Star.
London, England, 1831-04-14 00:00:00

WHAT IS A BOROUGH.

" Town," in Germany, is, and has always been called " burg,"
which is pronounced boorgh. London, on the arrival of the Saxons,
was called " London," " London Ceastet," " London Byrig," and
" London Wic." (Camden Brit. p. 330, edit. 1772.) William the
Conqueror, immediately on his conquest, having occasion to address
the Londoners,calls them by theirname, the " burgware" of London.—
(Spelman's Gloss.) Bracton, who wrote In the time of Henry the
Third, calls Oxford and London " burgh' The Britons bad called
towns " Llan" and " Caer," i. e. church," " castle ;" the Romans
had superseded these names by " Cisitas" and " Castrurn." Again,
the Normans called the same " %tulle." Though the Normanssaid "Ville,"'',
the people—who were not Normans, but Saxons—still said boorgh or
borough. We even now say Canterbury, Salisbury, e. Sails-
borough. &c. When we translate French, their " villa" becomes
'• town." But why did not our fathers say " borough" for " vine,"
in translating that word, as the Normans had said " ville" for " bo-
rough ?" The ending syllable " bury," a " borough," in such names
as Salisbury, Glastonbury, &c. became almost part of a proper name,
and so could not be left out in later days, as it had been In Saxon times
(Glaston, and not Glastonbury, occurs in passages quoted in Selden's
Tit. Honor ;)and still they could not say the borough of Glastonborough,
as " borough" would, in that expression, too much abound. Littleton,
40u ycusago,says, that what had formerly been" city," was afterwards
" borough," and that vine" is the expression in his time. " Ville"
is now " town." Let us see how long " ville" and " town" were
unkrown. The Domesday Survey made by William I. purports to des.
all the districts of the kingdom : as counties. wapentakes, hundreds,
with all the particulars that made up these large divisions.
Tim. is no word meaning town except '4 burgus" in that survey :
I• Villa" is the only word that could raise a question in this
respect—" Villa" shall be examined immediately. But Stet to
dispose of evidence of the period of William I, which requires less
argument than the meaning of villa :' it is to be observed, that there
Is a law of William 1 (Lambert, fo. 12:4, That no traffic or mar-
ket shall be permitted, except in the cities (civitatibus) and in the
boroughs closed in and walled, and castles and safest places; because
castles, and boroughs, and cities, were founded and built for the pro-
tection of folk and people of the realm, and for the defence of the
resist,' this is an argument tor market towns being all boroughs.—
' Safest places,' perhaps, mean those abbeys which were allowed to
hold market. mentioned in the • Doomsday Survey.'
• Villa' occurs in Domesday, and it would appear from a passage in
Littleton's Tenures, that • Burgos' is different from other towns' or ,
vines' (section 165) that • villa' is meant in Littleton's expression
' other town: is evident from Coke's Commentary on that expression,
this is as follows It is to be understood what customs can be al-
, leged in an upland town.' The late Mr. Hargrave's note on the pas-
sage of Coke has the following passage : The privil, ge of having
special customs derogating from the common law, is in general denied
to inferior places, such as upland towns, not being cities or boroughs,
and to hamlets, though it is allowed to larger or more important dis-
tricts,
counties. hundreds, manors, honours, cities, or boroughs.' The
following is sufficient authority to prove the meaning of other towns in
Littleton's section. Upland town' is further explained by the ancient
au tl tont y of Britton, for 87 'villeins sont cultivateurs du fief demurantes
in villages upland,' of this confusion of town' and villa,' an instance
occurs in the commentary in Littleton's 171st section. Coke there
says what alteration lath been made in towns, what a great lawyer
Ranh, " In Anglia viaults tam parva inveniri non potest," &c.
here " town" is used as English for " villula," the diminutive of
•• villa ; " now hear, farther—" villa was described in Domesday-
book as another term for manor or lordship, two or more of which
(soya Nicholas) were usually united to form a willata, though in
some few a villa was sufficiently large to stand alone, and was said
to answer for villa Integra, otherwise for " dintidia villains." So
Spelman, " Villain Integram olim Niue qua friborgum integrum
continuis," and " Friborgus " is explained, " Frankpledge Cone.
glum seu societas decem primoriorum hominum In unaquaque ple.
rumque villa."
But that villa, without losing its meaning of village or neigh.
bouthood of the villeins, obtained a larger sense, cannot be denied.,
The earliest instance of the extension of the term beyond the mean-
ing of " village," is, perhaps, in charters of the time of Richard
which distinguish " villa murales " et " rurales." Villa runs,
says Spelman, contain " campum pratum et boscum." In the grant
of the Duchy of Cornwall, II Edward 111. the descriptive words
are " Castro, burgos. villas, maned*, honoree, stanarias et CMS.
glum." Selden Tit. Hon. 753. " Villa," as " village" or '• ma-
nor," occurs in the will of King Alfred. " Villain de IVelleto et
villain de Clere." Spelm. These rural districts in time grew to
walled towns; but where a distinction of customs and privileges is
asserted for boroughs, to the exclusion of villa, this latter word
means upland town, or village, as proved from the passasage in Lit.
tleton and Coke.

During the illuminations in Edinburgh the apartments in
the palace occupied by the French refugees were brilliantly
lighted up. Even Charles X. complied to popular feeling,
and illnminated his bed-room. Our correspondent bad the
curiosity to mount Arthur's Seat, and he states that the
houses of all the farmers were brilliantly lighted, and as far
as the eye could reach, the country exhibited one splendid
blaze. —Edinburgh Paper.

THE NUTHATCH.

The nuthatch (Sitta Europe), whose skill in masonry we have al-
ready recorded, is also said to have some notion of carpentry. M. Mount-
bealard says if this bird cannot and a convenient hole In a tree, it hews
out an excavation with its bill, if it can meet with a spot that is
worm eaten. Its manner of proceeding in this operation may be
understood from the wedge-like form and abrupt truncation of its bill.
The following observations were made upon one accidentally wounded
by a sportsman, and being taken was placed in a small cage of plain
oak.wood and wire. Here he remained all night, and the next morning
his knocking or tapping with his beak was the first sound I heard,
though sleeping in an apartment divided from the other by a landing-
place. He had food given to him, minced thicken and bread crumbs,
and water. He ate and drunk with a most perfect impudence, end the
moment he had satisfied himself, turned again to his work of battering
the frame of his cage, the sound from which, both in loudness and pro-
longation of noise, is only to be compared to the efforts of a fashionable
footman upon a fashionable door, in a fashionable square. He had a
particular fancy for the extremities of the corner pillars of his cage ; on
these he spent his most elaborate taps, and at this moment, though he
has only occupied the cage a day, the wood is pierced and worn like a
piece of old worm-eaten timber. He probably had an idea that if these
main beams could be once penetrated, the rest of the superstructure
would fall and free him. Against the door-way he had also a particular
spite, and once succeeded in opening it ; and when, to oppose a further
obstacle, it was tied in a double knot with string, the perpetual appli-
cation of his beak quickly unloosed it. In ordinary cages a circular hole
is left in the wire for birds to insert his head to drink from a glass : to
this hole the nuthatch constantly repaired, not for the purpose of drink-
ing, but to try to push out more than his head, but in vain, for he Is a
thick bird, and rather heavily built ; but the instant he found the
hole too small, he would withdraw his head, and begin to dig and
hammer at the circle, and where it is rooted in the wood, with his
pickaxe of a beak, evidently with a design to enlarge the orifice. His
labour was incessant, and he ate as largely as he worked, and I fear it
was the united effects of both that killed him. His hammering was
peculiarly laborious, for he did not perch as other birds do, but, grasp-
ing his hold with his immense feet, he turned upon them as upon a
pivot, and struck with the whole weight of his body, thus assuming the
appearance, with his entire form, of the head of • hammer, or, as I
have sometimes seen birds on mechanical clocks, made to strike the
hour by swinging on a wheel. We were in hopes that when the sun
went down, he would cease from his labours, and rest ; but no, at the
Interval of every ten minutes, up to nine or ten o'clock in the night, he
resumed his knocking, and strongly reminded us of the coffinmaka's
nightly and dreary occupation. It was said by one of us, "he is
nailing his own coffin," and so it proved. An awful fluttering in the
cage, now covered with a handkerchief, announced that something was
wrong; we found him at the bottom of his prison with his feathers
ruffled, and nearly all turned back. He was taken out, and for some
time he lingered amidst convulsions and occasional brightenings up ;
at length he drew his last gasp."
The Rev. W. T. Bree, of Allesley states, that having caught a
nuthatch in the common brick trap used by boys, he was struck with
the singular appearance of its bill, so unlike that of any bird he had
ever seen. It was blunt at the end, and presented the appearance of
having been truncated in an oblique direction, as if the natural beak
had been cut off; and he naturally inferred that it had been fairly
ground down to about two-thirds of its original length by the bird's
pecking at the bricks in its efforts to escape from the trap.
The faculty of digging into wood, though not designed by nature to
enable these birds to make their escape from confinement, was, it would
appear from the instances we have given, singularly applied by them
for that purpose. Many animals, who are endowed with singular
habits of carpentry, would not have thus employed them, eithet from
want of versatility of instinct and intelligence, or from being distracted
and puzzled by confinement. A wasp, for example, whose powerful
mandibles can rasp the woody fibres from a piece of weathered deal board
to make paper for her nest, never attempts to gnaw through a pasteboard
box in which she may be shut up; and we have had still more striking
instances in the case of some of the carpenter bees. 'When forming
their nests, these will chisel out holes several inches in length, even
in oak planks, as we have repeatedly witnessed; but, under other
circumstances, they never endeavour to make their way through
obstacles, which they would not find it very difficult to penetrate.—
We have, for the sake of experiment, confined carpenter bees
both in chip and pasteboard boxes, to see whether they would cut
their way out; but instead of attempting this, they did not try to
gnaw any of the materials. In the case of those which had been
caught while busy in excavating their galleries, this might probably be
referred to the interruption afforded to their interesting labours ; but
this could not be the case with one which was reared by us, almost
from the egg, in a chip box. When this bee made its appearance from
the cocoon, in April, 1830, we imagined that it would cut its way out
of the box ; yet, though it was purposely shut up in order to try this,
it never made the attempt. This was the more singular, as this is in
the routine of its instinctive actions to gnaw a passage for itself out of
the original nest. The substance, however, left by the mother bee to
be gnawed through, presents a much slighter obstacle than even the
thin materials of a chip box ; but this is not the case with many of the
gall flies (Cynipida, Westwood,) which have to gnaw themselves a
passage to day-light and liberty, through a substance much harder than
the wood of their native trees. The bedeguar of the rose, and the
root•gall of the oak are of this description; yet we have, in numerous
instances, had the insects from these produced in boxes through which
they never attempted to gnaw their way, although they could have most
easily done so in a few minutes.
How different are the proceedings of those animals who have often
to make use of their power of pawing through wood in order to pro-
cure food ; for example, the mouse and the rat. The ground-floor of
a house belonging to a friend of ours was so infested with rats, that
the edges of the floor contiguous to the walls were literally riddled
with their ho'es. As all the means used to extirpate them proved abor-
tive, recourse was had to pieces of old ship oak plank nailed over the
holes, under the notion that they would find it too hard to gnaw
through. But the rats were not to be thus foiled, for usually every
morning several new holes were hewn through the hardest pieces of
the oak ; and though every thing which might have tempted them was
removed from the room, and the new holes replanked every morning,
the determined animals persevered in cutting fresh holes every night for
many weeks successively. The perseverance of these rats in hewing
holes in the floor remids us more of the manners of the woodpecker
any than other animal; and the history of their proceedings will bring
us back to the carpentry of birds, from which these illustrations have
led us into brief digression.