74 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



Each rural sight, each sound, each smell combine ; 

 The tinkling sheep-bell, or the breath of kine ; 

 The new-mown hay that scents the swelling breeze, 

 Or cottage-chimney smoking through the trees. 



The chilling night-dews fall : away, retire ; 

 For see, the glow-worm * lights her amorous fire I 

 Thus, ere night's veil had half obscured the sky, 

 Th' impatient damsel hung her lamp on high : 

 True to the signal, by love's meteor led, 

 Leander hasten'd to his Hero's bed. f 



1 am, etc. 



LETTER XXV 



Selborne, Aug. 30, 17G9. 

 Dear Sib, 



It gives me batisfaction to find that my account of the 

 ousel migration pleases you. You put a very shrewd 

 question when you ask me how I know that their 

 autumnal migration is southward ? Was not candour 

 and openness the very life of natural history, I should 

 pass over this query just as a sly commentator does over 

 a crabbed passage in a classic ; but common ingenuous- 

 ness obliges me to confess, not without some degree of 

 shame, that I only reasoned in that case from analogy. 

 For as all other autumnal birds migrate from the north- 

 ward to us, to partake of our milder winters, and return 

 to the northward again when the rigorous cold abates, 

 so I concluded that the ring-ousels did the same, as well 



♦ The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up the 

 stalk of a grass to make herself more conspicuous) is a signal to the 

 male, which is a slender dusky scaraba'us. 



t See the story of Hero and Leander. 



