Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/292

270 dogs over their carrion; and seem to be appointed by Nature as fellow-scavengers to remove all cadaverous nuisances from the face of the earth.

I am, etc.

LETTER LIX. fossil wood buried in the bogs of Wolmer Forest is not yet all exhausted; for the peat-cutters now and then stumble upon a log. I have just seen a piece which was sent by a labourer of Oak hanger to a carpenter of this village; this was the butt-end of a small oak, about five feet long, and about five inches in diameter. It had apparently been severed from the ground by an axe, was very ponderous, and as black as ebony. Upon asking the carpenter for what purpose he had procured it, he told me that it was to be sent to his brother, a joiner at Farnham, who was to make use of it in cabinet-work, by inlaying it along with whiter woods.

Those that are much abroad on evenings after it is dark, in spring, and summer, frequently hear a nocturnal bird passing by on the wing, and repeating often a short, quick note. This bird I have remarked myself, but never could make out till lately. I am assured now that it is the stone-curlew (charadrius œdicnemtis). Some of them pass over or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the hill and North Fields, away down towards Dorton, where, among the streams and meadows, they find a greater plenty of food. Birds that fly by night are obliged to be noisy; their notes often repeated become signals or watch-words to keep them together, that they may not stray or lose each the other in the dark.

The evening proceedings and manœuvres of the rooks are curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and rendezvous by thousands over Selborne Down, where they wheel round in the