NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 143 



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 improve- 

 ments 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 favor- 

 able 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 vicissi- 

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

 turnips rot very fast. 



NOTE l am > etc - 



i " Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes 

 Pervolat, et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo, 

 Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas : 

 Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum 

 Stagna sonat" 



u 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. ^n. xii. 1. 691. G. W. 



LETTER XX 



SELBORNE, Feb. 26th, 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 seen, the smallest known hirundo ; though Brisson asserts 

 that there is one much smaller, and that is the hirundo esculenta. 



But it is much to be regretted that it is scarce possible for any 

 observer to be so full and exact as he could wish in reciting the 



