636 
NATURAL HISTORY 
out in walks by my father. As the soil is strong, the 
hedgeS;, which are cut-up_, are prodigious. The maples 
about thirty-five feet in height, and the hazels, and white- 
thorns twenty, which, when feathered to the ground, were 
beautiful : but they now, being fifty years old, have rather 
over-stood their time ; and besides, the severity of Decem- 
ber, 1784, has occasioned irreparable damages among the 
branches. Thus much for trees. Lord Stawell has lately 
sent me such a bird, sprung and shot in his coverts, as I 
never saw before, or shall again. I pronounced it to be a 
mule, bred between a cock pheasant and a pea-hen.^ 
You say woodcocks in their passage strike against light- 
houses on your coast : a gentleman tells me, that at Penzance 
sea-fowls frequently dash in the night against windows 
where they see a light. My well is sixty-three feet in 
depth j yet in very dry seasons, as last autumn, it is nearly 
exhausted : yet you would be surprised to see how few 
inches of rain falling will replenish it again. ^ How do rains 
insinuate themselves to such depths ? The rains this win- 
ter have been prodigious ! In IN^ovember last seven inches ; 
in December six inches. The whole rain at Selborne in 
1790 was thirty- two inches. Sure such thunder, and 
lightning, and winds have never fallen out within your ob- 
servation in one winter ! Had I known you thirty years 
ago, I should have been much pleased; because I would 
have gone to have seen you ; and perhaps you might have 
been prevailed on when all our timber was standing, to have 
returned the visit. In the year 1746 I lived for six months 
^ This was a hybrid between the Blackcock and Pheasant. It is 
noticed in the " Observations on Birds," under the head of " Hybrid 
Pheasant " (p. 326), where the author states that Mr. Elmer, of Farn- 
ham, the famous game painter, was " employed to take an exact copy of 
this curious bird." The picture was subsequently presented to Gil- 
bert White by Lord Stawell (see Jesse's " Grleanings," second series, 
p. 159), and was engraved for the second edition of his works, where 
it will be found in vol. ii. p. 173. — Ed. 
2 Sixty-three feet is stated to be the average depth of the wells at 
Selborne, which, when sunk to that depth, seldom fail. See Letter I. to 
Pennant (p. 4.) — Ed. 
