NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 181 



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 lavants, break out much on the downs of Sussex, 

 Hampshire and Wiltshire. The country people say when the 

 lavants 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 newspaper letters, that talk of combinations, tend 

 to inflame and mislead ; since we must not expect plenty till 

 Providence sends us more favourable seasons. 



The wheat of last year, all round this district, and in the 

 county of Rutland, and elsewhere, yields remarkably bad ; and 

 our wheat on the ground, by the continual late sudden vicissitudes 

 from fierce frost to pouring rains, looks poorly ; and the turnips 

 rot very fast. 



I am, etc. 





LETTER XX. 



SELBORNE, Feb. 26///, 1774. 



DEAR SIR, The sand-martin, or bank-martin, is by much the 

 least of any of the British hirundines ; and as far as we have ever 



Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum 

 Stagna sonat " 



" As the black swallow near the palace plies : 

 O'er empty courts, and under arches flies ; 

 Now hawks aloft, now skims along the flood, 

 To furnish her loquacious nests with food." 



DRYD, VIRG. ALn. xii. line 691. 



