The Natural History of Selborne Part 26

This wild and fanciful a.s.sertion will hardly be admitted by the philosophers of these days; especially as they all now seem agreed that insects are not furnished with any organs of hearing at all. But if it should be urged, that though they cannot hear yet perhaps they may feel the repercussion of sounds, I grant it is possible they may.

Yet that these impressions are distasteful or hurtful, I deny, because bees, in good summers, thrive well in my outlet, where the echoes are very strong: for this village is another Anathoth, a place of responses or echoes. Besides, it does not appear from experiment that bees are in any way capable of being affected by sounds: for I have often tried my own with a large speaking- trumpet held close to their hives, and with such an exertion of voice as would have hailed a ship at the distance of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various employments undisturbed, and without showing the least sensibility or resentment.

Some time since its discovery this echo is become totally silent, though the object, or hop-kiln remains: nor is there any mystery in this defect, for the field between is planted as an hop-garden, and the voice of the speaker is totally absorbed and lost among the poles and entangled foliage of the hops. And when the poles are removed in autumn the disappointment is the same; because a tall quick-set hedge, nurtured up for the purpose of shelter to the hop ground, entirely interrupts the impulse and repercussion of the voice: so that till those obstructions are removed no more of its garrulity can be expected.

Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his park or outlet a pleasing incident, he might build one at little or no expense. For whenever he had occasion for a new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the like structure, it would be only needful to erect this building on the gentle declivity of an hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hundred yards distance; and perhaps success might be the easier ensured could some ca.n.a.l, lake, or stream, intervene. From a seat at the centrum phonic.u.m he and his friends might amuse themselves sometimes of an evening with the prattle of this loquacious nymph; of whose complacency and decent reserve more may be said than can with truth of every individual of her s.e.x; since she is

... quae nec reticere loquenti, Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo.

I am, etc.

P.S. -- The cla.s.sic reader will, I trust, pardon the following lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting for their causes from popular superst.i.tion:

Quae bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis Tute tibi atque alus, quo pacto per loca sola Saxa pareis formas verborum ex ordine reddant, Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos Quaerimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus.

s.e.x etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces Unam quom jaceres: ita colles collibus ipsis Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre.

Haec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur; Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi, Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas, Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum: Et genus agricolum late sentiscere, quom Pan Pinea semiferi capitis velamina qua.s.sans, Unco saepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis, Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam.

Lucretius, lib. iv. 1. 576.

Letter x.x.xIX To The Honourable Daines Barrington

Selborne, May 13, 1778.

Dear Sir,

Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds the swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every year the same number of pairs invariably; at least the result of my inquiry has been exactly the same for a long time past. The swallows and martins are so numerous, and so widely distributed over the village, that it is hardly possible to recount them; while the swifts, though they do not all build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The number that I constantly find are eight pairs; about half of which reside in the church, and the rest build in some of the lowest and meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight pairs, allowance being made for accidents, breed yearly eight pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase; and what determines every spring which pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy their ancient haunts ?

Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have always supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange antistorge (in Greek), which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind to the most pa.s.sionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of birds over the face of the earth. Without this provision one favourite district would be crowded with inhabitants, while others would be dest.i.tute and forsaken. But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous superiority, and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes: and the rivalry of the males, in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one on the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins return in the same exact number annually is not easy to say, for reasons given above: but it is apparent, as I have remarked before in my Monographies, that the numbers returning bear no manner of proportion to the numbers retiring.

Letter XL To The Honourable Daines Barrington

Selborne, June 2, 1778.

Dear Sir,

The standing objection to botany has always been, that it is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without improving the mind or advancing any real knowledge: and where the science is carried no farther than a mere systematic cla.s.sification, the charge is but too true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this aspersion should be by no means content with a list of names; he should study plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegetation, should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, should promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the husbandman, on the phytologist. Not that system is by any means to be thrown aside; without system the field of nature would be a pathless wilderness: but system should be subservient to, not the main object of, pursuit.

Vegetation is highly worthy of our attention; and in itself is of the utmost consequence to mankind, and productive of many of the greatest comforts and elegancies of life. To plants we owe timber, bread, beer, honey, wine, oil, linen, cotton, etc., what not only strengthens our hearts, and exhilarates our spirits, but what secures from inclemencies of weather and adorns our persons. Man, in his true state of nature, seems to be subsisted by spontaneous vegetation: in middle climes, where gra.s.ses prevail, he mixes some animal food with the produce of the field and garden: and it is towards the polar extremes only that, like his kindred bears and wolves, he gorges himself with flesh alone, and is driven, to what hunger has never been known to compel the very beasts, to prey on his own species.*

(* See the late Voyages to the South-seas.)

The productions of vegetation have had a vast influence on the commerce of nations, and have been the great promoters of navigation, as may be seen in the articles of sugar, tea, tobacco, opium, ginseng, betel, paper, etc. As every climate has its peculiar produce, our natural wants bring on a mutual intercourse; so that by means of trade each distant part is supplied with the growth of every lat.i.tude. But, without the knowledge of plants and their culture, we must have been content with our hips and haws, without enjoying the delicate fruits of India and the salutiferous drugs of Peru.

Instead of examining the minute distinctions of every various species of each obscure genus, the botanist should endeavour to make himself acquainted with those that are useful. You shall see a man readily ascertain every herb of the field, yet hardly know wheat from barley, or at least one sort of wheat or barley from another.

But of all sorts of vegetation the gra.s.ses seem to be most neglected; neither the farmer nor the grazier seem to distinguish the annual from the perennial, the hardy from the tender, nor the succulent and nutritive from the dry and juiceless.

The study of gra.s.ses would be of great consequence to a northerly and grazing kingdom. The botanist that could improve the sward of the district where he lived would be an useful member of society; to raise a thick turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of systematic knowledge; and he would be the best commonwealth's man that could occasion the growth of 'two blades of gra.s.s where one alone was seen before.'

I am, etc.

Letter XLI To The Honourable Daines Barrington

Selborne, July 3, 1778.

Dear Sir,

In a district so diversified with such a variety of hill and dale, aspects, and soils, it is no wonder that great choice of plants should be found. Chalks, clays, sands, sheep-walks and downs, bogs, heaths, woodlands, and champaign fields, cannot but furnish an ample flora. The deep rocky lanes abound with filices, and the pastures and moist woods with fungi. If in any branch of botany we may seem to be wanting, it must be in the large aquatic plants, which are not to be expected on a spot far removed from rivers, and lying up amidst the hill country at the spring heads. To enumerate all the plants that have been discovered within our limits would be a needless work; but a short list of the more rare, and the spots where they are to be found, may be neither unacceptable nor unentertaining:

h.e.l.leborus foetidus, stinking h.e.l.lebore, bear's foot, or setterworth, -- all over the High-wood and Coney-croft-hanger: this continues a great branching plant the winter through, blossoming about January, and is very ornamental in shady walks and shrubberies.

The good women give the leaves powdered to children troubled with worms; but it is a violent remedy, and ought to be administered with caution.

h.e.l.leborus viridis, green h.e.l.lebore, -- in the deep stony lane on the left hand just before the turning to Norton-farm, and at the top of Middle Dorton under the hedge: this plant dies down to the ground early in autumn, and springs again about February, flowering almost as soon as it appears above ground.

Vaccinium oxycoccos, creeping bilberries or cranberries, -- in the bogs of Bin's-pond.

Vaccinium myrtillus, whortle, or bleaberries, -- on the dry hillocks of Wolmer-forest.

Drosera rotundifolia, round-leaved sun-dew. Drosera longifolia, long-leaved ditto. In the bogs of Bin's-pond.

Comarum pal.u.s.tre, purple comarum, or marsh cinquefoil, -- in the bogs of Bin's-pond.

Hypericon androsaemum, tutsan, St. John's wort, -- in the stony, hollow lanes.

Vinca minor, less periwinkle, -- in Selborne Hanger and Shrubwood.

Monotropa hypopithys, yellow monotropa, or bird's nest, -- in Selborne Hanger under the shady beeches, to whose roots it seems to be parasitical -- at the north-west end of the Hanger.

Chlora perfoliata, Blackstonia perfoliata, Hudsoni, perfoliated yellow-won, -- on the banks in the King's-field.

Paris quadrifolia, herb Paris, true-love, or one-berry, -- in the Church Litten coppice.

Chrysosplenium oppositifolium, opposite golden saxifrage, -- in the dark and rocky hollow lanes.

Gentiana amarella, autumnal gentian or fellwort, -- on the Zig-zag and Hanger;

Lathraea squamaria, tooth-wort, -- in the Church Litten coppice under some hazels near the foot-bridge, in Tr.i.m.m.i.n.g's garden- hedge, and on the dry wall opposite Grange-yard.

Dipsacus pilosus, small teasel, -- in the Short and Long Lith.

Lathyrus sylvestris, narrow-leaved, or wild lathyrus, -- in the bushes at the foot of the Short Lith, near the path.

Ophrys spiralis, ladies' traces, -- in the Long Lith, and towards the south-corner of the common.

Ophrys nidus avis, birds' nest ophrys, -- in the Long Lith under the shady beeches among the dead leaves; in Great Dorton among the bushes, and on the Hanger plentifully.