OF SELBORNE 141 



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 

 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 frosts to pouring rains, looks poorly ; and the turnips 

 rot very fast. 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XX. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Feb. 26, 1774. 

 DEAR SIR, 



THE sand-martin, or bank-martin, is by much the least of any of 

 the British hirundines ; and, as far as we have ever seen, the 

 smallest known hirundo : though Brisson asserts that there is one 

 much smaller, and that is the hirundo esculenta. 



But it is much to be regretted that it is scarce possible for any 

 observer to be so full and exact as he could wish in reciting the 

 circumstances attending the life and conversation of this little 

 bird, since it is fera naturd, at least in this part of the kingdom, 

 disclaiming all domestic attachments, and haunting wild heaths 

 and commons where there are large lakes : while the other 

 species, especially the swallow and house-martin, are remarkably 



