LETTER CIII. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. THE fossil wood buried in the bogs of Wolmer Forest, is not yet all exhausted; for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a log. I have just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of Oakhanger to a carpenter of this village: this was the butt end of a small oak, about five feet long, and about five inches in diameter. It had apparently been severed from the ground by an ax, was very ponderous, and as black as ebony. Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had procured it, he told me that it was to be sent to his brother, a joiner at Farnham, who was to make use of it in cabinet work, by inlaying it along with whiter woods. Those that are much abroad on evenings after it is dark, in spring and summer, frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing by on the wing, and repeating often a short quick note. This bird I have remarked myself, but never could make out till lately. I am assured now, that it is the stone-curlew, (charadrius oedicnemus.) Some of them pass over or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the hill and Northfield, away down towards Dorton; where, among the streams and meadows, they find a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are obliged to be noisy; their notes, often repeated, become signals, or watch-words, to keep them together, that they may not stray or lose each other in the dark. The evening proceedings and manœuvres of the rooks are curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk, they return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over Selborne-down, where they wheel round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl, who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an occurrence, in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the rooks were saying their prayers; and yet this child was much too young to be aware that the Scriptures have said of the Deity—that " He feedeth the ravens who call upon him."* LETTER CIV. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. IN reading Dr Huxham's Observationes de Aëre, &c. written at Plymouth, I find, by those curious and accurate remarks, which contain an account of the weather from the year 1727 to the year 1748, inclusive, that though there is frequent rain in that district of Devonshire, yet the quantity falling is not great; and that some years it has been very small; for in 1731, the rain measured only 17 inch.-266 thou.; and in 1741, 20-354; and again, in 1743, only 20-908. Places near the sea have frequent scuds, that keep the atmosphere moist, yet do not reach far up into the country; making thus the maritime situations appear wet, when the rain is not considerable. In the wettest years at Plymouth, the Doctor measured only once 36; and again once, viz. 1734, 37—114; a quantity of rain that has twice been exceeded at Selborne in the short period of my observations. Dr Huxham remarks, that frequent small rains keep the air moist; while heavy ones render it more dry, by beating down the vapours.† He is also of opinion, * Rooks have undoubtedly a language of their own, which is understood by the whole community; and a bird set to watch by them has a peculiar note, by which it warns its fellows of approaching danger, and upon the sound of which they all take flight, and always in a direction opposite to where the danger is apprehended. - ED. + Mr Spence remarks, on this subject, "The superior dryness of the air in Italy in summer, compared with that of England, and many parts of the north of Europe, is well known; but I was not aware that the difference is equally striking even in the rainy part of winter, judging, for want of a better hygrometer, from the condensation of moisture on the inside of windows in rooms without a fire, which I have always observed to be very considerable in winter, both in England, and in Brussels, during a three years' residence there, whenever a cold night succeeds a rainy or warm day, the condensed moisture often even running down to the floor; whereas at Florence, under precisely similar circumstances, I have never but once observed more than a slight condensation in the middle of the panes, as if breathed on, even in rooms with a north aspect, and only once during the frost, any appearance, and that but slight, of that thick crust of ice formed on the inside of the panes in England, and at Brussels, whenever that the dingy smoky appearance in the sky, in very dry seasons, arises from the want of moisture sufficient to let the light through, and render the atmosphere transparent; because he had observed several bodies more diaphanous when wet than dry; and did never recollect that the air had that look in rainy seasons. My friend, who lives just beyond the top of the Down, brought his three swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with their muzzles towards the Hanger, supposing that the report would have had a great effect; but the experiment did not answer his expectation. He then removed them to the alcove on the Hanger; when the sound, rushing along the Lythe and Comb-wood, was very grand: but it was at the Hermitage that the echoes and repercussions delighted the hearers; not only filling the Lythe with a roar, as if all the beeches were tearing up by the roots, but, turning to the left, they pervaded the vale above Comb-wood ponds; and, after a pause, seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend round Harteley Hangers, and to die away at last among the coppices and coverts of Ward-le-ham. It has been remarked before, that this district is an Anathoth, a place of responses, or echoes, and therefore proper for such experiments; we may farther add, that the pauses in echoes, when they cease and yet are taken up again, like the pauses in music, surprise the hearers, and have a fine effect on the imagination. The gentleman above mentioned has just fixed a barometer in his parlour at Newton Valence. The tube was first filled here (at Selborne) twice with care, when the mercury agreed, and stood exactly with my own; but being filled again twice at Newton, the mercury stood, on account of the great elevation of that house, three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at this village, and so continues to do, be the weight of the atmosphere what it may. The plate of the barometer at Newton is figured as low as twenty-seven; because, in stormy weather, the mercury there will sometimes descend below twenty-eight. We have supposed Newton house to stand two hundred feet higher than this house: but if the rule holds good, which says that mercury in a barometer sinks a hard frost sets in. Among many other proofs of the greater dryness of the air in winter, one is afforded by the profusion in which grapes are to be had, at less than twopence a pound, at the corners of every street, up to the end of March, quite free from all mouldiness, though cut full four months, and kept merely by being hung at the top of rooms without a fire."-ED. one-tenth of an inch for every hundred feet elevation, then the Newton barometer, by standing three-tenths lower than that of Selborne, proves that Newton house must be three hundred feet higher than that in which I am writing, instead of two hundred. It may not be impertinent to add, that the barometers at Selborne stand three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at South Lambeth; whence we may conclude, that the former place is about three hundred feet higher than the latter; and with good reason, because the streams that rise with us run into the Thames at Weybridge, and so to London. Of course, therefore, there must be lower ground all the way from Selborne to South Lambeth; the distance between which, all the windings and indentings of the streams considered, cannot be less than an hundred miles. * LETTER CV. TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. SINCE the weather of a district is undoubtedly part of its natural history, I shall make no farther apology for the four following letters, which will contain many particulars concerning some of the great frosts, and a few respecting some very hot summers, that have distinguished themselves from the rest during the course of my observations. As the frost in January, 1768, was, for the small time it lasted, the most severe that we had then known for many years, and was remarkably injurious to evergreens, some account of its rigour, and reason of its ravages, may be useful, and not unacceptable to persons that delight in planting and ornamenting; and may particularly become a work that professes never to lose sight of utility. For the last two or three days of the former year, there were considerable falls of snow, which lay deep and uniform on the ground without any drifting, wrapping up the more *The best instrument now in use for determining the pressure of the atmosphere, the altitude of any place above another, or above the level of the sea, is the barometer invented and made by Mr Adie, 58, Princes Street, Edinburgh, and named by him the sympiesometer. The great simplicity of this instrument is a high recommendation, as it gives the altitudes by a single process of subtraction and multiplication, whereas to obtain the altitude with the common barometer, the use of the barometrical tables is indispensable.-ED. humble vegetation in perfect security. From the first day to the fifth of the new year, more snow succeeded; but from that day, the air became entirely clear, and the heat of the sun about noon had a considerable influence in sheltered situations. It was in such an aspect, that the snow on the author's evergreens was melted every day, and frozen intensely every night; so that the laurustines, bays, laurels, and arbutuses, looked, in three or four days, as if they had been burnt in the fire; while a neighbour's plantation of the same kind, in a high, cold situation, where the snow was never melted at all, remained uninjured.* From hence I would infer, that it is the repeated melting and freezing of the snow that is so fatal to vegetation, rather than the severity of the cold. Therefore, it highly behoves every planter, who wishes to escape the cruel mortification of losing in a few days the labour and hopes of years, to bestir himself on such emergencies; and, if his plantations are small, to avail himself of mats, cloths, pease-haum, straw, reeds, or any such covering, for a short time; or if his shrubberies are extensive, to see that his people go about with prongs and forks, and carefully dislodge the snow from the boughs; since the naked foliage will shift much better for itself, than where the snow is partly melted and frozen again. It may perhaps appear at first like a paradox, but doubtless the more tender trees and shrubs should never be planted in hot aspects; not only for the reason assigned above, but also because, thus circumstanced, they are disposed to shoot earlier in the spring, and to grow on later in the autumn than they would otherwise do, and so are sufferers by lagging or early frosts. For this reason, also, plants from Siberia will hardly endure our climate; because, on the very first advances of spring, they shoot away, and so are cut off by the severe night of March or April. Dr Fothergill and others have experienced the same inconvenience with respect to the more tender shrubs from North America: which they therefore plant under north walls. There * The effect of shade, in preventing, or rather neutralizing, terrestrial radiation, was strikingly exhibited at Florence, in January, 1830, after the second and longest frost. While all the rest of the surrounding exposed grass looked bare and withered, that under a group of old evergreen oaks had made a shoot of from one to two inches, and was of a fine vivid green, distinguishable at a great distance. Groundsel, the daisy, shepherd's purse, veronica arvensis,calendula arvensis,&c. were in flower the whole winter, their blossoms expanding in bright warm days during the frost.-ED. |