192 LAND-SPRINGS. 



We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so as 

 to raise the springs to a pitch beyond any thing since 

 1764, which was a remarkable year for floods and 

 high waters. The land- springs, which we call levants, 

 break out much on the downs of Sussex, Hampshire, 

 and Wiltshire. The country people say, when the 

 levants 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 combi- 

 nations, tend to inflame and mislead, since we must 

 not expect plenty till Providence sends us more favour- 

 able seasons. 



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

 in the county of Rutland, and elsewhere, yields re- 

 markably 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. 



Of scatter'd crumbs and humble food in quest 

 To still the clamour of the craving nest ; 

 Now through the porch her agile figure bounds, 

 Now by the lake her noisy note resounds. 



