OF SELBORNE. 207 
As to the simile, too much stress must not be 
laid on it; yet the epithet nigra speaks plainly in 
favour of the swallow, whose back and wings are 
very black, while the rump of the martin is milk. 
white, its back and wings blue, and all its under 
part white as snow. Nor can the clumsy motions 
(comparatively clumsy) of the martin well repre- 
sent the sudden and artful evolutions and quick 
turns which Juturna gave to her brother’s chariot, 
so as to elude the eager pursuit of the enraged 
fEneas. ‘The verb sonat also seems to imply a bird 
that is somewhat loquacious.* 
We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so 
as to raise the springs to a pitch beyond anything 
since 1764, which was a remarkable year for floods 
and high waters. The land-springs, which we call 
levants, break out much on the Downs of Sussex, 
Hampshire, and Wiltshire. The country, people 
say, when the levants rise, corn will always be 
dear ; meaning, that when the earth is so glutted 
with water as to send forth springs on the downs 
and uplands, that the corn-vales must be'drowned; 
and so it has proved for these ten or eleven years 
past: for land-springs have never obtained more 
since the memory of man than during that period, 
nor has there been known a greater scarcity of all 
sorts of grain, considering the great improvements 
of modern husbandry. Such a run of wet seasons 
a century or two ago would, I am persuaded, have 
occasioned a famine. Therefore pamphlets and 
* “ Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis edes 
Pervolat, et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo, 
Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas° 
Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum 
Stagna senat,” 
