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Vegetation is highly worthy of our attention; and in itself is of the
utmost consequence to mankind, and productive of many of the
greatest comforts and elegancies of life. To plants we owe timber,
bread, beer, honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, etc., what not only
strengthens our hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but what secures
from inclemencies of weather and adorns our persons. Man, in his
true state of nature, seems to be subsisted by spontaneous
vegetation: in middle climes, where grasses prevail, he mixes some
animal food with the produce of the field and garden: and it is
towards the polar extremes only that, like his kindred bears and
wolves, he gorges himself with flesh alone, and is driven, to what
hunger has never been known to compel the very beasts, to prey on
his own species.*
(* See the late Voyages to the South-seas.)
The productions of vegetation have had a vast influence on the
commerce of nations, and have been the great promoters of
navigation, as may be seen in the articles of sugar, tea, tobacco,
opium, ginseng, betel, paper, etc. As every climate has its peculiar
produce, our natural wants bring on a mutual intercourse; so that
by means of trade each distant part is supplied with the growth of
every latitude. But, without the knowledge of plants and their
culture, we must have been content with our hips and haws,
without enjoying the delicate fruits of India and the salutiferous
drugs of Peru.
Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various
species of each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to
make himself acquainted with those that are useful. You shall see a
man readily ascertain every herb of the field, yet hardly know
wheat from barley, or at least one sort of wheat or barley from
another.
But of all sorts of vegetation the grasses seem to be most
neglected; neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distinguish
the annual from the perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the
succulent and nutritive from the dry and juiceless.
The study of grasses would be of great consequence to a northerly
and grazing kingdom. The botanist that could improve the sward of
the district where he lived would be an useful member of society;
to raise a thick turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of
systematic knowledge; and he would be the best commonwealth's
man that could occasion the growth of 'two blades of grass where
one alone was seen before.'
I am, etc.
Letter XLI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, July 3, 1778.
Dear Sir,
In a district so diversified with such a variety of hill and dale,
aspects, and soils, it is no wonder that great choice of plants should
be found. Chalks, clays, sands, sheep-walks and downs, bogs,
heaths, woodlands, and champaign fields, cannot but furnish an
ample flora. The deep rocky lanes abound with filices, and the
pastures and moist woods with fungi. If in any branch of botany we
may seem to be wanting, it must be in the large aquatic plants,
which are not to be expected on a spot far removed from rivers,
and lying up amidst the hill country at the spring heads. To
enumerate all the plants that have been discovered within our
limits would be a needless work; but a short list of the more rare,
and the spots where they are to be found, may be neither
unacceptable nor unentertaining:
Helleborus foetidus, stinking hellebore, bear's foot, or setterworth,
-- all over the High-wood and Coney-croft-hanger: this continues a
great branching plant the winter through, blossoming about
January, and is very ornamental in shady walks and shrubberies.
The good women give the leaves powdered to children troubled
with worms; but it is a violent remedy, and ought to be
administered with caution.
Helleborus viridis, green hellebore, -- in the deep stony lane on the
left hand just before the turning to Norton-farm, and at the top of
Middle Dorton under the hedge: this plant dies down to the ground
early in autumn, and springs again about February, flowering
almost as soon as it appears above ground.
Vaccinium oxycoccos, creeping bilberries or cranberries, -- in the
bogs of Bin's-pond.
Vaccinium myrtillus, whortle, or bleaberries, -- on the dry hillocks
of Wolmer-forest.
Drosera rotundifolia, round-leaved sun-dew. Drosera longifolia,
long-leaved ditto. In the bogs of Bin's-pond.
Comarum palustre, purple comarum, or marsh cinquefoil, -- in the
bogs of Bin's-pond.
Hypericon androsaemum, tutsan, St. John's wort, -- in the stony,
hollow lanes.
Vinca minor, less periwinkle, -- in Selborne Hanger and
Shrubwood.
Monotropa hypopithys, yellow monotropa, or bird's nest, -- in
Selborne Hanger under the shady beeches, to whose roots it seems
to be parasitical -- at the north-west end of the Hanger.
Chlora perfoliata, Blackstonia perfoliata, Hudsoni, perfoliated
yellow-won, -- on the banks in the King's-field.
Paris quadrifolia, herb Paris, true-love, or one-berry, -- in the
Church Litten coppice.
Chrysosplenium oppositifolium, opposite golden saxifrage, -- in
the dark and rocky hollow lanes.
Gentiana amarella, autumnal gentian or fellwort, -- on the Zig-zag
and Hanger;
Lathraea squamaria, tooth-wort, -- in the Church Litten coppice
under some hazels near the foot-bridge, in Trimming's garden-
hedge, and on the dry wall opposite Grange-yard.
Dipsacus pilosus, small teasel, -- in the Short and Long Lith.
Lathyrus sylvestris, narrow-leaved, or wild lathyrus, -- in the
bushes at the foot of the Short Lith, near the path.
Ophrys spiralis, ladies' traces, -- in the Long Lith, and towards the
south-corner of the common.
Ophrys nidus avis, birds' nest ophrys, -- in the Long Lith under the
shady beeches among the dead leaves; in Great Dorton among the
bushes, and on the Hanger plentifully.
Serapias latifolia, helleborine, -- in the High-wood under the shady
beeches.
Daphne laureola, spurge laurel, -- in Selborne Hanger and the
High-wood.
Daphne mezereum, the mezereon, -- in Selborne Hanger among the
shrubs at the south-east end above the cottages.
Lycoperdon tuber, truffles, -- in the Hanger and High-wood.
Sambucus ebulus, dwarf elder, walwort, or danewort, -- among the
rubbish and ruined foundations of the Priory.
Of all the propensities of plants none seem more strange than their
different periods of blossoming. Some produce their flowers in the
winter, or very first dawnings of spring; many when the spring is
established; some at midsummer, and some not till autumn. When
we see the helleborus foetidus and helleborus niger blowing at
Christmas, the helleborus hyemalis in January, and the helleborus
viridis as soon as ever it emerges out of the ground, we do not
wonder, because they are kindred plants that we expect should
keep pace the one with the other. But other congenerous vegetables
differ so widely in their time of flowering that we cannot but
admire. I shall only instance at present in the crocus sativus, the
vernal, and the autumnal crocus, which have such an affinity, that
the best botanists only make them varieties of the same genus, of
which there is only one species; not being able to discern any
difference in the corolla, or in the internal structure. Yet the vernal
crocus expands its flowers by the beginning of March at farthest,
and often in very rigorous weather; and cannot be retarded but by
some violence offered: -- while the autumnal (the saffron) defies
the influence of the spring and summer, and will not blow till most
plants begin to fade and run to seed. This circumstance is one of
the wonders of the creation, little noticed, because a common
occurrence: yet ought not to be overlooked on account of its being
familiar, since it would be as difficult to be explained as the most
stupendous phaenomenon in nature.
Say, what impels, amidst surrounding snow,
Congealed, the crocus' flamy bud to grow?
Say, what retards, amidst the summer's blaze,
Th' autumnal bulb till pale, declining days ?
The GOD of SEASONS; whose pervading power
Controls the sun, or sheds the fleecy shower:
He bids each flower His quickening word obey;
Or to each lingering bloom enjoins delay.
Letter XLII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Omnibus animalibus reliquis certus et uniusmodi, et in suo cuique
genere incessus est: aves solae vario meatu feruntur, et in terra, et
in aere. -PLIN. Hist. Nat. lib. x. cap. 38.
Selborne, Aug. 7, 1778.
Dear Sir,
A good ornithologist should be able to distinguish birds by their air
as well as by their colours and shape; on the ground as well as on
the wing, and in the bush as well as in the hand. For, though it must
not be said that every species of birds has a manner peculiar to
itself, yet there is somewhat in most genera at least, that at first
sight discriminates them, and enables a judicious observer to
pronounce upon them with some certainty. Put a bird in moron
... Et Vera incessu patuit....
Thus kites and buzzards sail round in circles with wings expanded
and motionless; and it is from their gliding manner that the former
are still called in the north of England gleads, from the Saxon verb
glidan to glide. The kestrel, or wind-hover, has a peculiar mode of
hanging in the air in one place, his wings all the while being
briskly agitated. Hen-harriers fly low over heaths or fields of corn,
and beat the ground regularly like a pointer or setting-dog. Owls
move in a buoyant manner, as if lighter than the air; they seem to
want ballast. There is a peculiarity belonging to ravens that must
draw the attention even of the most incurious -- they spend all their
leisure time in striking and cuffing each other on the wing in a kind
of playful skirmish; and, when they move from one place to
another, frequently turn on their backs with a loud croak, and seem
to be falling to the ground. When this odd gesture betides them,
they are scratching themselves with one foot, and thus lose the
centre of gravity. Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a
frolicsome manner; crows and daws swagger in their walk; wood-
peckers fly volatu undoso, opening and closing their wings at every
stroke, and so are always rising or falling in curves. All of this
genus use their tails, which incline downward, as a support while
they run up trees. Parrots, like all other hook-clawed birds, walk
awkwardly, and make use of their bill as a third foot, climbing and
ascending with ridiculous caution. All the gallinae parade and walk
gracefully, and run nimbly; but fly with difficulty, with an
impetuous whirring, and in a straight line. Magpies and jays flutter
with powerless wings, and make no dispatch; herons seem
incumbered with too much sail for their light bodies; but these vast
hollow wings are necessary in carrying burdens, such as large
fishes, and the like; pigeons, and particularly the sort called
smiters, have a way of clashing their wings the one against the
other over their backs with a loud snap; another variety called
tumblers turn themselves over in the air. Some birds have
movements peculiar to the season of love: thus ring-doves, though
strong and rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the
wing in a toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while
breeding, forgetting his former flight, fans the air like the wind-
hover; and the green-finch in particular exhibits such languishing
and faltering gestures as to appear like a wounded and dying bird;
the king-fisher darts along like an arrow; fern-owls, or goat-
suckers, glance in the dusk over the tops of trees like a meteor;
starlings as it were swim along, while missal-thrushes use a wild
and desultory flight; swallows sweep over the surface of the ground
and water, and distinguish themselves by rapid turns and quick
evolutions; swifts dash round in circles; and the bank-martin
moves with frequent vacillations like a butterfly. Most of the small
birds fly by jerks, rising and falling as they advance. Most small
birds hop; but wagtails and larks walk, moving their legs
alternately. Skylarks rise and fall perpendicularly as they sing:
woodlarks hang poised in the air; and titlarks rise and fall in large
cubes, singing in their descent. The white-throat uses odd jerks and
gesticulations over the tops of hedges and bushes. All the duck-
kind waddle; divers and auks walk as if fettered, and stand erect on
their tails: these are the compedes of Linnaeus. Geese and cranes,
and most wild-fowls, move in figured flights, often changing their
position. The secondary rerniges of tringae, wild-ducks, and some
others, are very long, and give their wings, when in motion, an
hooked appearance. Dab-chicks, moor-hens, and coots, fly erect,
with their legs hanging down, and hardly make any dispatch; the
reason is plain, their wings are placed too forward out of the true
centre of gravity; as the legs of auks and divers are situated too
backward.
Letter XLIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 9, 1778.
Dear Sir,
From the motion of birds, the transition is natural enough to their
notes and language, of which I shall say something. Not that I
would pretend to understand their language like the vizier who, by
the recital of a conversation which passed between two owls,
reclaimed a sultan,* before delighting in conquest and devastation;
but I would be thought only to mean that many of the winged tribes
have various sounds and voices adapted to express their various
passions, wants, and feelings; such as anger, fear, love, hatred,
hunger, and the like. All species are not equally eloquent; some are
copious and fluent as it were in their utterance, while others are
confined to a few important sounds: no bird, like the fish kind, is
quite mute, though some are rather silent. The language of birds is
very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very
elliptical: little is said, but much is meant and understood.
(* See Spectator, Vol. VII., No. 512.)
The notes of the eagle-kind are shrill and piercing; and about the
season of nidification much diversified, as I have been often
assured by a curious observer of nature, who long resided at
Gibraltar, where eagles abound. The notes of our hawks much
resemble those of the king of birds. Owls have very expressive
notes; they hoot in a fine vocal sound, much resembling the vox
humana, and reducible by a pitch-pipe to a musical key. This note
seems to express complacency and rivalry among the males: they
use also a quick call and an horrible scream; and can snore and hiss
when they mean to menace. Ravens, beside their loud croak, can
exert a deep and solemn note that makes the woods to echo; the
amorous sound of a crow is strange and ridiculous; rooks, in the
breeding season, attempt sometimes in the gaiety of their hearts to
sing, but with no great success; the parrot-kind have many
modulations of voice, as appears by their aptitude to learn human
sounds; doves coo in an amorous and mournful manner, and are
emblems of despairing lovers; the wood-pecker sets up a sort of
loud and hearty laugh; the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, from the dusk
till day-break, serenades his mate with the clattering of castanets.
All the tuneful passeres express their complacency by sweet
modulations, and a variety of melody. The swallow, as has been
observed in a former letter, by a shrill alarm bespeaks the attention
of the other hirundines, and bids them be aware that the hawk is at
hand. Aquatic and gregarious birds, especially the nocturnal, that
shift their quarters in the dark, are very noisy and loquacious; as
cranes, wild-geese, wild-ducks, and the like; their perpetual
clamour prevents them from dispersing and losing their
companions.
In so extensive a subject, sketches and outlines are as much as can
be expected; for it would be endless to instance in all the infinite
variety of the feathered nation. We shall therefore confine the
remainder of this letter to the few domestic fowls of our yards,
which are most known, and therefore best understood. At first the
peacock, with his gorgeous train, demands our attention; but, like
most of the gaudy birds, his notes are grating and shocking to the
ear: the yelling of cats, and the braying of an ass, are not more
disgustful. The voice of the goose is trumpet-like, and clanking;
and once saved the Capitol at Rome, as grave historians assert: the
hiss also of the gander is formidable and full of menace, and '
protective of his young. ' Among ducks the sexual distinction of
voice is remarkable; for, while the quack of the female is loud and
sonorous, the voice of the drake is inward and harsh and feeble,
and scarce discernible. The cock turkey struts and gobbles to his
mistress in a most uncouth manner; he hath also a pert and petulant
note when he attacks his adversary. When a hen turkey leads forth
her young brood she keeps a watchful eye: and if a bird of prey
appear, though ever so high in the air, the careful mother
announces the enemy with a little inward moan, and watches him
with a steady and attentive look; but if he approach, her note
becomes earnest and alarming, and her outcries are redoubled.
No inhabitants of a yard seem possessed of such a variety of
expression and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a
chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a window where
there are flies, and it will immediately seize its prey, with little
twitterings of complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at
once its note becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and
a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the
event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of all the occurrences of their
life that of laying seems to be the most important; for no sooner
has a hen disburdened herself, than she rushes forth with a
clamorous kind of joy, which the cock and the rest of his
mistresses immediately adopt. The tumult is not confined to the
family concerned, but catches from yard to yard, and spreads to
every homestead within hearing, till at last the whole village is in
an uproar. As soon as a hen becomes a mother her new relation
demands a new language; she then runs clocking and screaming
about, and seems agitated as if possessed. The father of the flock
has also a considerable vocabulary; if he finds food, he calls a
favourite concubine to partake; and if a bird of prey passes over,
with a warning voice he bids his family beware. The gallant
chanticleer has, at command, his amorous phrases, and his terms of
defiance. But the sound by which he is best known is his crowing:
by this he has been distinguished in all ages as the countryman's
clock or larum, as the watchman that proclaims the divisions of the
night. Thus the poet elegantly styles him:
... the crested cock, whose clarion sounds
The silent hours.
A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost most of his
chickens by a sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between a
faggot-pile and the end of his house to the place where the coops
stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see his flock thus
diminishing, hung a setting net adroitly between the pile and the
house, into which the caitiff dashed and was entangled.
Resentment suggested the law of retaliation; he therefore clipped
the hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his bill,
threw him down among the brood-hens. Imagination cannot paint
the scene that ensued; the expressions that fear, rage, and revenge
inspired, were new, or at least such as had been unnoticed before:
the exasperated matrons upbraided, they execrated, they insulted,
they triumphed. In a word, they never desisted from buffeting their
adversary till they had torn him in an hundred pieces.
Letter XLIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
... monstrent.
* * * * *
Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
Hyberni; vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
Gentlemen who have outlets might contrive to make ornament
subservient to utility; a pleasing eye-trap might also contribute to
promote science: an obelisk in a garden or park might be both an
embellishment and an heliotrope.
Any person that is curious, and enjoys the advantage of a good
horizon, might, with little trouble, make two heliotropes; the one
for the winter, the other for the summer solstice: and these two
erections might be constructed with very little expense; for two
pieces of timber frame-work, about ten or twelve feet high, and
four feet broad at the base, and close lined with plank, would
answer the purpose.
The erection for the former should, if possible, be placed within
sight of some window in the common sitting parlour; because men,
at that dead season of the year, are usually within doors at the close
of the day; while that for the latter might be fixed for any given
spot in the garden or outlet: whence the owner might contemplate,
in a fine summer's evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to
the northward at the season of the longest days. Now nothing
would be necessary but to place these two objects with so much
exactness, that the westerly limb of the sun, at setting, might but
just clear the winter heliotrope to the west of it on the shortest day;
and that the whole disc of the sun, at the longest day, might exactly
at setting also clear the summer heliotrope to the north of it.
By this simple expedient it would soon appear that there is no such
thing, strictly speaking, as a solstice; for, from the shortest day, the
owner would, every clear evening, see the disc advancing, at its
setting, to the westward of the object; and, from the longest day,
observe the sun retiring backwards every evening at its setting,
towards the object westward, till, in a few nights, it would set quite
behind it, and so by degrees to the west of it: for when the sun
comes near the summer solstice, the whole disc of it would at first
set behind the object: after a time the northern limb would first
appear, and so every night gradually more, till at length the whole
diameter would set north of it for about three nights; but on the
middle night of the three, sensibly more remote than the former or
following. When beginning its recess from the summer tropic, it
would continue more and more to be hidden every night, till at
length it would descend quite behind the object again; and so
nightly more and more to the westward.
Letter XLV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
... Mugire videbis
Sub pedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos.
When I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and implicit
assent, accounts in Baker's Chronicle of walking hills and
travelling mountains. John Philips, in his Cyder, alludes to the
credit that was given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein
of humour peculiar to the author of the Splendid Shilling.
I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice
Of Marcley Hill: the apple no where finds
A kinder mould: yet 'tis unsafe to trust
Deceitful ground: who knows but that once more
This mount may journey, and his present site
Forsaken, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer
Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange
For law debates!
But, when I came to consider better, I began to suspect that though
our hills may never have journeyed that far, yet the ends of many of
them have slipped and fallen away at distant periods, leaving the
cliffs bare and abrupt. This seems to have been the case with Nore
and Whetham hills; and especially with the ridge between Harteley
Park and Ward-le-ham, where the ground has slid into vast
swellings and furrows; and lies still in such romantic confusion as
cannot be accounted for from any other cause. A strange event that
happened not long since, justifies our suspicions; which, though it
befell not within the limits of this parish, yet as it was within the
hundred of Selborne, and as the circumstances were singular, may
fairly claim a place in a work of this nature.
The months of January and February, in the year 1774, were
remarkable for great melting snows and vast gluts of rain, so that
by the end of the latter month the land-springs, or lavants, began to
prevail, and to be near as high as in the memorable winter of 1764.
The beginning of March also went on in the same tenor; when, in
the night between the 8th and 9th of that month, a considerable
part of the great woody hanger at Hawkley was torn from its place,
and fell down, leaving a high freestone cliff naked and bare, and
resembling the steep side of a chalk-pit. It appears that this huge
fragment, being perhaps sapped and undermined by waters,
foundered, and was engulfed, going down in a perpendicular
direction; for a gate which stood in the field, on the top of the hill,
after sinking with its posts for thirty or forty feet, remained in so
true and upright a position as to open and shut with great
exactness, just as in its first situation. Several oaks also are still
standing, and in a state of vegetation, after taking the same
desperate leap. That great part of this prodigious mass was
absorbed in some gulf below, is plain also from the inclining
ground at the bottom of the hill, which is free and unincumbered;
but would have been buried in heaps of rubbish, had the fragment
parted and fallen forward. About an hundred yards from the foot of
this hanging coppice stood a cottage by the side of a lane; and two
hundred yards lower, on the other side of the lane, was a farm-
house, in which lived a labourer and his family; and, just by, a
stout new barn. The cottage was inhabited by an old woman and
her son and his wife. These people in the evening, which was very
dark and tempestuous, observed that the brick floors of their
kitchens began to heave and part; and that the walls seemed to
open, and the roofs to crack: but they all agree that no tremor of the
ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever felt; only that the wind
continued to make a most tremendous roaring in the woods and
hangers. The miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to bed,
remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every
moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered edifices.
When day-light came they were at leisure to contemplate the
devastations of the night: they then found that a deep rift, or chasm,
had opened under their houses, and torn them, as it were, in two;
and that one end of the barn had suffered in a similar manner; that
a pond near the cottage had undergone a strange reverse, becoming
deep at the shallow end, and so vice versa; that many large oaks
were removed out of their perpendicular, some thrown down, and
some fallen into the heads of neighbouring trees; and that a gate
was thrust forward, with its hedge, full six feet, so as to require a
new track to be made to it. From the foot of the cliff the general
course of the ground, which is pasture, inclines in a moderate
descent for half a mile, and is interspersed with some hillocks,
which were rifted, in every direction, as well towards the great
woody hanger, as from it. In the first pasture the deep clefts began:
and running across the lane, and under the buildings, made such
vast shelves that the road was impassable for some time; and so
over to an arable field on the other side, which was strangely torn
and disordered. The second pasture field, being more soft and
springy, was protruded forward without many fissures in the turf,
which was raised in long ridges resembling graves, lying at right
angles to the motion. At the bottom of this enclosure the soil and
turf rose many feet against the bodies of some oaks that obstructed
their farther course and terminated this awful commotion.
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