152 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
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 of the enraged A®neas. 
The verb sonat also seems to imply a bird that is somewhat 
loquacious. 
* As the black swallow near the palace plies: 
O’er empty courts, and under archis flies ; 
Now hawks aloft, now skims along the flood, 
To furnish her loquacious nests with food.” 
DRYDEN’S VIRGIL, x. xii. 
We have had a very wet autumn and winter, so as to raise 
the springs to a pitch beyond anything 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 
favorable seasons. 
The wheat of last year, all round this district, and in the 
county of Rutland, and elsewhere, yields remarkably bad; and 
a oe | 
