168 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOKNE. 



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. 



LETTER XX. 



SELBORNE, Feb. 2Gth, 1774. 



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 



