17 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



The verb sonat also seems to imply a bird that is somewhat 

 loquacious.* 



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

 springs to a pitch beyond anything since 1764, which was a 

 remarkable, 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 modern 

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

 would, I am persuaded, have occasioned a famine. Therefore 

 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. 



* " Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis sedes 

 Pervclat, et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo, 

 Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas : 

 Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum 

 Stagna. s0nat." ..... 



Let. XIX., p. 173 orig edit. 



"As the black swallow near the palace plies: 

 O'er empty courts, and under arches flies ; 

 Now hawks aloft, now skims along the flood, 

 To furnish her loquacious nests with food. " 



DRYD. VIRG. sn. xii. line 691. 



