166 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



the epithet nigra speaks plainly in favour of the swallow, whose 

 back and wings are very black ;* while the rump of the martin is 

 milk-white, its back and wings blue, and all its under part white 

 as snow. Nor can the clumsy motions (comparatively clumsy) 

 of the martin well represent the sudden and artful evolutions 

 and quick turns which Juturna gave to her brother's chariot, 

 so as to elude the eager pursuit of the enraged ^Eneas. The 

 verb sonat also seems to imply a bird that is somewhat loqua- 

 cious. 



" A'tgra velut magnas domini cum divitis redes 

 Pervolat, et peiinis aha atria lustrat hirundo, 

 Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas : 

 Et mine porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum 

 Stagna sonat." 



We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so as to raise the 

 springs to a pitch beyond any thing since 1764 ; which was a re- 

 markable year for floods and high waters. The land-springs, 

 which we call lavants, break out much on the downs of Sussex, 

 Hampshire, and Wiltshire. The country people say when the 

 lavants rise corn will always be dear ; meaning that when 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 improvements of mo- 

 dern husbandry. Such a run of wet seasons a century or two 

 ago would, I am persuaded, have occasioned a famine. There- 

 fore pamphlets and newspaper letters, that talk of combinations, 

 tend to inflame and mislead ; since we must not expect plenty till 

 Providence sends us more favourable 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 vicissitudes 

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

 rot very fast. 



I am, &c. 



* It has, however, a very beautiful and rich blue gloss, superior to that of the other. There is 

 a species of swallow unknown in Britain inhabiting the districts bordering on the Mediter- 

 ranean, the rock swallow (H- rupertrw), which combines the characters of the three British 

 species. It evidently, however, is not the kind alluded to by the poet. ED. 



