The Natural History of Selborne [93]
of this loquacious nymph; of whose complacency and decent reserve more may be said than can with truth of every individual of her sex; since she is
... quae nec reticere loquenti, Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo.
I am, etc.
P.S. -- The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the following lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting for their causes from popular superstition:
Quae bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis Tute tibi atque alus, quo pacto per loca sola Saxa pareis formas verborum ex ordine reddant, Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos Quaerimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus. Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces Unam quom jaceres: ita colles collibus ipsis Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre. Haec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur; Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi, Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas, Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum: Et genus agricolum late sentiscere, quom Pan Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans, Unco saepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis, Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam.
Lucretius, lib. iv. 1. 576.
Letter XXXIX To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 13, 1778.
Dear Sir,
Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds the swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every year the same number of pairs invariably; at least the result of my inquiry has been exactly the same for a long time past. The swallows and martins are so numerous, and so widely distributed over the village, that it is hardly possible to recount them; while the swifts, though they do not all build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The number that I constantly find are eight pairs; about half of which reside in the church, and the rest build in some of the lowest and meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight pairs, allowance being made for accidents, breed yearly eight pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase; and what determines every spring which pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy their ancient haunts ?
Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have always supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange antistorge (in Greek), which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind to the most passionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of birds over the face of the earth. Without this provision one favourite district would be crowded with inhabitants, while others would be destitute and forsaken. But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous superiority, and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes: and the rivalry of the males, in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one on the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins return in the same exact number annually is not easy to say, for reasons given above: but it is apparent, as I have remarked before in my Monographies, that the numbers returning bear no manner of proportion to the numbers retiring.
Letter XL To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, June 2, 1778.
Dear Sir,
The standing objection to botany has always been, that it is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without improving the mind or advancing any real knowledge: and where the science is carried no farther than a mere systematic classification, the charge is but too true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this aspersion should be by no means content with a list of names; he should study plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegetation, should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, should promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the husbandman, on the phytologist. Not that system is by any means to be thrown aside; without system the field of nature
... quae nec reticere loquenti, Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo.
I am, etc.
P.S. -- The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the following lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting for their causes from popular superstition:
Quae bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis Tute tibi atque alus, quo pacto per loca sola Saxa pareis formas verborum ex ordine reddant, Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos Quaerimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus. Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces Unam quom jaceres: ita colles collibus ipsis Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre. Haec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur; Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi, Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas, Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum: Et genus agricolum late sentiscere, quom Pan Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans, Unco saepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis, Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam.
Lucretius, lib. iv. 1. 576.
Letter XXXIX To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 13, 1778.
Dear Sir,
Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds the swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every year the same number of pairs invariably; at least the result of my inquiry has been exactly the same for a long time past. The swallows and martins are so numerous, and so widely distributed over the village, that it is hardly possible to recount them; while the swifts, though they do not all build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The number that I constantly find are eight pairs; about half of which reside in the church, and the rest build in some of the lowest and meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight pairs, allowance being made for accidents, breed yearly eight pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase; and what determines every spring which pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy their ancient haunts ?
Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have always supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange antistorge (in Greek), which immediately succeeds in the feathered kind to the most passionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal dispersion of birds over the face of the earth. Without this provision one favourite district would be crowded with inhabitants, while others would be destitute and forsaken. But the parent birds seem to maintain a jealous superiority, and to oblige the young to seek for new abodes: and the rivalry of the males, in many kinds, prevents their crowding the one on the other. Whether the swallows and house-martins return in the same exact number annually is not easy to say, for reasons given above: but it is apparent, as I have remarked before in my Monographies, that the numbers returning bear no manner of proportion to the numbers retiring.
Letter XL To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, June 2, 1778.
Dear Sir,
The standing objection to botany has always been, that it is a pursuit that amuses the fancy and exercises the memory, without improving the mind or advancing any real knowledge: and where the science is carried no farther than a mere systematic classification, the charge is but too true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this aspersion should be by no means content with a list of names; he should study plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegetation, should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, should promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the husbandman, on the phytologist. Not that system is by any means to be thrown aside; without system the field of nature