on it, yet the epithet
_nigra_ speaks plainly in favour of the swallow, whose 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 AEneas. The
verb _sonat_ also seems to imply a bird that is somewhat loquacious.

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 favourable seasons.

The wheat of last year, all round this district, and in the county of
Rutland, and elsewhere, yields remarkably bad, and our wheat on the
ground, by the continual late sudden vicissitudes from fierce frost to
pouring rains, looks poorly, and the turnips rot very fast.

I am, etc.

LETTER XX.

SELBORNE, _Feb._ 26_th_, 1774.

Dear Sir,--The sand-martin, or bank-martin, is by much the least of any
of the British hirundines, and as far as we have ever seen, the smallest
known hirundo; though Brisson asserts that there is one much smaller, and
that is the _hirundo esculenta_.

But it is much to be regretted that it is scarce possible for any
observer to be so full and exact as he could wish in reciting the
circumstances attending the life and conversation of this little bird,
since it is _fera natura_, at least in this part of the kingdom,
disclaiming all domestic attachments, and hau