NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNR 7 1 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 

 THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING WALK. 



^ equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis 



Ingenium. VIRG. 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 f cuckoo's tale ; 

 To hear the clamorous J curlew call his mate, 

 Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; 

 To see the swallow sweep the dark'ning 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 of NATURE is your secret guide! 



While deep'ning shades obscure the face of "Uay 

 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 dor 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 poised upon his wings, 

 Unseen, the soft enamour'd || woodlark sings : 



* The angler's may-fly, the ephemera vnlgata, 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 



Siuammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, &c. 

 t Vagrant cuckoo ; so called bee 



. so called because, being tied down by no incubation or attendance 

 about the nutrition of its young, it wanders without control. 



t Charadrius cedicnemns. Gryllus campestris. 



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



