168 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost most of his chickens 

 by a sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between a faggot pile and 

 the end of his house to the place where the coops stood. The owner, 

 inwardly vexed to see his flock thus diminished, hung a setting-net 

 adroitly between the pile and the house, into which the caitiff dashed, 

 and was entangled. Resentment suggested the law of retaliation ; he 

 therefore clipped the hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a 

 cork on his bill, threw him down among the brood-hens. Imagination 

 cannot paint the scene that ensued; the expressions that fear, rage, 

 and revenge, inspired, were new, or at least such as had been unnoticed 

 before : the exasperated matrons upbraided, they execrated, they 

 insulted, they triumphed. In a word, they never desisted from 

 buffeting their adversary till they had torn him in an hundred pieces. 



LETTEE XLIY. 



TO THE SAME. 



" Monstrent 



***** 



Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles 

 Hyberui; vel quse tardis mora noctibus obstet." 



SELBORNE. 



GENTLEMEN who have outlets might contrive to make ornament 

 subservient to utility : a pleasing eye-trap might also contribute to 

 promote science : an obelisk in a garden or park might be both an 

 embellishment and an heliotrope. 



Any person that is curious, and enjoys the advantage of a good 

 horizon, might, with little trouble, make two heliotropes ; the one for 

 the winter, the other for the summer solstice : and the two erections 

 might be constructed with very little expense ; for two pieces of timber 

 frame-work, about ten or twelve feet high, and four feet broad at the 

 base, and close lined with plank, would answer the purpose. 



The erection for the former should, if possible, be placed within sight 

 of some window in the common sitting-parlour ; because men, at that 

 dead season of the year, are usually within doors at the close of the day ; 

 while that for the latter might be fixed for any given spot in the garden 

 or outlet : whence the owner might contemplate, in a fine summer's 

 evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to the northward at the 

 season of the longest days. Now nothing would be necessary but to 

 place these two objects with so much exactness, that the westerly limb 

 of the sun, at setting, might but just clear the winter heliotrope to the 

 west of it on the shortest day ; and that the whole disc of the sun, at 

 the longest day, might exactly at setting also clear the summer 

 heliotrope to the north of it. 



By this simple expedient it would soon appear that there is no such 

 thing, strictly speaking, as a solstice ; for, from the shortest day, the 

 owner would, every clear evening, see the disc advancing, at its setting, 

 to the westward of the object ; and, from the longest day, observe the 



