ON THE

DARK, STILL, DRY, WARM WEATHER,

OCCASIONALLY HAPPENING IN THE WINTER MONTHS.

HE imprison'd winds slumber, within their

caves

Fast bound: the fickle vane, emblem of

change,

Wavers no more, long settling to a point. All Nature nodding seems composed: thick steams From land, from flood updrawn, dimming the day, "Like a dark ceiling stand:" slow through the air Gossamer floats, or stretch'd from blade to blade The wavy network whitens all the field.

Push'd by the weightier atmosphere, up springs
The ponderous mercury, from scale to scale
Mounting, amidst the Torricellian tube.1

While high in air, and poised upon his wings,
Unseen, the soft, enamour'd woodlark runs
Through all his maze of melody; the brake
Loud with the blackbird's bolder note resounds.
Sooth'd by the genial warmth, the cawing rook
Anticipates the spring, selects her mate,
Haunts her tall nest-trees, and with sedulous care
Repairs her wicker eyrie, tempest torn.

The ploughman inly smiles to see upturn
His mellow glebe, best pledge of future crop.
With glee the gardener eyes his smoking beds:
E'en pining sickness feels a short relief.

The happy schoolboy brings transported forth
His long forgotten scourge, and giddy gig:

1 The barometer.

O'er the white paths he whirls the rolling hoop,
Or triumphs in the dusty fields of taw.

Not so the museful sage: abroad he walks
Contemplative, if haply he may find

What cause controls the tempest's rage, or whence Amidst the savage season winter smiles.

For days, for weeks, prevails the placid calm. At length some drops prelude a change: the sun With ray refracted bursts the parting gloom; When all the chequer'd sky is one bright glare. Mutters the wind at eve: the horizon round With angry aspect scowls: down rush the showers, And float the deluged paths, and miry fields.

APPENDIX.

TEN LETTERS

FROM

THE REV. GILBERT WHITE, M. A.

ΤΟ

ROBERT MARSHAM, F.R.S.

1790-1793.

EDITOR'S NOTE.

O the "Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society" is due the credit of having first made public the ten Letters from Gilbert White to Robert Marsham which are here reprinted.

By singular good fortune these letters were discovered amongst other family records in the possession of the Rev. H. P. Marsham, of Rippon Hall, near Norwich, a great grandson of the gentleman to whom they were addressed, and with great liberality he placed them at the disposal of the Society in whose "Transactions" they have been recently published,' together with the corresponding replies from Marsham to White, the originals of which are in the possession of Mr. Bell of Selborne.

Robert Marsham, of Stratton Strawless, Norfolk, to whom these letters were addressed, is already known to most readers of White's writings as a correspondent to whose opinions the latter often referred in terms of respect. His leisure hours were devoted chiefly to arboriculture, and he delighted in making experiments on the growth of forest trees, the results of which he communicated from time to time to the "Philosophical Transactions" of the Royal Society, of which learned body he was a Fellow. The "Indications of Spring," of which he left such a remarkable

1 "Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society," 1876, vol. ii. pp. 133-195.