178 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



A farmer, near Weyhill, fallows his land with two teams of 

 asses ; one of which works till noon, and the other in the after- 

 noon. When these animals have done their work, they are 

 penned all night, like sheep, on the fallow. In the winter they 

 are confined and foddered in a yard, and make plenty of dung. 



Linnaeus says that hawks "paciscuntur inducias cum ambus, 

 quamdiu cuculus cuculat :" but it appears to me that, during that 

 period, many little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of 

 prey, as may be seen by their feathers left in lanes and under 

 hedges. 



The missel-thrush is, while breeding, fierce and pugnacious, 

 driving such birds as approach its nest, with great fury, to a 

 distance. The Welch call it pen y llwyn, the head or master of 

 the coppice. He suffers no magpie, jay, or blackbird, to enter 

 the garden where he haunts ; and is, for the time, a good guard 

 to the new- sown legumens. In general he is very successful in 

 the defence of his family : but once I observed in my garden, 

 that several magpies came determined to storm the nest of a 

 missel -thrush: the dams defended their mansion with great 

 vigour, and fought resolutely pro aris etfocisj but numbers at 

 last prevailed, they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed the 

 young alive. 



In the season of nidification the wildest birds are compara- 

 tively tame. Thus the ring-dove breeds in my fields, though 

 they are continually frequented ; and the missel-thrush, though 

 most shy and wild in the autumn and winter, builds in my 

 garden close to a walk where people are passing all day long. 



Wall-fruit abounds with me this year ; but my grapes, that 

 used to be forward and good, are at present backward beyond all 

 precedent : and this is not the worst of the story ; for the same 

 ungenial weather, the same black cold solstice, has injured the 

 more necessary fruits of the earth, and discoloured and blighted 

 our wheat. The crop of hops promises to be very large. 



Frequent returns of deafness incommode me sadly, and half 

 disqualify me for a naturalist ; for, when those fits are upon me, 

 I lose all the pleasing notices and little intimations arising from 

 rural sounds ; and May is to me as silent and mute with respect 

 to the notes of birds, &c., as August. My eyesight is, thank God, 

 quick and good ; but with respect to the other sense, I am, at 

 times, disabled : 



*' And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out." 



