216 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
been distinguished in all ages as the countryman's clock or 
larum, as the watchman that proclaims the divisions of the night. 
Thus the poet elegantly stiles him : 
" the crested cock whose clarion sounds 
The silent hours." 
A neighbouring gentleman one summer had lost most of his 
chickens by a sparrow-hawk, that came gliding down between 
a faggot pile and the end of his house to the place where the 
coops stood. The owner, inwardly vexed to see his flock thus 
diminishing, hung a setting net adroitly between the pile and 
the house, into which the caitif dashed, and was entangled. 
Resentment suggested the law of retaliation ; he therefore clipped 
the hawk's wings, cut off his talons, and, fixing a cork on his 
bill, threw him down among the brood-hens. Imagination cannot 
paint the scene that ensued ; the expressions that fear, rage, and 
revenge, inspired, were new, or at least such as had been unno- 
ticed before : the exasperated matrons upbraided, they execrated, 
they insulted, they triumphed. In a word, they never desisted 
from buffeting their adversary till they had torn him in a hundred 
pieces. 
LETTER XLIV. To the Hon. DAINES BARRINGTON. 
Selborne. 
«« ^monstrent 
Quid tanttim Oceano properent se tingere soles 
Hyberni; vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet." 
Gentlemen who have outlets might contrive to make orna- 
ment subservient to utility ; a pleasing eye-trap might also con- 
tribute to promote science : an obelisk in a garden or park might 
be both an embellishment and an heliotrope. 
Any person that is curious, and enjoys the advantage of a 
good horizon, might, with little trouble, make two heliotropes ; 
the one for the winter, the other for the summer solstice : and 
these two erections might be constructed with very little ex- 
pense ; for two pieces of timber frame -work, about ten or twelve 
feet high, and four feet broad at the base, and close lined with 
plank, would answer the purpose. 
The erection for the former should, if possible, be placed 
