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A various group the herds and flocks compose:
... on the grassy bank
Some ruminating lie; while others stand
Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip
The circling surface.
Wolmer-pond, so called, I suppose, for eminence sake, is a vast
lake for this part of the world, containing, in its whole
circumference, 2,646 yards, or very near a mile and a half. The
length of the north-west and opposite side is about 704 yards, and
the breadth of the south-west end about 456 yards. This
measurement, which I caused to be made with good exactness,
gives an area of about sixty-six acres, exclusive of a large irregular
arm at the north-east corner, which we did not take into the
reckoning.
On the face of this expanse of waters, and perfectly secure from
fowlers, lie all day long, in the winter season, vast flocks of ducks,
teals, and widgeons, of various denominations; where they preen
and solace, and rest themselves, till towards sunset, when they
issue forth in little parties (for in their natural state they are all
birds of the night) to feed in the brooks and meadows; returning
again with the dawn of the morning. Had this lake an arm or two
more, and were it planted round with thick covert (for now it is
perfectly naked), it might make a valuable decoy.
Yet neither its extent, nor the clearness of its water, nor the resort
of various and curious fowls, nor its picturesque groups of cattle,
can render this meer so remarkable as the great quantity of coins
that were found in its bed about forty years ago. But, as such
discoveries more properly belong to the antiquities of this place, I
shall suppress all particulars for the present, till I enter professedly
on my series of letters respecting the more remote history of this
village and district.
Letter IX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
By way of supplement, I shall trouble you once more on this
subject, to inform you that Wolmer, with her sister forest Ayles
Holt, alias Alice Holt,* as it is called in old records, is held by
grant from the crown for a term of years.
(*In 'Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest. in Scaccar.,' 36, Ed. 3, it is called
Aisholt. In the same, 'Tit. Woolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. Dominus
Rex habet unam capellam in haia sua de Kingesle.' 'Haia, sepes,
sepimentum, parcus: a Gall. haie and haye.'--Spelman's Glossary.)
The grantees that the author remembers are Brigadier-General
Emanuel Scroope Howe, and his lady, Ruperta, who was a natural
daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughs; a Mr. Mordaunt, of
the Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pembroke;
Henry Bilson Legge and lady; and now Lord Stawel, their son.
The lady of General Howe lived to an advanced age, long surviving
her husband; and, at her death, left behind her many curious pieces
of mechanism of her father's constructing, who was a distinguished
mechanic and artist,** as well as warrior; and, among the rest, a
very complicated clock, lately in possession of Mr. Elmer, the
celebrated game-painter at Farnham, in the county of Surrey.
(** This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto.)
Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow range of
enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different: for the Holt
consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, carrying a good turf,
and abounding with oaks that grow to be large timber; while
Wolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste.
The former, being all in the parish of Binsted, is about two miles in
extent from north to south, and near as much from east to west, and
contains within it many woodlands and lawns, and the great lodge
where the grantees reside; and a smaller lodge, called Goose-green;
and is abutted on by the parishes of Kingsley, Frinsham, Farnham,
and Bentley; all of which have right of common.
One thing is remarkable; that, though the Holt has been of old
well-stocked with fallow-deer, unrestrained by any pales or fences
more than a common hedge, yet they were never seen within the
limits of Wolmer; nor were the red deer of Wolmer ever known to
haunt the thickets or glades of the Holt.
At present the deer of the Holt are much thinned and reduced by
the night-hunters, who perpetually harass them in spite of the
efforts of numerous keepers, and the severe penalties that have
been put in force against them as often as they have been detected,
and rendered liable to the lash of the law. Neither fines nor
imprisonment can deter them: so impossible is it to extinguish the
spirit of sporting, which seems to be inherent in human nature.
General Howe turned out some German wild boars and sows in his
forests, to the great terror of the neighbourhood; and, at one time, a
wild bull or buffalo: but the country rose upon them and destroyed
them.
A very large fall of timber, consisting of about one thousand oaks,
has been cut this spring (viz., 1784) in the Holt forest; one-fifth of
which, it is said, belongs to the grantee, Lord Stawel. He lays claim
also to the lop and top: but the poor of the parishes of Binsted and
Frinsham, Bentley and Kingsley, assert that it belongs to them; and,
assembling in a riotous manner, have actually taken it all away.
One man, who keeps a team, has carried home, for his share, forty
stacks of wood. Forty-five of these people his lordship has served
with actions. These trees, which were very sound and in high
perfection, were winter-cut, viz., in February and March, before the
bark would run. In old times the Holt was estimated to be eighteen
miles, computed measure, from water-carriage, viz., from the town
of Chertsey, on the Thames; but now it is not half that distance,
since the Wey is made navigable up to the town of Godalming in
the county of Surrey.
Letter X
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
August 4, 1767.
It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose
studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge; so
that, for want of a companion to quicken my industry and sharpen
my attention, I have made but slender progress in a kind of
information to which I have been attached from my childhood.
As to swallows (hirundines rusticae) being found in a torpid state
during the winter in the Isle of Wight, or any part of this country, I
never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergyman,
of an inquisitive turn, assures me that, when he was a great boy,
some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower
early in the spring, found two or three swifts (hirundines apodes)
among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, dead, but, on
being carried toward the fire, revived. He told me that, out of his
great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and hung
them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated.
Another intelligent person has informed me that, while he was a
schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the
chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach; and that
many people found swallows among the rubbish; but, on my
questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my
no small disappointment, he answered me in the negative; but that
others assured him they did.
Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the
eleventh, and young martins (hirundines urbicae) were then fledged
in their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see by my
Fauna of last year, that young broods come forth so late as
September the eighteenth. Are not these late hatchings more in
favour of hiding than migration? Nay, some young martins
remained in their nests last year so late as September the twenty-
ninth; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth of
October.
How strange is it that the swift, which seems to live exactly the
same life with the swallow and house-martin, should leave us
before the middle of August invariably! while the latter stay often
till the middle of October; and once I saw numbers of house-
martins on the seventh of November. The martins and red-wing
fieldfares were flying in sight together; an uncommon assemblage
of summer and winter birds.
A little bird (it is either a species of the alauda trivialis, or rather
perhaps of the motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a
sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods. The stoparola of
Ray (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called, in
your Zoology, the fly-catcher. There is one circumstance
characteristic of this bird, which seems to have escaped
observation, and that is, that it takes its stand on the top of some
stake or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a
fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, but returning
still to the same stand for many times together.
I perceive there are more than one species of the motacilla
trochilus: Mr. Derham supposes, in Ray's Philos. Letters, that he
has discovered three. In these there is again an instance of some
very common birds that have as yet no English name.
Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the black-cap (motacilla
atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not: I chink there is no doubt of
it: for, in April, in the very first fine weather, they come trooping,
all at once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They
are delicate songsters.
Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on
the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on
wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes.
I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which
I mentioned to you in town. The person that brought me the last
says they are plenty in harvest, at which time I will take care to get
more; and will endeavour to put the matter out of doubt, whether it
be a nondescript species or not.
I suspect much there may be two species of water-rats. Ray says,
and Linnaeus after him, that the water-rat is web-footed behind.
Now I have discovered a rat on the banks of our little stream that is
not web-footed, and yet is an excellent swimmer and diver: it
answers exactly to the mus amphibius of Linnaeus (see Syst. Nat.),
which he says 'natat in fossis et urinator.' I should be glad to
procure one 'plantis palmatis.' Linnaeus seems to be in a puzzle
about his mus amphibius, and to doubt whether it differs from his
mus terrestris; which if it be, as he allows, the 'mus agrestis capite
grandi brachyuros' of Ray, is widely different from the water-rat,
both in size, make, and mariner of life.
As to the falco, which I mentioned in town, I shall take the liberty
to send it down to you into Wales; presuming on your candour, that
you will excuse me if it should appear as familiar to you as it is
strange to me. Though mutilated 'qualem dices.. . antehac fuisse,
tales cum sint religuiae!'
It haunted a marshy piece of ground in quest of wild-ducks and
snipes: but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which
it was tearing in pieces. I cannot make it answer to any of our
English hawks; neither could I find any like it at the curious
exhibition of stuffed birds in Spring-gardens. I found it nailed up at
the end of a barn, which is the countryman's museum.
The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills
and woods, and therefore full of birds.
Letter XI
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, September 9, 1767.
It will not be without impatience, that I shall wait for your thoughts
with regard to the falco; as to its weight, breadth, etc., I wish I had
set them down at the time; but, to the best of my remembrance, it
weighed two pounds and eight ounces, and measured, from wing to
wing, thirty-eight inches. Its cere and feet were yellow, and the
circle of its eyelids bright yellow. As it had been killed some days,
and the eyes were sunk, I could make no good observation on the
colour of the pupils and the irides.
The most unusual birds I ever observed in these parts were a pair of
hoopoes (upupa) which came several years ago in the summer, and
frequented an ornamented piece of ground, which joins to my
garden, for some weeks. They used to march about in a stately
manner, feeding in the walks, many times in the day; and seemed
disposed to breed in my outlet; but were frightened and persecuted
by idle boys, who would never let them be at rest.
Three gross-beaks (loxia coccothraustes) appeared some years ago
in my fields, in the winter; one of which I shot: since that, now and
then one is occasionally seen in the same dead season.
A cross-bill (loxia curvirostra) was killed last year in this
neighbourhood.
Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the
village, yield nothing but the bull's head or miller's thumb (gobius
fluviatilis capitatus), the trout (trutta fluviatilis), the eel (anguilla),
the lampern (lampaetra parka et fluviatilis), and the stickle-back
(pisciculus aculeatus).
We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many from a great
river, and therefore see but little of sea-birds. As to wild fowls, we
have a few teams of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes
breed; and multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard weather
frequent our lakes in the forest.
Having some acquaintance with a tame brown owl, I find that it
casts up the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after
the manner of hawks: when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot
eat.
The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a
constant supply of fresh mice: whereas the young of the brown owl
will eat indiscriminately all that is brought; snails, rats, kittens,
puppies, magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.
The house-martins have eggs still, and squab-young. The last swift
I observed was about the twenty-first of August; it was a straggler.
Red-starts, fly-catchers, white-throats, and reguli non cristati, still
appear; but I have seen no black-caps lately.
I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College
quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house-
martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the
twentieth of November.
At present I know only two species of bats, the common vespertilio
murinus and the vespertilio auritus.
I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would
take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it
brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its
head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness
it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always
rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects
seem to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh
when offered: so that the notion that bats go down chimnies and
gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused
myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times
confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down on a flat surface
cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the
floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I was aware of;
but in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner.
Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as
they play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, not
only for the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which are
found over them in the greatest plenty. As I was going, some years
ago, pretty late, in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on a warm
summer's evening, I think I saw myriads of bats between the two
places: the air swarmed with them all along the Thames, so that
hundreds were in sight at a time.
I am, etc.
Letter XII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
November 4, 1767.
Sir,
It gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the falco* turned out
an uncommon one. I must confess I should have been better
pleased to have heard that I had sent you a bird that you had never
seen before; but that, I find, would be a difficult task.
(* This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus; a variety.)
I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters, a
young one and a female with young, both of which I have
preserved in brandy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of
nesting, I make no doubt but that the species is nondescript. They
are much smaller and more slender than the mus domesticus
medius of Ray; and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour:
their belly is white, a straight line along their sides divides the
shades of their back and belly. They never enter into houses; are
carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves; abound in harvest,
and build their nests amidst the straws of the corn above the
ground, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as many as eight at a
litter, in a little round nest composed of the blades of grass or
wheat.
One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted,
and composed of the blades of wheat; perfectly round, and about
the size of a cricket-ball; with the aperture so ingeniously closed,
that there was no discovering to what part it belonged. It was so
compact and well filled, that it would roll across the tame being
discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that were naked
and blind. As this nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come
at her litter respectively so as to administer a teat to each? perhaps
she opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them again
when the business is over: but she could not possibly be contained
herself in the ball with her young, which moreover would be daily
increasing in bulk. This wonderful procreant cradle, an elegant
instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a wheat-field,
suspended in the head of a thistle.
A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his servant had
shot one last January, in that severe weather, which he believed
would puzzle me. I called to see it this summer, not knowing what
to expect: but, the moment I took it in hand, I pronounced it the
male garrulus bohemicus or German silk-tail, from the five
peculiar crimson tags or points which it carries at the end of five of
the short remiges. It cannot, I suppose, with any propriety, be
called an English bird: and yet I see, by Ray's Philosoph. Letters,
that great flocks of them, feeding upon hews, appeared in this
kingdom in the winter of 1685.
The mention of hews put me in mind that there is a total failure of
that wild fruit, so conducive to the support of many of the winged
nation. For the same severe weather, late in the spring, which cut
off all the produce of the more tender and curious trees, destroyed
also that of the more hardy and common.
Some birds, haunting with the missal-thrushes, and feeding on the
berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the description of the
merula torquata, or ring-ousel, were lately seen in this
neighbourhood. I employed some people to procure me a
specimen, but without success. See Letter XX.
Query.....Might not canary birds be naturalized to this climate,
provided their eggs were put in the spring, into the nests of some of
their congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, etc. ? Before winter
perhaps they might be hardened, and able to shift for themselves.
About ten years ago I used to spend some weeks yearly at Sunbury,
which is one of those pleasant villages lying on the Thames, near
Hampton-court. In the autumn, I could not help being much
amused with those myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in
those parts. But what struck me most was, that, from the time they
began to congregate, forsaking the chimnies and houses, they
roosted every night in the osier-beds of the sits of that river. Now
this resorting towards that element, at that season of the year,
seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as
it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much
persuaded of that fact, that he talks, in his calendar of Flora, as
familiarly of the swallows going under water in the beginning of
September, as he would of his poultry going to roost a little before
sunset.
An observing gentleman in London writes me word that he saw a
house-martin, on the twenty-third of last October, flying in and out
of its nest in the Borough. And I myself, on the twenty-ninth of last
October (as I was travelling through Oxford), saw four or five
swallows hovering round and settling on the roof of the county-
hospital.
Now is it likely that these poor little birds (which perhaps had not
been hatched but a few weeks) should, at that late season of the
year, and from so midland a county, attempt a voyage to Goree or
Senegal, almost as far as the equator? *
(* See Adamson's Voyage to Senegal.)
I acquiesce entirely in your opinion--that, though most of the
swallow kind may migrate, yet that some do stay behind and hide
with us during the winter.
As to the short-winged soft-billed birds, which come trooping in
such numbers in the spring, I am at a loss even what to suspect
about them. I watched them narrowly this year, and saw them
abound till about Michaelmas, when they appeared no longer.
Subsist they cannot openly among us, and yet elude the eyes of the
inquisitive: and, as to their hiding, no man pretends to have found
any of them in a torpid state in the winter. But with regard to their
migration, what difficulties attend that supposition! that such
feeble bad fliers (who the summer long never flit but from hedge to
hedge) should be able to traverse vast seas and continents in order
to enjoy milder seasons amidst the regions of Africa!
Letter XIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Jan. 22, 1768.
Sir,
As in one of your former letters you expressed the more
satisfaction from my correspondence on account of my living in
the most southerly county; so now I may return the compliment,
and expect to have my curiosity gratified by your living much more
to the north.
For many years past I have observed that towards Christmas vast
flocks of chaffinches have appeared in the fields; many more, I
used to think, than could be hatched in any one neighbourhood.
But, when I came to observe them more narrowly, I was amazed to
find that they seemed to be almost all hens. I communicated my
suspicions to some intelligent neighbours, who, after taking pains
about the matter, declared that they also thought them all mostly
females; at least fifty to one. This extraordinary occurrence brought
to my mind the remark of Linnaeus; that 'before winter, all their
hen chaffinches migrate through Holland into Italy.' Now I want to
know, from some curious person in the north, whether there are
any large flocks of these finches with them in the winter, and of
which sex they mostly consist? For, from such intelligence, one
might be able to judge whether our female flocks migrate from the
other end of the island, or whether they come over to us from the
continent.
We have, in the winter, vast flocks of the common linnets; more, I
think, than can be bred in any one district. These, I observe, when
the spring advances, assemble on some tree in the sunshine, and
join all in a gentle sort of chirping, as if they were about to break
up their winter quarters and betake themselves to their proper
summer homes. It is well known, at least, that the swallows and the
fieldfares do congregate with a gentle twittering before they make
their respective departure.
You may depend on it that the bunting, emberiza miliaria, does not
leave this country in the winter. In January 1767 I saw several
dozen of them, in the midst of a severe frost, among the bushes on
the downs near Andover: in our woodland enclosed district it is a
rare bird.
Wagtails, both white and yellow, are with us all the winter. Quails
crowd to our southern coast, and are often killed in numbers by
people that go on purpose.
Mr. Stillingfleet, in his Tracts, says that 'if the wheatear (oenanthe)
does not quit England, it certainly shifts places; for about harvest
they are not to be found, where there was before great plenty of
them.' This well accounts for the vast quantities that are caught
about that time on the south downs near Lewes, where they are
esteemed a delicacy. There have been shepherds, I have been
credibly informed, that have made many pounds in a season by
catching them in traps. And though such multitudes are taken, I
never saw (and I am well acquainted with those parts) above two or
three at a time: for they are never gregarious. They may, perhaps,
migrate in general; and, for that purpose, draw towards the coast of
Sussex in autumn; but that they do not all withdraw I am sure;
because I see a few stragglers in many counties, at all times of the
year, especially about warrens and stone quarries.
I have no acquaintance, at present, among the gentlemen of the
navy: but have written to a friend, who was a sea-chaplain in the
late war, desiring him to look into his minutes, with respect to
birds that settled on their rigging during their voyage up or down
the channel. What Hasselquist says on that subject is remarkable:
there were little short-winged birds frequently coming on board his
ship all the way from our channel quite up to the Levant, especially
before squatty weather.
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