196 NATURAL HISTORY 



yet the epithet nigra speaks plainly in favour of the swallow, 

 whose back and wings are very black ; while the rump of 

 the martin is milk-white, its back and wings blue, and all 

 its under part white as snow. JNTor can the clumsy mo- 

 tions (comparatively clumsy) of the martin well represent 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. 1 



We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so as to 

 raise the springs to a pitch beyond any thing 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. 



" Nigra velut magnas domini cnm divitis aedes 

 Pervolat, ct pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo, 

 Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas : 

 Et mine porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum 

 Stagna sonat." G. \V. 



