NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 69 



the sudden and artful evolutions and quick turns which 

 Juturna gave to her brother's chariot, so as to elude the 

 eager pursuit of the enraged ^Eneas. 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 im- 

 provements 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 news- 

 paper-letters, that talk of combinations, tend to inflame 

 and mislead ; since we must not expect plenty till Provi- 

 dence 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. 



