Th' impatient damsel hung her lamp on high:
True to the signal, by love's meteor led,
Leander hasten'd to his Hero's bed.*******

I am, etc.
(*The angler's may-fly, the ephemera vulgata Linn., comes forth
from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the
evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its
fly state in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear
about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a
fortnight. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, etc.)
(** Vagrant cuckoo; so called because, being tied down by no
incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it
wanders without control.)
(*** Charadrius aedicnemus.)
(**** Gryllus campetris.)
(***** In hot summer nights woodlarks soar to a prodigious height,
and hang singing in the air.
(****** The light of the female glow-worm (as she often crawls up
the stalk of a grass to make herself more conspicuous) is a signal to
the male, which is a slender dusky scarabaeus.)
(******* See the story of Hero and Leander.)



Letter XXV
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Aug. 30, 1769.