Volume II Part 10 (2/2)

LETTER LVII.

A rare, and I think a new, little bird frequents my garden, which I have great reason to think is the pettichaps: it is common in some parts of the kingdom; and I have received formerly several dead specimens from Gibraltar. This bird much resembles the white-throat, but has a more white or rather silvery breast and belly; is restless and active, like the willow-wrens, and hops from bough to bough, examining every part for food; it also runs up the stems of the crown-imperials, and, putting its head into the bells of those flowers, sips the liquor which stands in the nectarium of each petal. Sometimes it feeds on the ground like the hedge- sparrow, by hopping about on the gra.s.s-plots and mown-walks.

One of my neighbours, an intelligent and observing man, informs me that, in the beginning of May, and about ten minutes before eight o'clock in the evening, he discovered a great cl.u.s.ter of house-swallows, thirty, at least, he supposes, perching on a willow that hung over the verge of James Knight's upper-pond. His attention was first drawn by the twittering of these birds, which sat motionless in a row on the bough, with their heads all one way, and, by their weight, pressing down the twig so that it nearly touched the water. In this situation he watched them till he could see no longer. Repeated accounts of this sort, spring and fall, induce us greatly to suspect that house-swallows have some strong attachment to water, independent of the matter of food; and, though they may not retire into that element, yet they may conceal themselves in the banks of pools and rivers during the uncomfortable months of winter.

One of the keepers of Wolmer Forest sent me a peregrine-falcon, which he shot on the verge of that district as it was devouring a wood-pigeon. The _falco peregrinus_, or haggard-falcon, is a n.o.ble species of hawk seldom seen in the southern counties. In winter 1767, one was killed in the neighbouring parish of Farringdon, and sent by me to Mr. Pennant into North Wales. Since that time I have met with none till now. The specimen mentioned above was in fine preservation, and not injured by the shot: it measured forty-two inches from wing to wing, and twenty-one from beak to tail, and weighed two pounds and a half standing weight. This species is very robust, and wonderfully formed for rapine; its breast was plump and muscular; its thighs long, thick, and brawny; and its legs remarkably short and well set: the feet were armed with most formidable, sharp, long talons: the eyelids and cere of the bill were yellow; but the irides of the eyes dusky; the beak was thick and hooked, and of a dark colour, and had a jagged process near the end of the upper mandible on each side: its tail, or train, was short in proportion to the bulk of its body; yet the wings, when closed, did not extend to the end of the train.

From its large and fair proportions it might be supposed to have been a female; but I was not permitted to cut open the specimen. For one of the birds of prey, which are usually lean, this was in high case: in its craw were many barley-corns, which probably came from the crop of the wood- pigeon, on which it was feeding when shot; for voracious birds do not eat grain, but, when devouring their quarry, with undistinguis.h.i.+ng vehemence swallow bones and feathers, and all matters indiscriminately. This falcon was probably driven from the mountains of North Wales or Scotland, where they are known to breed, by rigorous weather and deep snows that had lately fallen.

I am, etc.

LETTER LVIII.

My near neighbour, a young gentleman in the service of the East India Company, has brought home a dog and a b.i.t.c.h of the Chinese breed from Canton, such as are fattened in that country for the purpose of being eaten: they are about the size of a moderate spaniel; of a pale yellow colour, with coa.r.s.e bristling hairs on their backs; sharp upright ears, and peaked heads, which give them a very fox-like appearance. Their hind legs are unusually straight, without any bend at the hock or ham, to such a degree as to give them an awkward gait when they trot. When they are in motion their tails are curved high over their backs like those of some hounds, and have a bare place each on the outside from the tip midway, that does not seem to be matter of accident, but somewhat singular. Their eyes are jet-black, small, and piercing; the insides of their lips and mouths of the same colour, and their tongues blue. The b.i.t.c.h has a dew- claw on each hind leg; the dog has none. When taken out into a field the b.i.t.c.h showed some disposition for hunting, and dwelt on the scent of a covey of partridges till she sprung them, giving her tongue all the time.

The dogs in South America are dumb; but these bark much in a short thick manner like foxes, and have a surly, savage demeanour like their ancestors, which are not domesticated, but bred up in sties, where they are fed for the table with rice-meal and other farinaceous food. These dogs, having been taken on board as soon as weaned, could not learn much from their dam; yet they did not relish flesh when they came to England.

In the islands of the Pacific Ocean the dogs are bred upon vegetables, and would not eat flesh when offered them by our circ.u.mnavigators.

We believe that all dogs, in a state of nature, have sharp, upright, fox- like ears, and that hanging ears, which are esteemed so graceful, are the effect of choice breeding and cultivation. Thus, in the ”Travels of Ysbrandt Ides from Muscovy to China,” the dogs which draw the Tartars on snow-sledges, near the river Oby, are engraved with p.r.i.c.k-ears, like those from Canton. The Kamschatdales also train the same sort of sharp- eared, peak-nosed dogs to draw their sledges, as may be seen in an elegant print engraved for Captain Cook's last voyage round the world.

Now we are upon the subject of dogs, it may not be impertinent to add that spaniels, as all sportsmen know, though they hunt partridges and pheasants as it were by instinct, and with much delight and alacrity, yet will hardly touch their bones when offered as food; nor will a mongrel dog of my own, though he is remarkable for finding that sort of game.

But, when we came to offer the bones of partridges to the two Chinese dogs, they devoured them with much greediness, and licked the platter clean.

No sporting dogs will flush woodc.o.c.ks till inured to the scent and trained to the sport, which they then pursue with vehemence and transport; but then they will not touch their bones, but turn from them with abhorrence, even when they are hungry.

Now, that dogs should not be fond of the bones of such birds as they are not disposed to hunt is no wonder; but why they reject and do not care to eat their natural game is not so easily accounted for, since the end of hunting seems to be that the chase pursued should be eaten. Dogs again will not devour the more rancid water-fowls, nor indeed the bones of any wild fowls; nor will they touch the foetid bodies of birds that feed on offal and garbage; and indeed there may be somewhat of providential instinct in this circ.u.mstance of dislike, for vultures, and kites, and ravens, and crows, etc., were intended to be messmates with dogs over their carrion, and seem to be appointed by Nature as fellow-scavengers to remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of the earth.

I am, etc.

LETTER LIX.

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 Oak Hanger to a carpenter of this village; this was the b.u.t.t-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 axe, 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sured now that it is the stone-curlew (_Charadrius oedicnemus_). Some of them pa.s.s over or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the hill and North Fields, 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 the other in the dark.

The evening proceedings and manoeuvres 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 rus.h.i.+ng of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly sh.o.r.e. 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.”

I am, etc.

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