LAND SPRINGS. 199 



./Eneas. The verb sonat also seems to imply a 

 bird that is somewhat loquacious l . 



We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so 

 as to raise the springs to a pitch beyond any thing 

 since 1 764, which was a remarkable year for floods 

 and high waters. The land-springs, which we call 

 levants, break out much on the Downs of Sussex, 

 Hampshire, and Wiltshire. The country people 

 say, when the levants 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 " Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes 

 Pervolat, et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo, 

 Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas : 

 Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum 

 Stagna sonat." 



