NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 223 



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 

 laborer of Oakhanger 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 carpenter 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 (ckara- 

 drius cedicnemus). 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 watchwords to keep 

 them together, that they may not stray or lose each 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 ren- 

 dezvous by thousands over Selborne Down, where they wheel 

 round in the air, and sport and dive in a playful manner, all 

 the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing, 

 which, being blended and softened by the distance that we 

 at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or 

 chiding ; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the 

 imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in 

 hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, 

 or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this 



