202 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
diminished, hung a setting net adroitly between the pile and 
the house, into which the caitiff 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. Imagina- 
tion cannot paint the scene that ensued; the expressions that 
fear, rage, and revenge inspired, were new, or at least such as 
had been unnoticed 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 XXXIX. 
SELBORNE. 
* Teach me the various labors of the moon 
What shakes the solid earth: what cause delays 
The summer nights, what shortens winter days.” 
DRYDEN’S VIRGIL, Georg. ii. 
Gentlemen who have outlets might contrive to make orna- 
ment subservient to utility: a pleasing eye-trap might also 
contribute to promote science: an obelisk in a garden or park 
might be both an embellishment and a 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 
the two erections might be constructed with very little expense; 
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 
within sight of some window in the common sitting-parlor ; 
