336 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Now it must be admitted that the colour of a fallow will vary 

 in different localities, according to the nature of the soil that is 

 upturned by the plough. In some parts of the country an 

 admixture of yellow clay imparts a decided tinge of that colour; 

 in the West of England the fallows are almost as red as a burnt 

 brick. But in Hampshire and Sussex, where Gilbert White 

 spent his life, the admixture of chalk in the soil makes the 

 general aspect of the fallows grey or greyish white ; certainly not 

 red, or any shade of red. 



Milton has expressly referred to gray fallows, while in the 

 same line the term russet is used to describe the colour of 

 withered grass upon a sheep-walk : — 



" Streit mine eye hath caught new pleasures, 

 Whilst the lantskip round it measures 

 Russet lawns and fallows gray, 

 Where the nibbling flocks do stray." 



UAUegro. 



Gilbert White has also used the term "russet" in another of 

 his poems to describe the colour of the grey smock-frock still, as 

 in his day, commonly worn by the Hampshire shepherds : — 

 " Protective stalks the cur with bristling back, 

 To guard the scanty scrip and russet frock." 



A Harvest Scene. 



Dr. Johnson remarked that Sir Isaac Newton " seems to use 

 this word (russet) for gray," though I have not been able to find 

 the particular passage referred to. 



Turbervile, however, employs the word in the sense of mouse- 

 gray when describing deer-horns in the velvet-stage : — 



" His heade when it oometh first out hath a russet pyle upon it, the 

 which is called velvet." — The Booke of Hunting, 1575, p. 242. 



Both Halliwell, in his * Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial 

 Words, and Wright, in his * Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial 

 English,' describe " russetting" as " cloth of a dingy brown 

 colour," and the former defines "gray russet" as coarse cloth 

 of a dull gray colour. See also Forby, ii. 141. 



The use of the word cloth implies that it was made of wool, 

 but it appears rather to have been made of cotton. In the 

 ■ Household Book of the Duke of Norfolk, 1481—1490,' printed 

 for the Roxburgh Club, is the entry (p. 320) : — 



