NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 71 
eee an 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 
THE NATURALIST’S SUMMER-EVENING WALK. 
equidem crede, quia sit divinitus illis 
Ingenium. VirG. Georg. 
WHEN day declining sheds a milder gleam, 
What time the may-fly* haunts the pool or stream ; 
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, 
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed ; 
Then be the time to steal adown the vale, 
And listen to the vagrant f cuckoo’s tale; 
To hear the clamorous? curlew call his mate, 
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; 
To see the swallow sweep the dark’ning plain 
Belated, to support her infant train ; 
To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring 
Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing: 
Amusive birds !—say where your hid retreat 
When the frost rages and the tempests beat ; 
Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, 
When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head? 
Such baffled searches mock man’s prying pride, 
The Gop of NATURE is your secret guide! 
While deep’ning shades obscure the face of uay 
To yonder bench leaf-shelter’d let us stray, 
°Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, 
And all the fading landscape sinks in night ; 
To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by 
With buzzing wing, or the shrill§ cricket cry; 
To see the feeding bat glance through the wood ; 
To catch the distant falling of the flood ; 
While o’er the cliff th’ awaken’d churn-owl hung 
Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song}; 
While high in air, and poised upon his wings, 
Unseen, the soft enamour’d |] woodlark sings : 
* The angler’s may-fly, the eshemera vulgata, LINN., comes forth from its aurelia state, 
and emerges out of the water about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night, 
determining the date of its fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to 
appear about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a fortnight. See 
Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, &c. 
+ Vagrant cuckoo; so called because, being tied down by no incubation or attendance 
about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without control. 
t Charadrius adicnenzus. § Gryllus campestris. 
_|| In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and hang singing in the 
air. 
