NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 189 



LETTEE LIX. 



THE fossil wood buried in the bogs of Woolmer Forest is not yet all 

 exhausted ; for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a log. I 

 have just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of Oakhanger to a 

 carpenter of this village ; this was the butt-end of a small oak, about 

 five feet long, and about five inches in diameter. It had apparently 

 been severed from the ground by an axe, was very ponderous, and as 

 black as ebony. Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had 

 procured it, he told me that it was to be sent to his brother, a joiner at 

 Farnham, who was to make use of it in cabinet-work, by inlaying it 

 along with whiter woods. 



Those that are much abroad on evenings after it is dark, in spring, 

 and summer, frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing by on the wing, 

 and repeating often a short, quick note. This bird I have remarked 

 myself, but never could make out till lately. I am assured now that it 

 is the stone-curlew (charadrius oedicnemus). Some of them pass over 

 or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the 

 uplands of the hill and North Fields, away down towards Dorton, 

 where, among the streams and meadows, they find a greater plenty of 

 food. Birds that fly by night are obliged to be noisy ; their notes 

 often repeated become signals or watch-words to keep them together, 

 that they may not stray or lose each the other in the dark. 



The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious 

 and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long 

 strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over 

 Selborne Down, where they wheel round in the air, and sport and dive 

 in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a 

 loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance that 

 we at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding ; 

 or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and 

 not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, 

 or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide 

 upon a pebbly shore. "When this ceremony is over, with the last 

 gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of 

 Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl who, as she was going 

 to bed, used to remark on such an occurrence, in the true spirit of 

 physico-theology, that the rooks were saying their prayers; and yet 

 this child was much too young to be aware that the scriptures have 

 said of the Deity that " he feedeth the ravens who call upon him." 



I am, &c. 



LETTEE LX. 



TO THE SAME. 



IN reading Dr. Huxam's " Observationes de Acre," &c., written at 

 Plymouth, I find by those curious and accurate remarks, which contain an 



