270 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



dogs * over their carrion ; and seem to be appointed by Nature as 

 fellow-scavengers to remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face 

 of the earth. 



I am, etc. 



LETTER LIX. 



THE fossil wood buried in the bogs of Wolmer 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 car- 

 penter 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 xdic- 

 nemtis). 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 manoeuvres 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 



* "The Chinese word for a dog to an European ear sounds like quihloh" 



