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. Nor 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 ^neas. The verb sonat also seems 
to imply a bird that is somewhat loquacious.^ 
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 velnt magnas domini cum divitis tedos 
Pervolat, et peniiis alta atria lustrat hirundo, 
Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas : 
Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circnm 
Stagna sonaV G. W. 
