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As many of my readers may possibly never have heard of this
strange and unusual insect, I shall here transcribe a passage from a
natural history of Gibraltar, written by the Reverend John White,
late vicar of Blackburn in Lancashire, but not yet published:
'In the year 1770 a vine which grew on the east side of my house,
and which had produced the finest crops of grapes for years past,
was suddenly overspread on all the woody branches with large
lumps of a white fibrous substance resembling spiders' webs, or
rather raw cotton. It was of a very clammy quality, sticking fast to
everything that touched it, and capable of being spun into long
threads. At first I suspected it to be the product of spiders, but
could find none. Nothing was to be seen connected with it but
many brown oval husky shells, which by no means looked like
insects, but rather resembled bits of the dry bark of the vine. The
tree had a plentiful crop of grapes set, when this pest appeared
upon it; but the fruit was manifestly injured by this foul
incumbrance. It remained all the summer, still increasing, and
loaded the woody and bearing branches to a vast degree. I often
pulled off great quantities by handfuls; but it was so slimy and
tenacious that it could by no means be cleared. The grapes never
filled to their natural perfection, but turned watery and vapid. Upon
perusing the works afterwards of M. de Reaumur, I found this
matter perfectly described and accounted for. Those husky shells,
which I had observed, were no other than the female coccus, from
whose sides this cotton-like substance exudes, and serves as a
covering and security for their eggs.'
To this account I think proper to add, that, though the female cocci
are stationary, and seldom remove from the place to which they
stick, yet the male is a winged insect; and that the black dust which
I saw was undoubtedly the excrement of the females, which is
eaten by ants as well as flies. Though the utmost severity of our
winter did not destroy these insects, yet the attention of the
gardener in a summer or two has entirely relieved my vine from
this filthy annoyance.
As we have remarked above that insects are often conveyed from
one country to another in a very unaccountable manner, I shall here
mention an emigration of small aphides, which was observed in the
village of Selborne no longer ago than August the 1st, 1785.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon of that day, which was very
hot, the people of this village were surprised by a shower of
aphides, or smother-flies, which fell in these parts. Those that were
walking in the street at that juncture found themselves covered
with these insects, which settled also on the hedges and gardens,
blackening all the vegetables where they alighted. My annuals were
discoloured with them, and the stalks of a bed of onions were quite
coated over for six days after. These armies were then, no doubt, in
a state of emigration, and shifting their quarters; and might have
come, as far as we know, from the great hop-plantations of Kent or
Sussex, the wind being all that day in the easterly quarter. They
were observed at the same time in great clouds about Farnham, and
all along the vale from Farnham to Alton.*
(* For various methods by which several insects shift their quarters,
see Derham's Physico-Theology.)
Letter LIV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Dear Sir,
When I happen to visit a family where gold and silver fishes are
kept in a glass bowl, I am always pleased with the occurrence,
because it offers me an opportunity of observing the actions and
propensities of those beings with whom we can be little acquainted
in their natural state. Not long since I spent a fortnight at the house
of a friend where there was such a vivary, to which I paid no small
attention, taking every occasion to remark what passed within its
narrow limits. It was here that I first observed the manner in which
fishes die. As soon as the creature sickens, the head sinks lower
and lower, and it stands as it were on its head; till, getting weaker,
and losing all poise, the tail turns over, and at last it floats on the
surface of the water with its belly uppermost. The reason why
fishes, when dead, swim in that manner is very obvious; because,
when the body is no longer balanced by the fins of the belly, the
broad muscular back preponderates by its own gravity, and turns
the belly uppermost, as lighter from its being a cavity, and because
it contains the swimming-bladders, which contribute to render it
buoyant. Some that delight in gold and silver fishes have adopted a
notion that they need no aliment. True it is that they will subsist for
a long time without any apparent food but what they can collect
from pure water frequently changed; yet they must draw some
support from animalcula, and other nourishment supplied by the
water; because, though they seem to eat nothing, yet the
consequences of eating often drop from them. That they are best
pleased with such jejune diet may easily be confuted, since if you
toss them crumbs, they will seize them with great readiness, not to
say greediness: however, bread should be given sparingly, lest,
turning sour, it corrupt the water. They will also feed on the water-
plant called lemna (duck's meat), and also on small fry.
When they want to move a little they gently protrude themselves
with their pinnae pectorales; but it is with their strong muscular
tails only that they and all fishes shoot along with such
inconceivable rapidity. It has been said that the eyes of fishes are
immoveable: but these apparently turn them forward or backward
in their sockets as their occasions require. They take little notice of
a lighted candle, though applied close to their heads, but flounce
and seem much frightened by a sudden stroke of the hand against
the support whereon the bowl is hung; especially when they have
been motionless, and are perhaps asleep. As fishes have no eyelids,
it is not easy to discern when they are sleeping or not, because their
eyes are always open.
Nothing can be more amusing than a glass bowl containing such
fishes: the double refractions of the glass and water represent them,
when moving, in a shifting and changeable variety of dimensions,
shades, and colours; while the two mediums, assisted by the
concavo-convex shape of the vessel, magnify and distort them
vastly; not to mention that the introduction of another element and
its inhabitants into our parlours engages the fancy in a very
agreeable manner.
Gold and silver fishes, though originally natives of China and
Japan, yet are become so well reconciled to our climate as to thrive
and multiply very fast in our ponds and stews. Linnaeus ranks this
species of fish under the genus of cyprinus, or carp, and calls it
cyprinus auratus.
Some people exhibit this sort of fish in a very fanciful way; for
they cause a glass bowl to be blown with a large hollow space
within, that does not communicate with it. In this cavity they put a
bird occasionally; so that you may see a goldfinch or a linnet
hopping as it were in the midst of the water, and the fishes
swimming in a circle round it. The simple exhibition of the fishes
is agreeable and pleasant; but in so complicated a way becomes
whimsical and unnatural, and liable to the objection due to him,
Qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam.
I am, etc.
Letter LV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
October 10, 1781.
Dear Sir,
I think I have observed before that much the most considerable part
of the house-martins withdraw from hence about the first week in
October; but that some, the latter broods I am now convinced,
linger on till towards the middle of that month: and that at times,
once perhaps in two or three years, a flight, for one day only, has
shown itself in the first week of November.
Having taken notice, in October 1780, that the last flight was
numerous, amounting perhaps to one hundred and fifty; and that
the season was soft and still; I was resolved to pay uncommon
attention to these late birds; to find, if possible, where they roosted,
and to determine the precise time of their retreat. The mode of life
of these latter hirundines is very favourable to such a design; for
they spend the whole day in the sheltered district, between me and
the Hanger, sailing about in a placid, easy manner, and feasting on
those insects which love to haunt a spot so secure from ruffling
winds. As my principal object was to discover the place of their
roosting, I took care to wait on them before they retired to rest, and
was much pleased to find that, for several evenings together, just at
a quarter past five in the afternoon, they all scudded away in great
haste towards the south-east, and darted down among the low
shrubs above the cottages at the end of the hill. This spot in many
respects seems to be well calculated for their winter residence: for
in many parts it is as steep as the roof of any house, and therefore
secure from the annoyances of water; and it is moreover clothed
with beechen shrubs, which, being stunted and bitten by sheep,
make the thickest covert imaginable; and are so entangled as to be
impervious to the smallest spaniel: besides, it is the nature of
underwood beech never to cast its leaf all the winter; so that, with
the leaves on the ground and those on the twigs, no shelter can be
more complete. I watched them on to the thirteenth and fourteenth
of October, and found their evening retreat was exact and uniform;
but after this they made no regular appearance. Now and then a
straggler was seen; and on the twenty-second of October, I
observed two in the morning over the village, and with them my
remarks for the season ended.
From all these circumstances put together, it is more than probable
that this lingering flight, at so late a season of the year, never
departed from the island. Had they indulged me that autumn with a
November visit, as I much desired I presume that, with proper
assistants, I should have settled the matter past all doubt; but
though the third of November was a sweet day, and in appearance
exactly suited to my wishes, yet not a martin was to be seen; and so
I was forced, reluctantly, to give up the pursuit.
I have only to add that were the bushes, which cover some acres,
and are not my own property, to be grubbed and carefully
examined, probably those late broods, and perhaps the whole
aggregate body of the house-martins of this district, might be found
there, in different secret dormitories; and that, so far from
withdrawing into warmer climes, it would appear that they never
depart three hundred yards from the village.
Letter LVI
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
They who write on natural history cannot too frequently advert to
instinct, that wonderful limited faculty, which, in some instances,
raises the brute creation as it were above reason, and in others
leaves them so far below it. Philosophers have defined instinct to
be chat secret influence by which every species is impelled
naturally to pursue, at all times, The same way or track, without
any teaching or example; whereas reason, without instruction,
would often vary and do chat by many methods which instinct
effects by one alone. Now this maxim must be taken in a qualified
sense; for there are instances in which instinct does vary and
conform to the circumstances of place and convenience.
It has been remarked chat every species of bird has a mode of
nidification peculiar to itself; so that a schoolboy would at once
pronounce on the sort of nest before him. This is the case among
fields and woods, and wilds; but, in the villages round London,
where mosses and gossamer, and cotton from vegetables, are
hardly to be found, the nest of the chaffinch has not that elegant
finished appearance, nor is it so beautifully studded with lichens,
as in a more rural district: and the wren is obliged to construct its
house with straws and dry grasses, which do not give it that
rotundity and compactness so remarkable in the edifices of the
little architect. Again, the regular nest of the house-martin is
hemispheric; but where a rafter, or a joist, or a cornice may happen
to stand in the way, the nest is so contrived as to conform to the
obstruction, and becomes flat or oval, or compressed.
In the following instances instinct is perfectly uniform and
consistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse,
and the bird called the nut-hatch (sitta Europaea), which live much
on hazel nuts; and yet they open them each in a different way. The
first, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his
long fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife; the second nibbles a
hole with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet
so small that one would wonder how the kernel can be extracted
through it; while the last picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill:
but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces
it, like an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were in a vice, in some
cleft of a tree, or in some crevice; when, standing over it, he
perforates the stubborn shell. We have often placed nuts in the
chink of a gate-post where nut-hatches have been known to haunt,
and have always found that those birds have readily penetrated
them. While at work they make a rapping noise that may be heard
at a considerable distance.
You that understand both the theory and practical part of music
may best inform us why harmony or melody should so strangely
affect some men, as it were by recollection, for days after a concert
is over. What I mean the following passage will most readily
explain:
'Praehabebat porro vocibus humanis, instrumentisque harmonicis
musicam illam avium: non quad alia quoque non delectaretur; sed
quod ex musica humana relinqueretur in animo continens
qaemdam, attentionemque et somnum conturbans agitatio; dum
ascensus, exscensus, tenores, ac mutationes illae sonorum et
consonantiarum euntque redeuntque per phantasiam: -- cum nihil
tale relinqui possit ex modulationibus avium, quae, quod non sunt
perinde a nobis imitabiles, non possunt perinde internam
facultatem commovere.' -- GASSENDUS in Vita Peireskii.
This curious quotation strikes me much by so well representing my
own case, and by describing what I have so often felt, but never
could so well express. When I hear fine music I am haunted with
passages therefrom night and day; and especially at first waking,
which, by their importunity, give me more uneasiness than
pleasure: elegant lessons still tease my imagination, and recur
irresistibly to my recollection at seasons, and even when I am
desirous of thinking of more serious matters.
I am, etc.
Letter LVII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
A rare, and I think a new little bird frequents my garden, which I
have great reason to think is the pettichaps: it is common in some
parts of the kingdom, and I have received formerly several dead
specimens from Gibraltar. This bird much resembles the white-
throat, but has a more white or rather silvery breast and belly; is
restless and active, like the willow-wrens, and hops from bough to
bough, examining every part for food; it also runs up the stems of
the crown-imperials, and, putting its head into the bells of those
flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of each petal.
Sometimes it feeds on the ground, like the hedge-sparrow, by
hopping about on the grass-plots and mown walks.
One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing man, informs
me that, in the beginning of May, and about ten minutes before
eight o'clock in the evening, he discovered a great cluster of house-
swallows, thirty at least he supposes, perching on a willow that
hung over the verge of James Knight's upper-pond. His attention
was first drawn by the twittering of these birds, which sat
motionless in a row on the bough, with their heads all one way,
and, by their weight, pressing down the twig so that it nearly
touched the water. In this situation he watched them till he could
see no longer. Repeated accounts of this sort, spring and fall,
induce us greatly to suspect that house-swallows have some strong
attachment to water, independent of the matter of food; and though
they may not retire into that element, yet they may conceal
themselves in the banks of pools and rivers during the
uncomfortable months of winter.
One of the keepers of Wolmer-forest sent me a peregrine falcon,
which he shot on the verge of that district as it was devouring a
wood-pigeon. The falco peregrinus, or haggard falcon, is a noble
species of hawk seldom seen in the southern counties. In winter
1767 one was killed in the neighbouring parish of Faringdon, and
sent by me to Mr. Pennant into North Wales.* Since that time I
have met with none till now. The specimen measured above was in
fine preservation, and not injured by the shot: it measured forty-two
inches from wing to wing, and twenty-one from beak to tail, and
weighed two pounds and an half standing weight. This species is
very robust, and wonderfully formed for rapine: its breast was
plump and muscular; its thighs long, thick, and brawny; and its legs
remarkably short and well set: the feet were armed with most
formidable, sharp, long talons: the eyelids and cere of the bill were
yellow; but the irides of the eyes dusky; the beak was thick and
hooked, and of a dark colour, and had a jagged process near the
end of the upper mandible on each side: its tail, or train, was short
in proportion to the bulk of its body: yet the wings, when closed,
did not extend to the end of the train. From its large and fair
proportions it might be supposed to have been a female; but I was
not permitted to cut open the specimen. For one of the birds of
prey, which are usually lean, this was in high case: in its craw were
many barley-corns, which probably came from the crop of the
wood-pigeon, on which it was feeding when shot: for voracious
birds do not eat grain; but when devouring their quarry, with
undistinguishing vehemence swallow bones and feathers, and all
matters, indiscriminately. This falcon was probably driven from the
mountains of North Wales or Scotland, where they are known to
breed, by rigorous weather and deep snows that had lately fallen.
(* See my tenth and eleventh letter to that gentleman. )
I am, etc.
Letter LVIII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
My near neighbour, a young gentleman in the service of the East-
India Company, has brought home a dog and a bitch of the Chinese
breed from Canton; such as are fattened in the country for the
purpose of being eaten: they are about the size of a moderate
spaniel; of a pale yellow colour, with coarse bristling hairs on their
backs; sharp upright ears, and peaked heads, which give them a
very fox-like appearance. Their hind legs are unusually straight,
without any bend at the hock or ham, to such a degree as to give
them an awkward gait when they trot. When they are in motion
their tails are curved high over their backs like those of some
hounds, and have a bare place each on the outside from the tip
midway, that does not seem to be matter of accident, but somewhat
singular. Their eyes are jet black, small, and piercing; the insides
of their lips and mouths of the same colour, and their tongues blue.
The bitch has a dew-claw on each hind leg; the dog has none.
When taken out into a field the bitch showed some disposition for
hunting, and dwelt on the scent of a covey of partridges till she
sprung them, giving her tongue all the time. The dogs in South
America are dumb; but these bark much in a short thick manner,
like foxes; and have a surly, savage demeanour like their ancestors,
which are not domesticated, but bred up in sties, where they are fed
for the table with rice-meal and other farinaceous food. These
dogs, having been taken on board as soon as weaned, could not
learn much from their dam; yet they did not relish flesh when they
came to England. In the islands of the Pacific Ocean the dogs are
bred up on vegetables, and would not eat flesh when offered them
by our circumnavigators.
We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, upright
fox-like ears; and that hanging ears, which are esteemed so
graceful, are the effect of choice breeding and cultivation. Thus, in
the Travels of Ysbrandt Ides from Muscovy to China, the dogs
which draw the Tartars on snow-sledges near the river Oby are
engraved with prick-ears, like those from Canton. The
Kamschatdales also train the same sort of sharp-eared peak-nosed
dogs to draw their sledges; as may be seen in an elegant print
engraved for Captain Cook's last voyage round the world.
Now we are upon the subject of dogs it may not be impertinent to
add, that spaniels, as all sportsmen know, though they hunt
partridges and pheasants as it were by instinct, and with much
delight and alacrity, yet will hardly touch their bones when offered
as food; nor will a mongrel dog of my own, though he is
remarkable for ending that sort of game. But, when we came to
offer the bones of partridges to the two Chinese dogs, they
devoured them with much greediness, and licked the platter clean.
No sporting dogs will flush woodcocks till inured to the scent and
trained to the sport, which they then pursue with vehemence and
transport; but then they will not touch their bones, but turn from
them with abhorrence, even when they are hungry.
Now, that dogs should not be fond of the bones of such birds as
they are not disposed to hunt is no wonder; but why they reject and
do not care to eat their natural game is not so easily accounted for,
since the end of hunting seems to be, that the chase pursued should
be eaten. Dogs again will not devour the more rancid water-fowls,
nor indeed the bones of any wild-fowls; nor will they touch the
foetid bodies of birds that feed on offal and garbage: and indeed
there may be somewhat of providential instinct in this
circumstance of dislike; for vultures,* and kites, and ravens, and
crows, etc., 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.
(* Hasselquist, in his Travels to the Levant, observes that the dogs
and vultures at Grand Cairo maintain such a friendly intercourse as
to bring up their young together in the same place.)
(** The Chinese word for a dog to an European ear sounds like
quihloh.)
I am, etc.
Letter LIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
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 butt-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 repeating 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 oedicnemus). Some of
them pass over or near my house almost every evening after it is
dark, from the uplands of the hill and North field, away down
towards Dorton; where, among the streams and meadows, they find
a greater plenty 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 the other
in the dark.
The evening proceedings and manoeuvres 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
remember 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.'
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