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The water-eft has not, that I can discern, the least appearance of
any gills; for want of which it is continually rising to the surface of
the water to take in fresh air. I opened a big-bellied one indeed, and
found it full of spawn. Not that this circumstance at all invalidates
the assertion that they are larvae: for the larvae of insects are full of
eggs, which they exclude the instant they enter their last state. The
water-eft is continually climbing over the brims of the vessel,
within which we keep it in water, and wandering away: and people
every summer see numbers crawling out of the pools where they
are hatched, up the dry banks. There are varieties of them, differing
colour; and some have fins up their tail and back, and some have
not.
Letter XIX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Aug. 17, 1768.
Dear Sir,
I have now, past dispute, made out three distinct species of the
willow-wrens (motacillae trochili) which constantly and invariably
use distinct notes. But, at the same time, I am obliged to confess
that I know nothing of your willow-lark.* In my letter of April the
18th, I told you peremptorily that I knew your willow-lark, but had
not seen it then: but, when I came to procure it, it proved, in all
respects, a very motacilla trochilus; only that it is a size larger than
the two other, and the yellow-green of the whole upper part of the
body is more vivid, and the belly of a clearer white. I have
specimens of the three sorts now lying before me; and can discern
that there are three gradations of sizes, and that the least has black
legs, and the other two flesh-coloured ones. The yellowest bird is
considerably the largest, and has its quill-feathers and secondary
feathers tipped with white, which the others have not. This last
haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a
sibilous grasshopper-like noise, now and then, at short intervals,
shivering a little with its wings when it sings; and is, I make no
doubt now, the regulus non cristatus of Ray, which he says 'cantat
voce stridula locustae.' Yet this great ornithologist never suspected
that there were three species.
(*Brit. Zool. edit. 1776, octavo, p. 381.)
Letter XX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, October 8, 1768.
It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany: all nature is so full, that
that district produces the greatest variety which is the most
examined. Several birds, which are said to belong to the north only,
are, it seems, often in the south. I have discovered this summer
three species of birds with us, which writers mention as only to be
seen in the northern counties. The first that was brought me (on the
14th of May) was the sandpiper, tringa hypoleucus: it was a cock
bird, and haunted the banks of some ponds near the village; and, as
it had a companion, doubtless intended to have bred near that
water. Besides, the owner has told me since, that, on recollection,
he has seen some of the same birds round his ponds in former
summers.
The next bird that I procured (on the 21st of May) was a male red-
backed butcher bird, lanius collurio. My neighbour, who shot it,
says that it might easily have escaped his notice, had not the
outcries and chattering of the white-throats and other small birds
drawn his attention to the bush where it was: its craw was filled
with the legs and wings of beetles.
The next rare birds (which were procured for me last week) were
some ring-ousels, turdi torquati.
This week twelve months a gentleman from London, being with us,
was amusing himself with a gun, and found, he told us, on an old
yew hedge where there were berries, some birds like blackbirds,
with rings of white round their necks: a neighbouring farmer also at
the same time observed the same; but, as no specimens were
procured little notice was taken. I mentioned this circumstance to
you in my letter of November the 4th, 1767 (you, however, paid
but small regard to what I said, as I had not seen these birds
myself); but last week, the aforesaid farmer, seeing a large dock,
twenty or thirty of these birds, shot two cocks and two hens: and
says, on recollection, that he remembers to have observed these
birds again last spring, about Lady-day, as it were, on their return
to the north. Now perhaps these ousels are not the ousels of the
north of England, but belong to the more northern parts of Europe;
and may retire before the excessive rigour of the frosts in those
parts; and return to breed in the spring, when the cold abates. If this
be the case, here is discovered a new bird of winter passage,
concerning whose migrations the writers are silent: but if these
birds should prove the ousels of the north of England, then here is a
migration disclosed within our own kingdom never before
remarked. It does not yet appear whether they retire beyond the
bounds of our island to the south; but it is most probable that they
usually do, or else one cannot suppose that they would have
continued so long unnoticed in the southern counties. The ousel is
larger than a blackbird, and feeds on haws; but last autumn (when
there were no haws) it fed on yew-berries: in the spring it feeds on
ivy-berries, which ripen only at that season, in March and April.
I must not omit to tell you (as you have been so lately on the study
of reptiles) that my people, every now and then of late, draw up
with a bucket of water from my well, which is 63 feet deep, a large
black warty lizard with a fin-tail and yellow belly. How they first
came down at that depth, and how they were ever to have got out
thence without help, is more than I am able to say.
My thanks are due to you for your trouble and care in the
examination of a buck's head. As far as your discoveries reach at
present, they seem much to corroborate my suspicions; and I hope
Mr. ... may find reason to give his decision in my favour; and then,
I think, we may advance this extraordinary provision of nature as a
new instance of the wisdom of God in the creation.
As yet I have not quite done with my history of the oedicnemus, or
stone curlew; for I shall desire a gentleman in Sussex (near whose
house these birds congregate in vast flocks in the autumn) to
observe nicely when they leave him (if they do leave him), and
when they return again in the spring; I was with this gentleman
lately, and saw several single birds.
Letter XXI
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Nov. 28, 1768.
Dear Sir,
With regard to the oedicnemus, or stone curlew, I intend to write
very soon to my friend near Chichester, in whose neighbourhood
these birds seem most to abound; and shall urge him to take
particular notice when they begin to congregate, and afterwards to
watch them most narrowly whether they do not withdraw
themselves during the dead of the winter. When I have obtained
information with respect to this circumstance, I shall have finished
my history of the stone curlew; which I hope will prove to your
satisfaction, as it will be, I trust, very near the truth. This
gentleman, as he occupies a large farm of his own, and is abroad
early and late, will be a very proper spy upon the motions of these
birds: and besides, as I have prevailed on him to buy the
Naturalist's Journal (with which he is much delighted), I shall
expect that he will be very exact in his dates. It is very
extraordinary, as you observe, that a bird so common with us
should never straggle to you.
And here will be the properest place to mention, while I think of it,
an anecdote which the above-mentioned gentleman told me when I
was last at his house; which was that, in a warren joining to his
outlet, many daws (corvi monedulae) build every year in the rabbit
burrows under ground. The way he and his brothers used to take
their nests, while they were boys, was by listening at the mouths of
the holes; and, if they heard the young ones cry, they twisted the
nest out with a forked stick. Some water-fowls (viz., the puffins)
breed, I know, in that manner; but I should never have suspected
the daws of building in holes on the flat ground.
Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to
breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their nests in
the interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that
amazing work of antiquity: which circumstance alone speaks the
prodigious height of the upright stones, that they should be tall
enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of shepherd-boys,
who are always idling round that place.
One of my neighbours last Saturday, November the 26th, saw a
martin in a sheltered bottom: the sun shone warm, and the bird was
hawking briskly after flies. I am now perfectly satisfied that they
do not all leave this island in the winter.
You judge very right, I think, in speaking with reserve and caution
concerning the cures done by toads: for, let people advance what
they will on such subjects, yet there is such a propensity in
mankind towards deceiving and being deceived, that one cannot
safely relate any thing from common report, especially in print,
without expressing some degree of doubt and suspicion.
Your approbation, with regard to my new discovery of the
migration of the ring-ousel, gives me satisfaction; and I find you
concur with me in suspecting that they are foreign birds which visit
us. You will be sure, I hope, not to omit to make inquiry whether
your ring-ousels leave your rocks in the autumn. What puzzles me
most, is the very short stay they make with us; for in about three
weeks they are all gone. I shall be very curious to remark whether
they will call on us at their return in the spring, as they did last
year.
I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology. If fortune
had settled me near the sea-side, or near some great river, my
natural propensity would soon have urged me to have made myself
acquainted with their productions: but as I have lived mostly in
inland parts, and in an upland district, my knowledge of fishes
extends little farther than to those common sorts which our brooks
and lakes produce.
I am, etc.
Letter XXII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, July 2, 1769.
Dear Sir,
As to the peculiarity of jackdaws building with us under the ground
in rabbit-burrows, you have, in part, hit upon the reason; for, in
reality, there are hardly any towers or steeples in all this country.
And perhaps, Norfolk excepted, Hampshire and Sussex are as
meanly furnished with churches as almost any counties in the
kingdom. We have many livings of two or three hundred pounds a
year, whose houses of worship make little better appearance than
dovecots. When I first saw Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and
Huntingdonshire, and the fens of Lincolnshire, I was amazed at the
number of spires which presented themselves in every point of
view. As an admirer of prospects, I have reason to lament this want
in my own country; for such objects are very necessary ingredients
in an elegant landscape.
What you mention with respect to reclaimed toads raises my
curiosity. An ancient author, though no naturalist, has well
remarked that 'Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents,
and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed, of
mankind.' *
(* James, chap. iii. 7.)
It is a satisfaction to me to find that a green lizard has actually been
procured for you in Devonshire; because it corroborates my
discovery, which I made many years ago, of the same sort, on a
sunny sandbank near Farnham in Surrey. I am well acquainted with
the south hams of Devonshire; and can suppose that district, from
its southerly situation, to be a proper habitation for such animals in
their best colours.
Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not
forsake them against winter, our suspicions that those which visit
this neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not English birds, but
driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the frosts, are
still more reasonable: and it will be worth your pains to endeavour
to trace from whence they come, and to inquire why they make so
very short a stay.
In your account of your error with regard to the two species of
herons, you incidentally gave me great entertainment in your
description of the heronry at Cressi-hall; which is a curiosity I
could never manage to see. Fourscore nests of such a bird on one
tree is a rarity which I would ride half as many miles to have a
sight of. Pray be sure to tell me in your next whose seat Cressi-hall
is, and near what town it lies.* I have often thought that those vast
extents of fens have never been sufficiently explored. If half a
dozen gentlemen, furnished with a good strength of water-spaniels,
were to beat them over for a week, they would certainly find more
species.
(* Cressi-hall is near Spalding, in Lincolnshire .)
There is no bird, I believe, whose manners I have studied more
than that of the caplimulgus (the goat-sucker), as it is a wonderful
and curious creature: but I have always found that though
sometimes it may chatter as it flies, as I know it does, yet in
general it utters its jarring note sitting on a bough; and I have for
many an half hour watched it as it sat with its under mandible
quivering, and particularly this summer. It perches usually on a
bare twig, with its head lower than its tail, in an attitude well
expressed by your draughtsman in the folio British Zoology. This
bird is most punctual in beginning its song exactly at the close of
day; so exactly that I have known it strike up more than once or
twice just at the report of the Portsmouth evening gun, which we
can hear when the weather is still. It appears to me past all doubt
that its notes are formed by organic impulse, by the powers of the
parts of its windpipe, formed for sound, just as cats pur. You will
credit me, I hope, when I tell you that, as my neighbours were
assembled in an hermitage on the side of a steep hill where we
drink tea, one of these churn-owls came and settled on the cross of
that little straw edifice and began to chatter, and continued his note
for many minutes: and we were all struck with wonder to find that
the organs of that little animal, when put in motion, gave a sensible
vibration to the whole building! This bird also sometimes makes a
small squeak, repeated four or five times; and I have observed that
to happen when the cock has been pursuing the hen in a toying way
through the boughs of a tree.
It would not be at all strange if your bat, which you have procured,
should prove a new one, since five species have been found in a
neighbouring kingdom. The great sort that I mentioned is certainly
a nondescript: I saw but one this summer, and that I had no
opportunity of taking.
Your account of the Indian-grass was entertaining. I am no angler
myself; but inquiring of those that are, what they supposed that part
of their tackle to be made of? they replied 'of the intestines of a
silkworm.'
Though I must not pretend to great skill in entomology, yet I
cannot say that I am ignorant of that kind of knowledge: I may now
and then, perhaps, be able to furnish you with a little information.
The vast rains ceased with us much about the same time as with
you, and since we have had delicate weather. Mr. Barker, who has
measured the rain for more than thirty years, says, in a late letter,
that more has fallen this year than in any he ever attended to;
though, from July 1763 to January 1764, more fell than in any
seven months of this year.
Letter XXIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, February 28, 1769.
Dear Sir,
It is not improbable that the Guernsey lizard and our green lizard
may be specifically the same; all that I know is, that, when some
years ago many Guernsey lizards were turned loose in Pembroke
college garden, in the University of Oxford, they lived a great
while, and seemed to enjoy themselves very well, but never bred.
Whether this circumstance will prove anything either way I shall
not pretend to say.
I return you thanks for your account of Cressi-hall; but recollect,
not without regret, that in June 1746 I was visiting for a week
together at Spalding, without ever being told that such a curiosity
was just at hand. Pray send me word in your next what sort of tree
it is that contains such a quantity of herons' nests; and whether the
heronry consists of a whole grove or wood, or only of a few trees.
It gave me satisfaction to find that we accorded so well about the
caprimulgus: all I contended for was to prove that it often chatters
sitting as well as flying; and therefore the noise was voluntary, and
from organic impulse, and not from the resistance of the air against
the hollow of its mouth and throat.
If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last
Michaelmas-day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning: at
first there was a vast fog; but, by the time that I was got seven or
eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke out into a
delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath or common, and
I could discern, as the mist began to break away, great numbers of
swallows (hirundines rusticae) clustering on the stinted shrubs and
bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As soon as the air
became clear and pleasant they all were on the wing at once; and,
by a placid and easy flight, proceeded on southward towards the
sea: after this I did not see any more flocks, only now and then a
straggler.
I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow kind
disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the bulk of
them seem to withdraw at once: only some stragglers stay behind a
long while, and do never, there is the greatest reason to believe,
leave this island. Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come
forth in a warm day, as bats do continually of a warm evening,
after they have disappeared for weeks. For a very respectable
gentleman assured me that, as he was walking with some friends
under Merton-wall on a remarkably hot noon, either in the last
week in December or the first week in January, he espied three or
four swallows huddled together on the moulding of one of the
windows of that college. I have frequently remarked that swallows
are seen later at Oxford than elsewhere: is it owing to the vast
massy buildings of that place, to the many waters round it, or to
what else?
When I used to rise in a morning last autumn, and see the swallows
and martins clustering on the chimnies and thatch of the
neighbouring cottages, I could not help being touched with a secret
delight, mixed with some degree of mortification: with delight to
observe with how much ardour and punctuality those poor little
birds obeyed the strong impulse towards migration, or hiding,
imprinted on their minds by their great Creator; and with some
degree of mortification, when I reflected that, after all our pains
and inquiries, we are yet not quite certain to what regions they do
migrate; and are still farther embarrassed to find that some do not
actually migrate at all.
These reflections made so strong an impression on my imagination,
that they became productive of a composition that may perhaps
amuse you for a quarter of an hour when next I have the honour of
writing to you.
Letter XXIV
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, May 29, 1769.
Dear Sir,
The scarabaeus fullo I know very well, having seen it in
collections; but have never been able to discover one wild in its
natural state. Mr. Banks told me he thought it might be found on
the sea-coast.
On the thirteenth of April I went to the sheep-down, where the
ring-ousels have been observed to make their appearance at spring
and fall, in their way perhaps to the north or south; and was much
pleased to see three birds about the usual spot. We shot a cock and
a hen; they were plump and in high condition. The hen had but
very small rudiments of eggs within her, which proves they are late
breeders; whereas those species of the thrush kind that remain with
us the whole year have fledged young before that time. In their
crops was nothing very distinguishable, but somewhat that seemed
like blades of vegetables nearly digested. In autumn they feed on
haws and yew-berries, and in the spring on ivy-berries. I dressed
one of these birds, and found it juicy and well-flavoured. It is
remarkable that they make but a few days' stay in their spring visit,
but rest near a fortnight at Michaelmas. These birds, from the
observations of three springs and two autumns, are most punctual
in their return; and exhibit a new migration unnoticed by the
writers, who supposed they never were to be seen in any of the
southern counties.
One of my neighbours lately brought me a new salicaria, which at
first I suspected might have proved your willow-lark,* but, on a
nicer examination, it answered much better to the description of
that species which you shot at Revesby, in Lincolnshire. My bird I
describe thus: 'It is a size less than the grasshopper-lark; the head,
back, and coverts of the wings of a dusky brown, without those
dark spots of the grasshopper-lark; over each eye is a milk-white
stroke; the chin and throat are white, and the under parts of a
yellowish white; the rump is tawny and the feathers of the tail
sharp-pointed; the bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs are dusky;
the hinder claw long and crooked. The person that shot it says that
it sung so like a reed-sparrow that he took it for one; and that it
sings all night; but this account merits further inquiry. For my part,
I suspect it is a second sort of locustella, hinted at by Dr. Derham
in Ray's Letters: see p. 108. He also procured me a grasshopper-
lark.
(* For this salicaria see letter August 30, 1769.)
The question that you put with regard to those genera of animals
that are peculiar to America, viz. how they came there, and
whence? is too puzzling for me to answer; and yet so obvious as
often to have struck me with wonder. If one looks into the writers
on that subject little satisfaction is to be found. Ingenious men will
readily advance plausible arguments to support whatever theory
they shall choose to maintain; but then the misfortune is, every
one's hypothesis is each as good as another's, since they are all
founded on conjecture. The late writers of this sort, in whom may
be seen all the arguments of those that have gone before, as I
remember, stock America from the western coast of Africa and the
south of Europe; and then break down the Isthmus that bridged
over the Atlantic. But this is making use of a violent piece of
machinery: it is a difficulty worthy of the interposition of a god!
'Incredulus odi.'
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
The Naturalist's Summer-evening Walk
... equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
Ingenium.
Virg. Georg.
When day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the may-fly * haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant** cuckoo's tale,
To hear the clamorous*** curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;
To see the swallow sweep the dark'ning plain
Belated, to support her infant train;
To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring
Dash round the steeple, unsubdu'd of wing:
Amusive birds!--say where your hid retreat
When the frost rages and the tempests beat;
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led,
When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ?
Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride,
The God of Nature is your secret guide!
While deep'ning shades obscure the face of day
To yonder bench, leaf-shelter'd, let us stray,
Till blended objects fail the swimming sight,
And all the fading landscape sinks in night;
To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by
With buzzing wing, or the shrill**** cricket cry;
To see the feeding bat glance through the wood;
To catch the distant falling of the flood;
While o'er the cliff th' awakened churn-owl hung
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song;
While high in air, and pois'd upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft enamour'd woodlark***** sings:
These, Nature's works, the curious mind employ,
Inspire a soothing melancholy joy:
As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain
Steals o'er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein!
Each rural sight, each sound, each smell combine;
The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine;
The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze,
Or cottage-chimney smoking through the trees.
The chilling night-dews fall: away, retire;
For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire!******
Thus, ere night's veil had half obscured the sky,
Th' impatient damsel hung her lamp on high:
True to the signal, by love's meteor led,
Leander hasten'd to his Hero's bed.*******
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