166 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
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 motions (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 ot the enraged iEneas. The 
verb sonat also seems to imply a bird that is somewhat loqua- 
cious. 
" Nigra velut niagnas domini cum divitis aedes 
Pervolat, et peunis alta atria lustrat hirundo, 
Pabula parva legens, iiidisque loquacibus escas : 
Et nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum 
Stagna sonat-" 
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 re- 
markable 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 mo- 
dern husbandry. Such a run of wet seasons a century or two 
ago would, I am persuaded, have occasioned a famine. There- 
fore 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. 
I am, &c. 
* It has, however, a very beautiful and rich blue gloss, superior to that of the other. There is 
a species of swallow — unknown in Britain — inhabiting the districts bordering on the Mediter- 
ranean, the rock swallow (H- rupestris)^ vrhich combines the characters of the three British 
species. It evidently, however, is not the kind alluded to by the poet. — Ed. 
