NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 257 
LW Sl Ue ie 2 a OS a 
THE fossil wood buried in the bogs of Woolmer 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 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 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 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 edicnemus). Some of 
them pass 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 manceuvres 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 
