The Natural History of Selborne Volume II Part 5

SELBORNE, _April_ 29_th_, 1776.

Dear Sir,--On August 4th, 1775, we surprised a large viper, which seemed very heavy and bloated, as it lay in the gra.s.s basking in the sun. When we came to cut it up, we found that the abdomen was crowded with young, fifteen in number; the shortest of which measured full seven inches, and were about the size of full-grown earth-worms. This little fry issued into the world with the true viper-spirit about them, showing great alertness as soon as disengaged from the belly of the dam: they twisted and wriggled about, and set themselves up, and gaped very wide when touched with a stick, showing manifest tokens of menace and defiance, though as yet they had no manner of fangs that we could find, even with the help of our gla.s.ses.

To a thinking mind nothing is more wonderful than that early instinct which impresses young animals with a notion of the situation of their natural weapons, and of using them properly in their own defence, even before those weapons subsist or are formed. Thus a young c.o.c.k will spar at his adversary before his spurs are grown: and a calf or a lamb will push with their heads before their horns are sprouted. In the same manner did these young adders attempt to bite before their fangs were in being. The dam however was furnished with very formidable ones, which we lifted up (for they fold down when not used), and cut them off with the point of our scissors.

There was little room to suppose that this brood had ever been in the open air before; and that they were taken in for refuge, at the mouth of the dam, when she perceived that danger was approaching; because then probably we should have found them somewhere in the neck, and not in the abdomen.

LETTER x.x.xII.

Castration has a strange effect: it emasculates both man, beast, and bird, and brings them to a near resemblance of the other s.e.x. Thus eunuchs have smooth, unmuscular arms, thighs, and legs; and broad hips, and beardless chins, and squeaking voices. Gelt stags and bucks have hornless heads, like hinds and does. Thus wethers have small horns, like ewes; and oxen large bent horns, and hoa.r.s.e voices when they low, like cows: for bulls have short straight horns; and though they mutter and grumble in a deep, tremendous tone, yet they low in a shrill high key.

Capons have small combs and gills, and look pallid about the head, like pullets; they also walk without any parade, and hover chickens like hens.

Barrow-hogs have also small tusks like sows.

Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour puts a stop to the growth of those parts or appendages that are looked upon as its insignia. But the ingenious Mr. Lisle, in his book on husbandry, carries it much farther; for he says that the loss of those insignia alone has sometimes a strange effect on the ability itself: he had a boar so fierce and venereous, that, to prevent mischief, orders were given for his tusks to be broken off. No sooner had the beast suffered this injury than his powers forsook him, and he neglected those females to whom before he was pa.s.sionately attached, and from whom no fences would restrain him.

LETTER x.x.xIII.

The natural term of a hog's life is little known, and the reason is plain--because it is neither profitable nor convenient to keep that turbulent animal to the full extent of its time: however, my neighbour, a man of substance, who had no occasion to study every little advantage to a nicety, kept a half-bred bantam-sow, who was as thick as she was long, and whose belly swept on the ground till she was advanced to her seventeenth year, at which period she showed some tokens of age by the decay of her teeth and the decline of her fertility.

For about ten years this prolific mother produced two litters in the year of about ten at a time, and once above twenty at a litter; but, as there were near double the number of pigs to that of teats, many died. From long experience in the world this female was grown very sagacious and artful. When she found occasion to converse with a boar, she used to open all the intervening gates, and march, by herself, up to a distant farm where one was kept; and when her purpose was served, would return by the same means. At the age of about fifteen her litters began to be reduced to four or five, and such a litter she exhibited when in her fatting-pen. She proved, when fat, good bacon, juicy, and tender; the rind, or sward, was remarkably thin. At a moderate computation she was allowed to have been the fruitful parent of three hundred pigs: a prodigious instance of fecundity in so large a quadruped! She was killed in spring, 1775.

I am, etc.

LETTER x.x.xIV.

SELBORNE, _May_ 9_th_, 1776.

" . . . admorunt ubera tigres."

Dear Sir,--We have remarked in a former letter {83} how much incongruous animals, in a lonely state, may be attached to each other from a spirit of sociality; in this it may not be amiss to recount a different motive which has been known to create as strange a fondness. My friend had a little helpless leveret brought to him, which the servants fed with milk in a spoon, and about the same time his cat kittened and the young were dispatched and buried. The hare was soon lost, and supposed to be gone the way of most foundlings, to be killed by some dog or cat. However, in about a fortnight, as the master was sitting in his garden in the dusk of the evening, he observed his cat, with tail erect, trotting towards him, and calling with little short inward notes of complacency, such as they use towards their kittens, and something gamboling after, which proved to be the leveret that the cat had supported with her milk, and continued to support with great affection.

Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and predaceous one!

Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the ferocious genus of _Felis_, the _murium leo_, as Linnaeus calls it, should be affected with any tenderness towards an animal which is its natural prey, is not so easy to determine.

This strange affection probably was occasioned by that desiderium, those tender maternal feelings, which the loss of her kittens had awakened in her breast; and by the complacency and ease she derived to herself from the procuring her teats to be drawn, which were too much distended with milk, till, from habit, she became as much delighted with this foundling as if it had been her real offspring.

This incident is no bad solution of that strange circ.u.mstance which grave historians as well as the poets a.s.sert, of exposed children being sometimes nurtured by female wild beasts that probably had lost their young. For it is not one whit more marvellous that Romulus and Remus, in their infant state, should be nursed by a she-wolf, than that a poor little sucking leveret should be fostered and cherished by a b.l.o.o.d.y grimalkin.

" . . . viridi foetam Mavortis in antro Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circ.u.m Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem Impavidos: illam tereti cervice reflexam Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua."

LETTER x.x.xV.

SELBORNE, _May_ 20_th_, 1777.

Dear Sir,--Lands that are subject to frequent inundations are always poor; and probably the reason may be because the worms are drowned. The most insignificant insects and reptiles are of much more consequence, and have much more influence in the economy of Nature than the incurious are aware of, and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention, and from their numbers and fecundity. Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For, to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them, by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks of leaves and twigs into it, and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth called worm-casts, which, being their excrement, is a fine manure for grain and gra.s.s. Worms probably provide new soil for hills and slopes where the rain washes the earth away; and they affect slopes, probably to avoid being flooded. Gardeners and farmers express their detestation of worms; the former because they render their walks unsightly, and make them much work; and the latter because, as they think, worms eat their green corn. But these men would find that the earth without worms would soon become cold, hard-bound, and void of fermentation, and consequently sterile; and besides, in favour of worms, it should be hinted that green corn, plants, and flowers, are not so much injured by them as by many species of _coleoptera_ (scarabs), and _tipuloe_ (long-legs) in their larva, or grub-state, and by unnoticed myriads of small sh.e.l.l-less snails, called slugs, which silently and imperceptibly make amazing havoc in the field and garden. {86}

These hints we think proper to throw out in order to set the inquisitive and discerning to work.

A good monography of worms would afford much entertainment and information at the same time, and would open a large and new field in natural history. Worms work most in the spring, but by no means lie torpid in the dead months: are out every mild night in the winter, as any person may be convinced that will take the pains to examine his gra.s.s- plots with a candle; are hermaphrodites, and very prolific.

I am, etc.

LETTER x.x.xVI.

SELBORNE, _Nov._ 22_nd_, 1777.

Dear Sir,--You cannot but remember that the 26th and 27th of last March were very hot days--so sultry that everybody complained and were restless under those sensations to which they had not been reconciled by gradual approaches.

This sudden summer-like heat was attended by many summer coincidences; for on those two days the thermometer rose to 66 degrees in the shade; many species of insects revived and came forth; some bees swarmed in this neighbourhood; the old tortoise, near Lewes, in Suss.e.x, awakened and came forth out of its dormitory; and, what is most to my present purpose, many house-swallows appeared and were very alert in many places, and particularly at Chobham, in Surrey.

But as that short, warm period was succeeded as well as preceded by harsh, severe weather, with frequent frosts and ice, and cutting winds, the insects withdrew, the tortoise retired again into the ground, and the swallows were seen no more until the 10th April, when, the rigour of the spring abating, a softer season began to prevail.

Again, it appears by my journals for many years past that house-martins retire, to a bird, about the beginning of October, so that a person not very observant of such matters would conclude that they had taken their last farewell; but then it may be seen in my diaries also that considerable flocks have discovered themselves again in the first week of November, and often on the fourth day of that month, only for one day, and that not as if they were in actual migration, but playing about at their leisure and feeding calmly, as if no enterprise of moment at all agitated their spirits. And this was the case in the beginning of this very month; for on the 4th November more than twenty house-martins, which, in appearance, had all departed about the 7th October, were seen again for that one morning only sporting between my fields and the Hanger, and feasting on insects which swarmed in that sheltered district.

The preceding day was wet and bl.u.s.tering, but the 4th was dark, and mild, and soft, the wind at south-west, and the thermometer at 58.5 degrees, a pitch not common at that season of the year. Moreover, it may not be amiss to add in this place, that whenever the thermometer is above 50 degrees, the bat comes flitting out in every autumnal and winter month.

From all these circ.u.mstances laid together, it is obvious that torpid insects, reptiles, and quadrupeds, are awakened from their profoundest slumbers by a little untimely warmth, and therefore that nothing so much promotes its death-like stupor as a defect of heat. And farther, it is reasonable to suppose that two whole species, or at least many individuals of those two species of British hirundines, do never leave this island at all, but partake of the same benumbed state; for we cannot suppose, that after a month's absence, house-martins can return from southern regions to appear for one morning in November, or that house- swallows should leave the districts of Asia to enjoy in March the transient summer of a couple of days.

I am, etc.

LETTER x.x.xVII.

SELBORNE, _Jan._ 8_th_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--There was in this village several years ago a miserable pauper, who from his birth was afflicted with a leprosy, as far as we are aware of a singular kind, since it affected only the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. This scaly eruption usually broke out twice in the year, at the spring and fall; and, by peeling away, left the skin so thin and tender that neither his hands nor feet were able to perform their functions; so that the poor object was half his time on crutches, incapable of employ, and languishing in a tiresome state of indolence and inactivity. His habit was lean, lank, and cadaverous. In this sad plight he dragged on a miserable existence, a burden to himself and his parish, which was obliged to support him till he was relieved by death at more than thirty years of age.

The good women, who love to account for every defect in children by the doctrine of longing, said that his mother felt a violent propensity for oysters, which she was unable to gratify; and that the black rough scurf on his hands and feet were the sh.e.l.ls of that fish. We knew his parents, neither of which were lepers; his father in particular lived to be far advanced in years.

In all ages the leprosy has made dreadful havoc among mankind. The Israelites seem to have been greatly afflicted with it from the most remote times, as appears from the peculiar and repeated injunctions given them in the Levitical law. Nor was the rancour of this foul disorder much abated in the last period of their commonwealth, as may be seen in many pa.s.sages of the New Testament.