NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 205 



When a tall youth he was removed from hence to a distant 

 village, where he died, as I understand, before he arrived at 

 manhood. I am, etc. 



NOTE TO LETTER XXVII. 



1 Wildman was a writer on bees and their management. 



LETTER XXVIII. 



SELBORNE, Jan. %th, 1776. 



DEAR SIR, It is the hardest thing in the world to shake off 

 superstitious prejudices : they are sucked in, as it were, with our 

 mother's milk ; and, growing up with us at a time when they take 

 the fastest hold and make the most lasting impressions, become 

 so interwoven into our very constitutions, that the strongest good 

 sense is required to disengage ourselves from them. No wonder, 

 therefore, that the lower people retain them their whole lives 

 through, since their minds are not invigorated by a liberal educa- 

 tion, and therefore not enabled to make any efforts adequate to 

 the occasion. 



Such a preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on 

 the superstitions of this district, lest we should be suspected of 

 exaggeration in a recital of practices too gross for this enlightened 

 age. 



But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to 

 remember, that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within 

 twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated 

 wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on 

 a suspicion of witchcraft; and, by trying experiments, drowned 

 them in a horse-pond. 



In a farm-yard near the middle of this village stands, at this 

 day, a row of pollard-ashes, which, by the seams and long cica- 

 trices down their sides, manifestly show that, in former times, they 

 have been cleft asunder. These trees, when young and flexible, 



