WHITE'S SELBORNE xv 



bling for distant flight. The fact that he had frequently 

 noticed that swallows were seen later at Oxford than else- 

 where, led him to believe that this might be owing to the 

 vast mossy buildings of that place, or possibly to the many 

 waters surrounding it. He had observed these birds to cling 

 by their claws against the surface of the church walls before 

 hybernating, and he was incessantly studying their move- 

 ments in autumn in the neighboring waters for proof of his 

 more than half-suspected theory that they concealed them- 

 selves in the banks of pools and rivers during the winter. 



Yet while ornithology was his favorite study, he was almost 

 equally at home in other branches of natural history, the 

 plant, arboreal, insect and animal life that surrounded him, 

 as well as the complexion of the soils and etiology of the 

 weather, regarding all of which his observations are most 

 exact and comprehensive. It is only in ichthyology that we 

 find him less at home and unfamiliar with Dame Julyans and 

 "The Compleat Angler." 



Many singular facts and anecdotes are related by him con- 

 cerning the customs, superstitions, history, phenomena, and 

 antiquities of the country. Among the quaint customs of 

 the time was that of renewing the arbors of Waldon, and 

 Brimstone Lodge in Wolmer Forest, which were constructed 

 of the boughs of oaks, these being renewed annually by the 

 keepers on the feast of St. Barnabas ; the farm called Black- 

 more being obliged to supply the material for the former, 

 while the farms of Greatham, in rotation, furnished for the 

 latter. 1 He tells also of a minute insect, termed harvest-bug, 

 common in chalky districts, which was very troublesome during 

 late summer, getting into people's skins and raising humors 

 that itched intolerably, men often being so bitten by it as to 

 be thrown into fevers. 2 



No less strange are his accounts of the boy bee-eater, the 

 prevailing superstitions concerning the ash-tree, the sinking 

 of the Hanger at Hawkley, and the small hill ponds which 

 maintained a supply of water during the severest droughts, 

 when even large valley ponds ran dry. Indeed, whether he 

 is discoursing of the growth of an elephant's tusk, or the walk 



i Letter VII. 2 Letter XLIII. 



i 



