actually a street of houses better than Parma or Modena. Nay, the houses of the people of fashion, who come hither for the races, are palaces to what houses in London itself were fifteen years ago. People do begin to live again now, and I suppose in a term we shall revert to York Houses, Clarendon Houses, etc. But from that grandeur all the nobility had contracted themselves to live in coops of a dining-room, a dark back-room, with one eye in a corner, and a closet. Think what London would be, if the chief houses were in it, as in the cities in other countries, and not dispersed like great rarity-plums in a vast pudding of country. Well, it is a tolerable place as it is! Were I a physician, I would prescribe nothing but Recipe, CCCLXV drachm. Londin. Would you know why I like London so much? Why, if the world must consist of so many fools as it does, I choose to take them in the gross, and not made into separate pills, as they are prepared in the country. Besides, there is no being alone but in a metropolis : the worst place in the world to find solitude is the country: questions grow there, and that unpleasant Christian commodity, neighbours. Oh! they are all good Samaritans, and do so pour balms and nostrums upon one, if one has but the toothache, or a journey to take, that they break one's head. A journey to take -ay! they talk over the miles to you, and tell you, you will be late in. My Lord Lovel says, John always goes two hours in the dark in the morning, to avoid being one hour in the dark in the evening. I was pressed to set out to-day before seven! I did before nine; and here am I arrived at a quarter past five, for the rest of the night.

Letters.

P. 205, l. 14. Craftsman. The famous Opposition newspaper in which for ten years (1726-1736) Pulteney, Bolingbroke, and many minor writers carried on war against Walpole.

P. 205, l. 18. Péché-mortel. The eighteenth century was fond of these fantastic names for pieces of furniture. Cf. bonheur-du-jour, etc.

GILBERT WHITE.

Gilbert White was born in 1720, and derives his whole celebrity from the elaborate observations of natural objects which he carried on in his parish of Selborne, and the simple but admirable English in which he set down their results. He has had no small influence on the descriptive school in England. He died in 1793.

THE HYBERNATION OF SWALLOWS.

S to swallows being found in a torpid state during the winter in the Isle of Wight, or any part of this country, I never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergyman of an inquisitive turn, assures me, that, when he was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts among the rubbish, which seemed, at their first appearance, dead; but on being carried toward the fire, revived. He told me that, out of his care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated.

Another intelligent person has informed me that, while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach; and that many people found swallows among the rubbish: but, on my questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small disappointment he answered me in the negative; but that others assured him they did. Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the eleventh, and young martins were then fledged in their nests. Both species will

breed again once: for I see by my fauna of last year, that young broods came forth as late as September the eighteenth. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so late as September the twenty-ninth; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth of October. How strange it is that the swift which seems to live exactly the same life with the swallow and house martin should leave us before the middle of August invariably! while the latter stay often till the middle of October; once I even saw numbers of house martins on the seventh of November. The martins, red-wings and fieldfares were flying in sight together; an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds !

The Natural History of Selborne.

NATURAL AFFECTION OF ANIMALS.

THE more I reflect on the oropy of animals, the more I am astonished at its effects. Nor is the violence of this affection more wonderful than the shortness of its duration. Thus every hen is in her turn the virago of the yard in proportion to the helplessness of her brood; and will fly in the face of a dog or a sow in defence of those chickens which in a few weeks she will drive before her with relentless cruelty.

This affection sublimes the passions, quickens the invention, and sharpens the sagacity of the brute creation. Thus an hen, just become a mother, is no longer that placid bird she used to be, but with feathers standing on end, wings hovering, and clucking note, she runs about like one possessed. Dams will throw themselves in the way of the greatest danger in order to avert it from their progeny. Thus a partridge will tumble along before a sportsman in order to draw away the dogs from her helpless covey. In the time of nidification the most feeble birds will assault the most rapacious. All the hirundines of a village are up in arms at the sight of a hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves that district. A very exact observer has often remarked that a pair of ravens nesting in the rock of Gibraltar would

suffer no vulture or eagle to rest near their station, but would drive them from the hill with an amazing fury: even the blue thrush at the season of breeding would dart out from the clefts of the rocks to chase away the kestril, or the sparrowhawk. If you stand near the nest of a bird that has young she will not be induced to betray them by an inadvertent fondness, but will wait about at a distance with meat in her mouth for an hour together.

Should I farther corroborate what I have advanced above by some anecdotes which I probably may have mentioned before in conversation, yet you will, I trust, pardon the repetition for the sake of the illustration.

The flycatcher of the Zoology (the Stoparola of Ray) builds every year in the vines that grow on the walls of my house. A pair of these little birds had one year inadvertently placed their nest on a naked bough, perhaps in a shady time, not being aware of the inconvenience that followed. But a hot sunny season coming on before the brood was half fledged, the reflection of the wall became insupportable, and must inevitably have destroyed the tender young, had not affection suggested an expedient, and prompted the parent birds to hover over the nest all the hotter hours, while with wings expanded, and mouths gaping for breath, they screened off the heat from their suffering offspring..

A farther instance I once saw of notable sagacity in a willow wren, which had built in a bank in my fields. This bird a friend and myself had observed as she sat in her nest; but were particularly careful not to disturb her, though we saw she eyed us with some degree of jealousy. Some days after, as we passed that way, we were desirous of remarking how this brood went on; but no nest could be found, till I happened to take up a bundle of long green moss as it were carelessly thrown over the nest in order to dodge the eye of any impertinent intruder.

A still more remarkable instance of sagacity and instinct occurred to me one day, as my people were pulling off the lining of a hotbed in order to add some fresh dung. From out of the side of this bed leaped an animal with great agility that made a most grotesque figure; nor was it without great difficulty that it

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could be taken; when it proved to be a large white bellied field mouse with three or four young clinging to her teats by their mouths and feet. It was amazing that the desultory and rapid motions of this dam should not oblige her litter to quit their hold, especially when it appeared that they were so young as to be both naked and blind! To these instances of tender attachment, many more of which might be daily discovered by those that are studious of nature: may be opposed that rage of affection, that monstrous perversion of the oropyn, which induces some females of the brute creation to devour their young because their owners have handled them too freely or removed them from place to place! Swine, and sometimes the more gentle race of dogs and cats are guilty of this horrid and preposterous murder. When I hear now and then of an abandoned mother that destroys her offspring, I am not so much amazed; since reason perverted, and the bad passions let loose are capable of any enormity; but why the parental feelings of brutes, that usually flow in one most uniform tenour should sometimes be so extravagantly perverted, I leave to abler philosophers than myself to determine.

The Natural History of Selborne.

P. 207, l. 15. Himself. An instance of the scientific spirit worth noting. It was not common in White's days.