The Natural History of Selborne Part 5

(* See Ray's Travels, p. 466.)

I have no friend left now at Sunbury to apply to about the swallows roosting on the aits of the Thames: nor can I hear any more about those birds which I suspected were merulae torquatae,.

As to the small mice, I have farther to remark, that though they hang their nests for breeding up amidst the straws of the standing corn, above the ground; yet I find that, in the winter, they burrow deep in the earth, and make warm beds of gra.s.s: but their grand rendezvous seems to be in corn-ricks, into which they are carried at harvest. A neighbour housed an oat-rick lately, under the thatch of which were a.s.sembled near an hundred, most of which were taken; and some I saw. I measured them; and found that, from nose to tail, they were just two inches and a quarter, and their tails just two inches long. Two of them in a scale, weighed down just one copper halfpenny, which is about a third of an ounce avoirdupois: so that I suppose they are the smallest quadrupeds in this island. A full- grown mus medius domesticus weighs, I find, one ounce, lumping weight, which is more than six times as much as the mouse above; and measures from nose to rump four inches and a quarter, and the same in its tail.

We have had a very severe frost and deep snow this month. My thermometer was one day fourteen degrees and a half below the freezing point, within doors. The tender evergreens were injured pretty much. It was very providential that the air was still, and the ground well covered with snow, else vegetation in general must have suffered prodigiously. There is reason to believe that some days were more severe than any since the year 1739-40.

I am, etc., etc.

Letter XIV To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, March 12, 1768.

Dear Sir,

If some curious gentleman would procure the head of a fallow- deer, and have it dissected, he would find it furnished with two spiracula, or breathing-places, beside the nostrils; probably a.n.a.logous to the puncta lachrymalia in the human head. When the deer are thirsty they plunge their noses, like some horses, very deep under water, while in the act of drinking, and continue them in that situation for a considerable time, but, to obviate any inconvenience, they can open two vents, one at the inner corner of each eye, having a communication with the nose. Here seems to be an extraordinary provision of nature worthy our attention; and which has not, that I know of, been noticed by any naturalist. For it looks as if these creatures would not be suffocated, though both their mouths and nostrils were stopped. This curious formation of the head may be of singular service to beasts of chase, by affording them free respiration: and no doubt these additional nostrils are thrown open when they are hard run.* Mr. Ray observed that, at Malta, the owners slit up the nostrils of such a.s.ses as were hard worked: for they, being naturally strait or small, did not admit air sufficient serve them when they travelled or laboured in that hot climate. And we know that grooms, and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and running horses.

(* In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent me the following curious and pertinent reply:--'I was much surprised to find in the antelope something a.n.a.logous to what you mention as so remarkable in deer. This animal has a long slit beneath each eye, which can be opened and shut at pleasure. On holding an orange to one, the creature made as much use of those orifices as of his nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and seeming to smell it through them.')

Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had some notion that stags have four spiracula:

Quadrifidae nares, quadruplices ad respirationem ca.n.a.les.

Opp. Cyn. lib. ii. 1. 181.

Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say that goats breathe at their ears; whereas he a.s.serts just the contrary: 'Alcmaeon does not advance what is true, when he avers that goats breathe through their ears.'--History of Animals. Book I. chap. xi.

Letter XV To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Mark 30, 1768.

Dear Sir,

Some intelligent country people have a notion that we have, in these parts, a species of the genus mustelinum, besides the weasel, stoat, ferret, and polecat; a little reddish beast, not much bigger than a field mouse, but much longer, which they call a cane. This piece of intelligence can be little depended on; but farther inquiry may be made.

A gentleman in this neighbourhood had two milk-white rooks in one nest. A b.o.o.by of a carter, finding them before they were able to fly, threw them down and destroyed them, to the regret of the owner, who would have been glad to have preserved such a curiosity in his rookery. I saw the birds myself nailed against the end of a barn, and was surprised to find that their bills, legs, feet, and claws were milk-white.

A shepherd saw, as he thought, some white larks on a down above my house this winter: were not these the emberiza nivalis, the snow-flake of the Brat. Zool.? No doubt they were.

A few years ago I saw a c.o.c.k bullfinch in a cage, which had been caught in the fields after it had come to its full colours. In about a year it began to look dingy; and, blackening every succeeding year, it became coal-black at the end of four. Its chief food was hemp- seed. Such influence has food on the colour of animals! The pied and mottled colours of domesticated animals are supposed to be owing to high, various, and unusual food.

I had remarked, for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of the arum is remarkably warm and pungent.

Our flocks of female chaffinches have not yet forsaken us. The blackbirds and thrushes are very much thinned down by that fierce weather in January.

In the middle of February I discovered, in my tall hedges, a little bird that raised my curiosity: it was of that yellow-green colour that belongs to the salicaria kind, and, I think, was soft-billed. It was no paws, and was too long and too big for the golden-crowned wren, appearing most like the largest willow-wren. It hung sometimes with its back downwards, but never continuing one moment in the same place. I shot at it, but it was so desultory that I missed my aim.

I wonder that the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird: it abounds in all the campaign parts of Hamps.h.i.+re and Suss.e.x, and breeds, I think, all the summer, having young ones, I know, very late in the autumn.

Already they begin clamouring in the evening. They cannot, I think, with any propriety, be called, as they are by Mr. Ray, 'circa aquas versantes'; for with us, by day at least, they haunt only the most dry, open, upland fields and sheep walks, far removed from water. What they may do in the night I cannot say. Worms are their usual food, but they also eat toads and frogs.

I can show you some good specimens of my new mice. Linnaeus, perhaps, would call the species mus minimus.

Letter XVI To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, April 18, 1768.

Dear Sir,

The history of the stone curlew, charadrius oedicnemus is as follows. It lays its eggs, usually two, never more than three, on the bare ground, without any nest, in the field; so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows, often destroys them. The young run immediately from the egg like partridges, etc., and are withdrawn to some flinty field by their dam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their best security; for their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our grey spotted flints, that the most exact observer, unless he catches the eye of the young bird, may be eluded. The eggs are short and round; of a dirty white, spotted with dark b.l.o.o.d.y blotches. Though I might not be able, just when I pleased, to procure you a bird, yet I could show you them almost any day; and any evening you may hear them round the village, for they make a clamour which may be heard a mile. Oedicnemus is a most apt and expressive name for them, since their legs seem sworn like those of a gouty man. After harvest I have shot them before the pointers in turnip-fields.

I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow-wrens: two I know perfectly; but have not been able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constancy, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note; the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half; while the latter weighs but two: so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer-bird of pa.s.sage that is heard, the wryneck sometimes excepted) begins his two notes in the middle of March, and continues them through the spring and summer till the end of August, as appears by my journals. The legs of the larger of these two are flesh-coloured; of the less, black.

The gra.s.shopper-lark began his sibilous note in my fields last Sat.u.r.day. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of this little bird, which seems to be close by though at an hundred yards distance; and, when close at your ear, is scarce any louder than when a great way oil.. Had I not been a little acquainted with insects, and known that the gra.s.shopper kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it had been a locusta whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful creature, skulking in the thickest part of a bush; and will sing at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on the other side of the hedge where it haunted; and then it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us for a hundred yards together, through the bottom of the thorns; yet it would not come into fair sight: but in a morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping and s.h.i.+vering with its wings. Mr.

Ray himself had no knowledge of this bird, but received his account from Mr. Johnson, who apparently confounds it with the reguli non cristati, from which it is very distinct. See Ray's Philosophical Letters, p. 108.

The fly-catcher (stoparola) has not yet appeared: it usually breeds in my vine. The redstart begins to sing: its note is short and imperfect, but is continued till about the middle of June. The willow-wrens (the smaller sort) are horrid pests in a garden, destroying the pease, cherries, currants, etc., and are so tame that a gun will not scare them.

A List of the summer birds of pa.s.sage discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear:

Smallest willow-wren, Linnaei Nomina Motacilla trochilus.

Wryneck, Lynx torquilla.

House-swallow, Hirundo rustica.

Martin, Hirundo urbica.

Sand-martin, Hirundo riparia .

Cuckoo, Cuculus canorus.

Nightingale, Motacilla luscinia.

Black-cap, Motacilla atricapilla.

White-throat, Motacilla sylvia.

Middle willow-wren, Motacilla trochilus.

Swift, Hirundo apus.

Stone curlew? Charadrius oedicnemus?

Turtle-dove? Turtur aldrovandi?

Gra.s.shopper-lark, Alauda trivialis.

Landrail, Rallus crex.

Largest willow-wren, Motacilla trochilus.

Redstart, Motacilla phoenicurus.

Goat-sucker, or fern-owl, Caprimulgus europaeus.

Fly-catcher, Muscicapa grisola.

My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter with its bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it a jar-bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the sitta europaea (the nut-hatch). Mr. Ray says that the less spotted woodp.e.c.k.e.r does the same. This noise may be heard a furlong or more.

Now is the only time to ascertain the short-winged summer birds; for, when the leaf is out, there is no making any remarks on such a restless tribe; and, when once the young begin to appear, it is all confusion: there is no distinction of genus, species, or s.e.x.

In breeding-time snipes play over the moors, piping and humming: they always hum as they are descending. Is not their hum ventriloquous like that of a turkey? Some suspect it is made by their wings.