NA TURAL HISTOR Y OF SELB ORNE. 267 



LETTER LIX. 



THE fossil wood buried in the bogs of Woolmer Forest is not yet 

 all exhausted ; for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a 

 log. I have just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of Oak- 

 hanger to a carpenter of this village ; this was the butt-end of a 

 small oaV, about five feet long, and about five inches in diameter. 

 It had apparently been severed from the ground by an axe, was 

 very ponderous, and as black as ebony. Upon asking the carpenter 

 for what purpose he had procured it, he told me that it was to be 

 sent to his brother, a joiner at Farnham, who was to make use of it 

 in cabinet-work, by inlaying it along with whiter woods. 



Those that are much abroad on evenings after it is dark, in spring 

 and summer, frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing by on the 

 wing, and repeating often a short, quick note. This bird I have 

 remarked myself, but never could make out till lately. I am assured 

 now that it is the stone-curlew (charadrius cedicnemus). Some of 

 them pass over or near my house almost every evening after it is 

 dark, from the uplands of the hill and North Fields, away down 

 towards Dorton, where, among the streams and meadows, they 

 find a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are obliged to 

 be noisy ; their notes often repeated become signals or watch- words 

 to keep them together, that they may not stray or lose each the other 

 in the dark. 



The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious 

 and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long 

 strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands 

 over Selborne Down, where they wheel round in the air and sport 

 and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and 

 making a loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the 

 distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused 

 noise or chiding ; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to 

 the imagination, and not unlike the cry "of a pack of hounds in 

 hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or 

 the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony 

 is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night to the 



