pected of exaggeration in a recital of practices too gross for this enlightened age.

But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to remember, that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of witchcraft; and, by trying experiments, drowned them in a horse-pond.

In a farm-yard, near the middle of this village, stands at this day, a row of pollard-ashes, which, by the seams and long cicatrices down their sides, manifestly show that in former times they have been cleft asunder. These trees, when young and flexible, were severed and held open by wedges, while ruptured children stripped naked were pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion that by such a process, the poor babes would be cured of their infirmity. As soon as the operation was over, the tree in the suffering part was plastered with loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and soldered together, as usually fell out where the feat was performed with any adroitness at all, the party was cured; but where the cleft continued to gape, the operation, it was supposed, would prove ineffectual. Having occasion to enlarge my garden not long since, I cut down two or three such trees, one of which did not grow together.

We have several persons now living in the village, who, in their childhood, were supposed to be healed by this superstitious ceremony, derived down, perhaps, from our Saxon ancestors, who practised it before their conversion to Christianity.*

At the south corner of the Plestor, or area, near the

The popular superstitions extend even to insects. A woman in my neighbourhood told me that she had lost all her hives of bees, because she had not tapped at each of the hives when her poor dear husband died, to announce his death to the bees. It is also a common custom to attach a small piece of black cloth or crape in a split stick and to fasten it on a hive when the owner has died. The author of a Tour in Brittany says, that, "if bees are kept at a house where a marriage feast is celebrated, care is always taken to dress up their hives in red, which is done by placing upon them pieces of scarlet cloth; the Bretons imagining that the bees would forsake their dwellings if they were not made to participate in the rejoicings of their owners. In the like manner they are all put into mourning when a death occurs in the family."-Ed.

church, there stood, about twenty years ago, a very old, grotesque, hollow pollard-ash, which for ages had been looked on with no small veneration as a shrew-ash. Now, a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrewmouse over the part affected;* for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this accident, to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus:†-Into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations, long since forgotten. As the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration are no longer understood, all succession is at an end, and no such tree is known to exist in the manor or hundred.

As to that on the Plestor,

"The late vicar stubb'd and burnt it,"

when he was way-warden, regardless of the remonstrances of the by-standers, who interceded in vain for its preservation, urging its power and efficacy, and alleging that it had been

"Religione patrum multos servata per annos."

With reverential awe preserved for years.

They were supposed, also, to be particularly injurious to horses. "When a horse in the fields happened to be suddenly seized with anything like a numbness in his legs, he was immediately judged by the old persons to be either planet-struck, or shrew-struck. The mode of cure which they prescribed, and which they considered in all cases as infallible, was to drag the animal through a piece of bramble that grew at both ends."-BINGLEY'S Memoirs of British Quadrupeds.-Cats will kill shrews, but will not eat them.-W. J.

For a similar practice, see PLOT's Staffordshire.

LETTER LXXI.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, Feb. 7, 1776. DEAR SIR,-In heavy fogs, on elevated situations especially, trees are perfect alembics; and no one that has not attended to such matters can imagine how much water one tree will distil in a night's time, by condensing the vapour, which trickles down the twigs and boughs, so as to make the ground below quite in a float. In Newton-lane, in October, 1775, on a misty day, a particular oak in leaf dropped so fast that the cart-way stood in puddles, and the ruts ran with water, though the ground in general was dusty.

In some of our smaller islands in the West Indies, if I mistake not, there are no springs or rivers; but the people are supplied with that necessary element, water, merely by the dripping of some large tall trees, which, standing in the bosom of a mountain, keep their heads constantly enveloped with fogs and clouds, from which they dispense their kindly, never-ceasing moisture; and so render those districts habitable by condensation alone.

Trees in leaf have such a vast proportion more of surface than those that are naked, that, in theory, their condensations should greatly exceed those that are stripped of their leaves; but, as the former imbibe also a great quantity of moisture, it is difficult to say which drip most: but this I know, that deciduous trees, that are entwined with much ivy, seem to distil the greatest quantity. Ivy leaves are smooth, and thick, and cold, and therefore condense very fast; and besides, evergreens imbibe very little.* These

*It has been supposed that trees, by condensing in moisture of the air in foggy weather, materially affect the climate, and that thickly wooded countries must necessarily be colder and more humid than naked savannahs. There can be little doubt that such is the case. When some North American Indians made the discovery that the wild cattle of the prairies got amidst the smoke of a burning forest to drive away the flies, they set fire to large tracts

facts may furnish the intelligent with hints concerning what sorts of trees they should plant round small ponds that they would wish to be perennial; and show them how advantageous some trees are in preference to others.

Trees perspire profusely, condense largely, and check evaporation so much, that woods are always moist; no wonder, therefore, that they contribute much to pools and streams.

That trees are great promoters of lakes and rivers appears from a well-known fact in North America; for, since the woods and forests have been grubbed and cleared, all bodies of water are much diminished; so that some streams that were very considerable a century ago will not now drive a common mill.* Besides, most woodlands, forests, and chases, with us, abound with pools and morasses, no doubt for the reason given above.

To a thinking mind, few phenomena are more strange than the state of little ponds on the summits of chalk hills, many of which are never dry in the most trying droughts of summer;―on chalk hills, I say, because in many rocky and gravelly soils springs usually break out pretty high on the sides of elevated grounds and mountains; but no person acquainted with chalky districts will allow that they ever saw springs in such a soil but in valleys and bottoms, since the waters of so pervious a stratum as chalk all lie on one dead level, as well-diggers have assured me again and again.

Now, we have many such little round ponds in this district; and one in particular on our sheep-down, three hundred feet above my house, which, though never above three feet deep in the middle, and not more than thirty feet in diameter, and containing perhaps not more than two or three hundred hogsheads of water, yet never is known to fail, though it affords drink for three hundred or four hundred sheep, and for at least twenty head of large cattle besides. This pond, it is true, is overhung with two moderate beeches, that, doubtless, at times afford it much supply; but then we have others as small, that, without the aid of trees, and in

in order the more readily to destroy the buffaloes. The consequence was that light and air penetrated the forests, the snow melted rapidly, and it has materially altered the climate of the vast regions of North America. See SIR FRANCIS HEAD's Emigrant.—ED.

* Vide KALM's Travels to North America.

spite of evaporation from sun and wind, and perpetual consumption by cattle, yet constantly maintain a moderate. share of water, without overflowing in the wettest seasons, as they would do if supplied by springs. By my journal of May, 1775, it appears that "the small and even considerable ponds on the vales are now dried up, while the small ponds on the very tops of hills are but little affected." Can this difference be accounted for from evaporation alone, which certainly is more prevalent in bottoms? or rather have not those elevated pools some unnoticed recruits, which in the night-time counterbalance the waste of the day, without which the cattle alone must soon exhaust them? And here it will be necessary to enter more minutely into the cause. Dr. Hales, in his Vegetable Statics, advances, from experi ment, that "the moister the earth is, the more dew falls on it in a night; and more than a double quantity of dew falls on an equal surface of moist earth." Hence we see that water, by its coolness, is enabled to assimilate to itself a large quantity of moisture nightly by condensation; and that the air, when loaded with fogs and vapours, and even with copious dews, can alone advance a considerable and never-failing resource. Persons that are much abroad, and travel early and late, such as shepherds, fishermen, &c., can tell what prodigious fogs prevail in the night on elevated downs, even in the hottest parts of summer; and how much the surfaces of things are drenched by those swimming vapours, though to the senses all the while little moisture seems to fall.

LETTER LXXII.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, April 3, 1776.

DEAR SIR,-Monsieur Herissant, a French anatomist, seems persuaded that he has discovered the reason why cuckoos * do not hatch their own eggs; the impediment, he supposes,

* The cuckoo is the largest of insectivorous birds, and must require a great