SUMMER EVENING. 79 



While deep'ning shades obscure the face of day, 

 To yonder bench leaf-shelter'd let us stray, 

 'Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, 

 And all the fading landscape sinks in night ; 

 To hear the drowsy dorr come brushing by 

 With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricket* cry ; 

 To see the feeding bat glance through the wood ; 

 To catch the distant falling of the flood ; 

 While o'er the cliff th' awaken'd churn-owl hung, 

 Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song ; 

 While high in air, and pois'd upon his wings, 

 Unseen, the soft enamour'd woodlarkt sings ; 

 These, NATURE'S works, the curious mind employ, 

 Inspire a soothing melancholy joy : 

 As fancy warms, a pleasing kind of pain 

 Steals o'er the cheek, and thrills the creeping vein ! 



Each rural sight, each soui.d, each smell, combine ; 

 The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine ; 

 The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze, 

 Or cottage-chimney smoking through the trees. 



The chilling night-dews fall : away, retire ; 

 For see, the glow-worm lights her amorous fire !| 

 Thus, ere night's veil had half obscured the sky, 

 Th' impatient damsel hung her lamp on high : 

 True to the signal, by love's meteor led, 

 Lcander hasten'd to his Hero's bed. 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XXV. To T. PENNANT, ESQ. 

 DEAR SIR, Selborne, August 30, 1769. 



IT gives me satisfaction to find that my account of the ousel 

 migration pleases you. You put a very shrewd question when 

 you ask me how I know that their autumnal migration is south- 

 ward ? Was not candour and openness the very life of natural 



* Gryllus campeslris. 



t In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height, and hang singing in 

 the air. 



t The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up the stalk of a grass to make her- 

 self more conspicuous) is a signal to the male, which is a slender dusky scarabceus- NOTB. This 

 is still the generally received notion respecting the light given out by this curious insect (lampyrit 

 noctiluca), though several circumstances would seem to point to a different conclusion. Not only, 

 for instance, is the phosphorescence common to both sexes, but the larva and even pupa exhibit 

 it, which are of course unable to propagate. I am inclined to subscribe to Waller's opinion, 

 who observes, " Possibly the use of this light is to be a lantern to the insect in catching its 

 prey, and to direct its course in the night, which is made probable by the position of it on the 

 under part of the tail, so that by bending the same downwards (as 1 always observe it do), it 

 gives a light forward upon the prey or object, the luminous rays in the mean time not being 

 at all incommodious to its sight, as they would have been if this torch had been carried before 

 it. This conjecture is also favoured by the placing of the eyes, which are on the under part of 

 the head, not on the top." ED. 



* See the story of Hero and Leander. 



