498 ^Appendix 



"A* -when a dove her rocky hold forsakes, 

 Rousd^ in a fright her sounding tvings she shakes ; 

 The cavern rings -with clattering: out she flies. 

 And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies; 

 At first she flutters: but at length she springs 

 To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings." 



felicitas, indeed a very odd way of translating a passage happily, 

 except the four last words, and it wants five only of having as many faults as words, 

 and many of them gross and glaring faults. S. T. C. (Of course, I leave the " in " 

 " with " " and " " she " " her " " a " and " the " out of the reckoning.) 



Vol. I. p. 239 [195]. Let me hear from your own observation whether 

 skylarks do not dust. I think they do ; and if they do, whether they wash also. 



Note. Skylarks dust, but not wash. 



Vol. I. p. 292 [231]. Thus is instinct in animals, taken the least out of its 

 way, an undistinguishing, limited faculty ; and blind to every circumstance that 

 does not immediately respect self-preservation, or lead at once to the propagation 

 or support of their species. 



Note, This is an inadequate explanation. I would rather say, that instinct is 

 the wisdom of the species, not of the individual ; but that let any circumstance 

 occur regularly through many generations that then its every-time-felt incon- 

 venience would by little and little act through the blind sensations on the organic 

 frame of the animals, till at length they were born wise in that respect, and by the 

 same process do they lose their not /zmate but connate wisdom : thus hens hatched 

 in an artificial oven, as in Egypt, in three or four generations (the same process 

 having been repeated in each) lose the instinct of brooding. I trust that this Note 

 will not be considered as lessening the value of this sweet delightful book. 

 S. T. Coleridge, July 7, 1810, Keswick. 



Vol. I. p. 326 [253]. The remark that I shall make on these cobweb-like 

 appearances, called gossamer, is, that, strange and superstitious as the notions 

 about them were formerly, nobody in these days doubts but that they are the real 

 production of small spiders, which swarm in the fields in fine weather in autumn, 

 and have a power of shooting out webs from their tails so as to render themselves 

 buoyant and lighter than air. 



Note. Permit me to observe, as a certain yet hitherto unnoticed etymology of 

 this word, that it is " God's Dame's Hair," and in Monkish Latin (where 1 found 

 it) called Fila Marias, Capilla Matris Dei. Thus Gossip i.e., God's Sib. 



Vol. I. p. 332 [258]. It would be matter of some curiosity, could one meet 

 with an intelligent person among them, to inquire whether, in their jargon, they 

 still retain any Greek words : the Greek radicals will appear in hand, foot, head, 



