
dissection, the crop, or craw, also lay behind the sternum,
immediately on the viscera, between them and the skin of the belly.
It was bulky, and stuffed hard with large phalaenae, moths of
several sorts, and their eggs, which no doubt had been forced out of
those insects by the action of swallowing.
Now as it appears that this bird, which is so well known to practice
incubation, is formed in a similar manner with cuckoos, Monsieur
Herissant's conjecture, that cuckoos are incapable of incubation
from the disposition of their intestines, seems to fall to the ground:
and we are still at a loss for the cause of that strange and singular
peculiarity in the instance of the cuculus canorus.
We found the case to be the same with the ring-tail hawk, in
respect to formation; and, as far as I can recollect, with the swift;
and probably it is so with many more sorts of birds that are not
granivorous.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, April 29, 1776.
Dear Sir,
On August the 4th, 1775, we surprised a large viper, which seemed
very heavy and bloated, as it lay in the grass basking in the sun.
When we came to cut it up, we found that the abdomen was
crowded with young, fifteen in number; the shortest of which
measured full seven inches, and were about the size of full-grown
earthworms. This little fry issued into the world with the true viper-
spirit about them, showing great alertness as soon as disengaged
from the belly of the dam: they twisted and wriggled about, and set
themselves up, and gaped very wide when touched with a stick,
showing manifest tokens of menace and defiance, though as yet
they had no manner of fangs that we could find, even with the help
of our glasses.
To a thinking mind nothing is more wonderful than that early
instinct which impresses young animals with the notion of the
situation of their natural weapons, and of using them properly in
their own defence, even before those weapons subsist or are
formed. Thus a young cock will spar at his adversary before his
spurs are grown; and a calf or a lamb will push with their heads
before their horns are sprouted. In the same manner did these
young adders attempt to bite before their fangs were in being. The
dam however was furnished with very formidable ones, which we
lifted up (for they fold down when not used) and cut them off with
the point of our scissors.
There was little room to suppose that this brood had ever been in
the open air before; and that they were taken in for refuge, at the
mouth of the dam, when she perceived that danger was
approaching; because then probably we should have found them
somewhere in the neck, and not in the abdomen.
Letter XXXII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Castration has a strange effect: it emasculates both man, beast, and
bird, and brings them to a near resemblance of the other sex. Thus
eunuchs have smooth unmuscular arms, thighs, and legs; and broad
hips, and beardless chins, and squeaking voices. Gelt-stags and
bucks have hornless heads, like hinds and does. Thus wethers have
small horns, like ewes; and oxen large bent horns, and hoarse
voices when they low, like cows: for bulls have short straight
horns; and though they mutter and grumble in a deep tremendous
tone, yet they low in a shrill high key. Capons have small combs
and gills, and look pallid about the head, like pullets; they also
walk without any parade, and hover chickens like hens. Barrow-
hogs have also small tusks like sows.
Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour puts a
stop to the growth of those parts or appendages that are looked
upon as its insignia. But the ingenious Mr. Lisle, in his book on
husbandry, carries it much farther; for he says that the loss of those
insignia alone has sometimes a strange effect on the ability itself:
he had a boar so fierce and venereous, that, to prevent mischief,
orders were given for his tusks to be broken off. No sooner had the
beast suffered this injury then his powers forsook him, and he
neglected those females to whom before he was passionately
attached, and from whom no fences could restrain him.
Letter XXXIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
The natural term of an hog's life is little known, and the reason is
plain -- because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep that
turbulent animal to the full extent of its time: however, my
neighbour, a man of substance, who had no occasion to study every
little advantage to a nicety, kept an half-bred Bantam sow, who
was as thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on the ground,
till she was advanced to her seventeenth year; at which period she
showed some tokens of age by the decay of her teeth and the
decline of her fertility.
For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters in the
year of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a litter; but,
as there were near double the number of pigs to that of teats, many
died. From long experience in the world this female was grown
very sagacious and artful:-when she found occasion to converse
with a boar she used to open all the intervening gates, and march,
by herself, up to a distant farm where one was kept; and when her
purpose was served would return by the same means. At the age of
about fifteen her litters began to be reduced to four or five; and
such a litter she exhibited when in her fatting-pen. She proved,
when fat, good bacon, juicy, and tender; the rind, or sward, was
remarkably thin. At a moderate computation she was allowed to
have been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs: a prodigious
instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped! She was killed in
spring 1775.
I am, etc.
Letter XXXIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 9, 1776.
Dear Sir,
... admorunt ubera tigres.
We have remarked in a former letter how much incongruous
animals, in a lonely state, may be attached to each other from a
spirit of sociality; in this it may not be amiss to recount a different
motive which has been known to create as strange a fondness.
My friend had a little helpless leveret brought to him, which the
servants fed with milk in a spoon, and about the same time his cat
kittened and the young were dispatched and buried. The hare was
soon lost, and supposed to be gone the way of most foundlings, to
be killed by some dog or cat. However, in about a fortnight, as the
master was sitting in his garden in the dusk of the evening, he
observed his cat, with tail erect, trotting towards him, and calling
with little short inward notes of complacency, such as they use
towards their kittens, and something gamboling after, which
proved to be the leveret that the cat had supported with her milk,
and continued to support with great affection.
Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and
predaceous one!
Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the ferocious
genus of Feles, the murium leo, as Linnaeus calls it, should be
affected with any tenderness towards an animal which is its natural
prey, is not so easy to determine.
This strange affection probably was occasioned by that desiderium,
those tender maternal feelings, which the loss of her kittens had
awakened in her breast; and by the complacency and ease she
derived to herself from the procuring her teats to be drawn, which
were too much distended with milk, till, from habit, she became as
much delighted with this foundling as if it had been her real
offspring.
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