The Natural History of Selborne Part 12

On a retrospect, I observe that my long letter carries with it a quaint and magisterial air, and is very sententious: but, when I recollect that you requested stricture and anecdote, I hope you will pardon the didactic manner for the sake of the information it may happen to contain.

Letter XLI To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

It is matter of curious inquiry to trace out how those species of soft-billed birds, that continue with us the winter through, subsist during the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems not to be the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters; for the robust wryneck (so much resembling the hardy race of wood-p.e.c.k.e.rs) migrates, while the feeble little golden-crowned wren, that shadow of a bird, braves our severest frosts without availing himself of houses or villages, to which most of our winter birds crowd in distressful seasons, while this keeps aloof in fields and woods; but perhaps this may be the reason why they may often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we know.

I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, which winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. All the species of wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams near their spring-heads, where they never freeze; and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the genus of Phryganeae,* etc.

(* See Derham's Physico-theology, p. 235.)

Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings: and in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a gra.s.s-plot on any mild winter's night. Red-b.r.e.a.s.t.s and wrens in the winter haunt out-houses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and files that have laid themselves up during the cold season. But the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aureliae of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings; and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the ground itself.

Every species of t.i.tmouse winters with us; they have what I call a kind of intermediate bill between the hard and the soft, between the Linnaean genera of fringilla and motacilla. One species alone spends its whole time in the woods and fields, never retreating for succour in the severest seasons to houses and neighbourhoods; and that is the delicate long-tailed t.i.tmouse, which is almost as minute as the golden-crowned wren: but the blue t.i.tmouse, or nun (parus caeruleus), the cole-mouse (parus ater), the great black-headed t.i.tmouse (fringillago), and the marsh t.i.tmouse (parus pal.u.s.tris), all resort, at times, to buildings; and in hard weather particularly. The great t.i.tmouse, driven by stress of weather, much frequents houses, and, in deep snows, I have seen this bird, while it hung with its back downwards (to my no small delight and admiration), draw straw lengthwise from out the eaves of thatched houses, in order to pull out the flies that were concealed between them, and that in such numbers that they quite defaced the thatch, and gave it a ragged appearance.

The blue t.i.tmouse, or nun, is a great frequenter of houses, and a general devourer. Beside insects, it is very fond of flesh; for it frequently picks bones on dung-hills: it is a vast admirer of suet, and haunts butchers' shops. When a boy, I have known twenty in a morning caught with snap mousetraps, baited with tallow or suet. It will also pick holes in apples left on the ground, and be well entertained with the seeds on the head of a sunflower. The blue, marsh, and great t.i.tmice will, in very severe weather, carry away barley and oat straws from the sides of ricks.

How the wheat-ear and whin-chat support themselves in winter cannot be so easily ascertained, since they spend their time on wild heaths and warrens; the former especially, where there are stone quarries: most probably it is that their maintenance arises from the aureliae of the lepidoptera ordo, which furnish them with a plentiful table in the wilderness.

I am, etc.

Letter XLII To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, March 9, 1775.

Dear Sir,

Some future faunist, a man of fortune, will, I hope, extend his visits to the kingdom of Ireland; a new field, and a country little known to the naturalist. He will not, it is to be wished, undertake that tour unaccompanied by a botanist, because the mountains have scarcely been sufficiently examined; and the southerly counties of so mild an island may possibly afford some plants little to be expected within the British dominions. A person of a thinking turn of mind will draw many just remarks from the modern improvements of that country, both in arts and agriculture, where premiums obtained long before they were heard of with us. The manners of the wild natives, their superst.i.tions, their prejudices, their sordid way of life, will extort from him many useful reflections. He should also take with him an able draughtsman: for he must by no means pa.s.s over the n.o.ble castles and seats, the extensive and picturesque lakes and water-falls, and the lofty stupendous mountains, so little known, and so engaging to the imagination when described and exhibited in a lively manner: such a work would be well received.

As I have seen no modern map of Scotland, I cannot pretend to say how accurate or particular any such may be; but this I know, that the best old maps of that kingdom are very defective.

The great obvious defect that I have remarked in all maps of Scotland that have fallen in my way is, a want of a coloured line, or stroke, that shall exactly define the just limits of that district called the Highlands. Moreover, all the great avenues to that mountainous and romantic country want to be well distinguished. The military roads formed by General Wade are so great and Roman-like an undertaking that they well merit attention. My old map, Moll's Map, takes notice of Fort William; but could not mention the other forts that have been erected long since: therefore a good representation of the chain of forts should not be omitted.

The celebrated zigzag up the Coryarich must not be pa.s.sed over.

Mall takes notice of Hamilton and Drumlanrig, and such capital houses; but a new survey, no doubt, should represent every seat and castle remarkable for any great event, or celebrated for its paintings, etc. Lord Breadalbane's seat and beautiful policy are too curious and extraordinary to be omitted.

The seat of the Earl of Eglintoun, near Glasgow, is worthy of notice. The pine plantations of that n.o.bleman are very grand and extensive indeed.

I am, etc.

Letter XLIII To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Dear Sir,

A pair of honey-buzzards, buteo opivorus, sive vespivorus Raii, built them a large shallow nest, composed of twigs and lined with dead beechen leaves, upon a tall slender beech near the middle of Selborne-hanger, in the summer of 1780. In the middle of the month of June a bold boy climbed this tree, though standing on so steep and dizzy a situation, and brought down an egg, the only one in the nest, which had been sat on for some time, and contained the embrio of a young bird. The egg was smaller, and not so round as those of the common buzzard; was dotted at each end with small red spots, and surrounded in the middle with a broad b.l.o.o.d.y zone.

The hen-bird was shot, and answered exactly to Mr. Ray's description of that species; had a black cere, short thick legs, and a long tail. When on the wing this species may be easily distinguished from the common buzzard by its hawk-like appearance, small head, wings not so blunt, and longer tail. This specimen contained in its craw some limbs of frogs, and many grey snails without sh.e.l.ls. The irides of the eyes of this bird were of a beautiful bright yellow colour.

About the tenth of July in the same summer a pair of sparrow- hawks bred in an old crow's nest on a low beech in the same hanger; and as their brood, which was numerous, began to grow up, became so daring and ravenous, that they were a terror to all the dames in the village that had chickens or ducklings under their care. A boy climbed the tree, and found the young so fledged that they all escaped from him: but discovered that a good house had been kept: the larder was well-stored with provisions; for he brought down a young blackbird, jay, and house martin, all clean picked, and some half devoured. The old birds had been observed to make sad havoc for some days among the new-flown swallows and martins, which, being but lately out of their nests, had not acquired those powers and command of wing that enable them, when more mature, to set such enemies at defiance.

Letter XLIV To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Nov. 30, 1780.

Dear Sir,

Every incident that occasions a renewal of our correspondence will ever be pleasing and agreeable to me.

As to the wild wood-pigeon, the oenas, or vinago, of Ray, I am much of your mind; and see no reason for making it the origin of the common house-dove: but suppose those that have advanced that opinion may have been misled by another appellation, often given to the oenas, is that of stock-dove.

Unless the stock-dove in the winter varies greatly in manners from itself in summer, no species seems more unlikely to be domesticated, and to make an house-dove. We very rarely see the latter settle on trees at all, nor does it ever haunt the woods; but the former, as long as it stays with us, from November perhaps to February, lives the same wild life with the ring-dove, palumbus torquatus; frequents coppices and groves, supports itself chiefly by mast, and delights to roost in the tallest beeches. Could it be known in what manner stock-doves build, the doubt would be settled with me at once, provided they construct their nests on trees, like the ring-dove, as I much suspect they do.

You received, you say, last spring a stock-dove from Suss.e.x; and are informed that they sometimes breed in that county. But why did not your correspondent determine the place of its nidification, whether on rocks, cliffs, or trees ? If he was not an adroit ornithologist I should doubt the fact, because people with us perpetually confound the stock-dove with the ring-dove.

For my own part, I readily concur with you in supposing that house-doves are derived from the small blue rock-pigeon, for many reasons. In the first place, the wild stock-dove is manifestly larger than the common house-dove, against the usual rule of domestication, which generally enlarges the breed. Again, these two remarkable black spots on the remiges of each wing of the stock-dove, which are so characteristic of the species, would not, one should think, be totally lost by its being reclaimed; but would often break out among its descendants. But what is worth an hundred arguments is, the instance you give in Sir Roger Mostyn's house-doves, in Caernarvonshire; which, though tempted by plenty of food and gentle treatment, can never be prevailed on to inhabit their cote for any time; but as soon as they begin to breed, betake themselves to the fastnesses of Ormshead, and deposit their young in safety amidst the inaccessible caverns and precipices of that stupendous promontory.

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.

I have consulted a sportsman, now in his seventy-eighth year, who tells me that fifty or sixty years back, when the beechen woods were much more extensive than at present, the number of wood- pigeons was astonishing; that he has often killed near twenty in a day; and that with a long wildfowl piece he has shot seven or eight at a time on the wing as they came wheeling over his head: he moreover adds, which I was not aware of, that often there were among them little parties of small blue doves, which he calls rockiers. The food of these numberless emigrants was beech-mast and some acorns; and particularly barley, which they collected in the stubbles. But of late years, since the vast increase of turnips, that vegetable has furnished a great part of their support in hard weather; and the holes they pick in these roots greatly damage the crop. From this food their flesh has contracted a rancidness which occasions them to be rejected by nicer judges of eating, who thought them before a delicate dish. They were shot not only as they were feeding in the fields, and especially in snowy weather, but also at the close of the evening, by men who lay in ambush among the woods and groves to kill them as they came in to roost.*

These are the princ.i.p.al circ.u.mstances relating to this wonderful internal migration, which with us takes place towards the end of November, and ceases early in the spring. Last winter we had in Selborne high wood about an hundred of these doves; but in former times the flocks were so vast not only with us but all the district round, that on mornings and evenings they traversed the air, like rooks, in strings, reaching for a mile together. When they thus rendezvoused here by thousands, if they happened to be suddenly roused from their roost-trees on an evening,

Their rising all at once was like the sound Of thunder heard remote....

(* Some old sportsmen say that the main part of these flocks used to withdraw as soon as the heavy Christmas frosts were over.)

It will by no means be foreign to the present purpose to add, that I had a relation in this neighbourhood who made it a practice for a time, whenever he could procure the eggs of a ring-dove, to place them under a pair of doves that were sitting in his own pigeon- house; hoping thereby, if he could bring about a coalition, to enlarge his breed, and teach his own doves to beat out into the woods and to support themselves by mast: the plan was plausible, but something always interrupted the success; for though the birds were usually hatched, and sometimes grew to half their size, yet none ever arrived at maturity. I myself have seen these foundlings in their nest displaying a strange ferocity of nature, so as scarcely to bear to be looked at, and snapping with their bills by way of menace. In short, they always died, perhaps for want of proper sustenance: but the owner thought that by their fierce and wild demeanour they frighted their foster-mothers, and so were starved.

Virgil, as a familiar occurrence, by way of simile, describes a dove haunting the cavern of a rock in such engaging numbers, that I cannot refrain from quoting the pa.s.sage: and John Dryden has rendered it so happily in our language, that without farther excuse I shall add his translation also.

Qualis spelunca subito commota Columba, Cui domus, et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi, Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis Dat tecto ingentem--mox aere lapse quieto, Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas.

As when a dove her rocky hold forsakes, Rous'd, in her fright her sounding wings she shakes; The cavern rings with clattering:--out she flies, And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies: At first she flutters:--but at length she springs To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings.

I am, etc.

LETTERS to DAINES BARRINGTON

Letter I To The Honourable Daines Barrington

Selborne, June 30, 1769.

Dear Sir,