The Natural History of Selborne 101 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 



THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING WALK. 



equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis 



Ingenium. VJRG. Georg. 



When day declining sheds a milder gleam, 

 What time the may-fly * haunts the pool or stream ; 

 When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, 

 What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed ; 

 Then be the time to steal adown the vale, 

 And listen to the vagrant\ cuckoo's tale ; 

 To hear the clamorous^ curlew call his mate, 

 Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; 

 To see the swallow sweep the darkening plain 

 Belated, to support her infant train; 

 To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring 

 Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing : 

 Amusive birds ! say where your hid retreat 

 When the frost rages and the tempests beat ; 

 Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, 

 When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head? 

 Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, 

 The GOD <?/* NATURE is your secret guide ! 



While deepening shades obscure the face of day 

 To yonder bench leaf-sheltered let us stray, 

 ' Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, 

 And all the fading landscape sinks in night ; 

 To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by 

 With buzzing wing, or the shrill ' cricket cry; 

 To see the feeaing bat glance through the wood ; 

 To catch the distant falling of the flood ; 



* The angler's may-fly, the ephemera vulgata, LINN., comes forth from its aurelia 

 state, and emerges out of the water about six in the evening, and dies about eleven 

 at night, determining the date of its fly state in about five or six hours. They 

 usually begin to appear about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near 

 a fortnight. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, &c. t Vagrant cuckoo; so 

 called because, being tied down by no incubation or attendance about the nutri- 

 tion of its young, it wanders without control. J Charadrius aedicnemus. 

 Gryllus campestris. 



