TheCube presents UiPath Forward 5, brought to you by UiPath. Hello and welcome back to theCube's coverage of UiPath Forward 5. We're here in Las Vegas at the Venetian Convention Center. This is, Dacia, we're wrapping up Dave Nicholson and Dave Vellante. This is the fourth time theCube has been at UiPath Forward and we've seen the transformation of the company from essentially what was a really interesting and easy to adopt point product to now. Number one threat through acquisitions, IPO, has made a number of enhancements to its platform. David Cardenas is here, Deputy Director of Operations for County of Los Angeles, the Department of Public Health, David. Good to see you, thanks for coming on TheCube. Thanks for having me on guys, appreciate it. So what is your role, what does it have to do with automation? So I had been, I actually started off as kind of in the IT space within the public health, I had served as a CIO previously, but now I've been moving into broader operations and I basically manage all of the back office operations for the department, HR, IT, finance, all that. So you've had a wild ride in the last couple of years. Yeah, I think like I was been talking earlier, it's just been, the last few years have just been horrendous, it's been a really difficult experience for us. Yeah, and I mean the scars are there and maybe permanently, but it also had major effects on organizations, on operations that again seem to be permanent. How would you describe the situation in your organization? So I think the urgency that came along with the pandemic response kind of required us to look at things differently. We had to be realized, we had to be a lot more nimble than when we were and try to figure out how to enhance our operations, but really look at the core of what we're doing and figure out how it is to be more efficient. So I think we've kind of seen it as an opportunity to really examine ourselves a little bit more deeply and see what things we need to do to kind of to fix our operations and get things on a better path. You know, I think in a lot of organizations we talk to say that, but I want to understand how you handle this is you didn't have time to sit back in the middle of the pandemic.  So how do you deal with that organizational trauma? Say, okay, now let's sit back and think about this. Do people are they eager to do so? Do they have the appetite for it? What's that dynamic like? So I think certainly there's a level of exhaustion inside the organization, I can't say that there isn't because it's just been two years of 24, 7, 365 kind of work and that's tough on any organization. But I think what we realize is that there's, we need to move into action quickly because we don't know what's come to come next, right? And we're expecting that this is just a sign of what's to come and that we're just at the start of that stage of we're just gonna see a lot more outbreaks. We're gonna see a lot more conditions kind of hitting us. And if we're not prepared for that, we're not gonna be able to respond for the and preserve the health and safety of our citizens, right? So I think we're taking a very active and like look at these opportunities and see what we've done and say, how do we now make the changes that we made in response to the pandemic permanent so that the next time this comes at us, we won't have to be struggling the way that we were to try to figure things out because we'll have such a better foundation in place to be able to move things forward. I mean, I've never served in the military, but I imagine that when you're in the military, you're always prepared for some kind of, when you're code red, right? So it's like this code red culture and that seems to have carried through, right? People are constantly aware that, wow, we got caught off guard and we don't want that to happen again because that was a big part of the trauma was just the unknown and the lack of preparedness. So thinking about technology and its role in helping you to prepare for that type of uncertainty, can you describe how you're applying technology to prepare for the next unknown? So I think to the first part of what you said, I think the difficulty we've always had in the public health side is that generally the approach to healthcare is very reactionary, right?  The work that we do in public health is to try to do everything we can to keep you out of that, right? So it's broad-based messaging, social media now, it's kind of put us out there, but also to be able to surveil disease in a different way. And so the holy grail for us in healthcare has always been and at least on the public health side has been to try to see how can we tap in more actively that when you go see the doctor or when you go to the hospital, how can I get access that information very, very quickly so that I know and can see and surveil my entire county in my jurisdiction and know, oh, there's an outbreak of disease happening in this section of the county. We're 10 million people with hundreds of square miles inside of LA. There are places where we can see very specific targets that we know we have to hit, but the data's a little stale and we find out several months after, we need to figure out a way to do that more actively. Technology's going to be our path to be able to capture that information more actively and come up on something a little bit so we can track things faster and be able to respond more quickly. So that's our focus for all our technology implementations. Automation like UiPath has offered us and other things is around how to gather that information more quickly and put that into action so we can do quick interventions. People have notoriously short memories. Please tell me at any of the friction that you may have experienced in years past before the pandemic, that those friction points where people are thinking, ah, what are the odds? Yeah. Ah, I've got finite budget. I think I'm going to spend it on this thing over here. Do you, are you able to still ride sort of the wave of mind share at this point when putting programs together for the future? So whatever friction was there during the pandemic wiped away. I mean, we had amazing collaboration with the medical provider community, our hospital partners, the healthcare system in LA was working very closely with us to make sure that we were responding. And there is that wave that we are trying to make sure that we use this as an opportunity to kind of ride it so that we can implement all the things that we want because we don't know how long that's going to last us. The last time that I saw anything this large was after the anthrax attacks and the bioterrorism attacks that we had after 9-11. How interesting. Public health was really in lens at that point and we had a huge infusion of funding, a lot of support from stakeholders both politically and within the healthcare system. And we were able to make some large steps and movement at that point. This feels the same, but on a larger scale because now it touched every part of the infrastructure and we saw how society really had to react to what was going on in a different way than anyone has ever prepared for. And so now we think is a time where we know that people are making more investments in our success is going to be their success in the long run. And you have to know that expectations are now set at a completely different level. There is no, oh, we don't have enough PPE. Correct. Correct. The expectation level is, hey, you should have learned from all of A thing. We should have it, we can deliver it, we'll have it at the ready when we need to provide it. Yes, absolutely. Okay, so I sort of mentioned, we're David Cubed on the Cube, so three Dave's. You spoke today at the conference. Actually I'm speaking later actually in the session in an hour or so. Okay, my understanding is that you've got this concept of putting humans at the center of the automation. What does that mean, why is that important? Can you help us understand that? So I think what we found in the crisis is that the high demand for information was something we hadn't seen before, right? We're one of the largest media markets in the United States and what we really had trouble with is trying to figure out how to serve that the residents to provide them the information that we needed to provide to them. And so what we had traditionally done is press releases, just general marketing campaigns, billboards trying to send our message out. And when you're talking about a pandemic where on a daily basis, hour by hour, people wanted to know what was going on in their local communities. Like we had to change the way that we focused on so we started thinking about what is the information that the residents of our county need and how can we set up an infrastructure to sustain the feeding of that because if we can provide more information, people will make their own personal decisions around their personal risk, their personal safety measures they need to take and do so more actively, more so than one of us going on camera to say, this is what you should do. They can look for themselves and look at the data that's in front of them and be able to make those choices for themselves, right? And so we needed to make sure that everything that we were doing wasn't built around feeding it to our political stakeholders, which are important stakeholders. We needed to make sure that they're aware and our messaging out and our leadership were aware, but it's what could we give the public to be able to make them have access to the information that we were collecting on every single day basis to be able to make the decisions for their lives. And so the automation was key to that. We were at the beginning of the pandemic just had tons and tons of resources that we were throwing at the problem that was our systems were slow. We didn't have good ability to move data back and forth between our systems. And we needed a stopgap solution to really fill that need and be able to meet the data cycles. We had basically every day had to deliver reports and analytics and dashboards by like 10 o'clock in the morning because we knew that the 12 an hour and the five hour news cycles were going to hit and the press were going to then take those and message out. And the public started to kind of come in at that same time and look at 10 and 11 o'clock and 12 o'clock. We could see from how many hits we're hitting our website looking for that information. So when we failed and had a cycle where that data cycle didn't work and we couldn't deliver, the public would let us know. The press would let us know. The stakeholders would let us know. We had never experienced anything like that before, right? Where people had like this voracious appetite for the information. So we needed to have a very bulletproof process to make sure that every single 24 hours we were delivering that data and making it available to everybody. It's software robots enabled that. Exactly. Okay, and so how were you able to implement that so quickly and within such a traumatic environment? So I think, I guess the necessity is always the mother invention. I can try to drove us to go real quickly to look at what we had. We had data entry operations set up where we had dozens and dozens of people whose sole job in life on a 24 hour cycle was to receive medical reports that were getting interview data that's coming from our case interviews, hospitalization data that was coming in through all these different channels and it was all coming in in various forms and they were entering that into our systems of record and that's what we were using extracts from that system of record, what we was using to generate the data analyses in our systems, in our dashboards. And so we couldn't rely on those after a while because the data was coming in at such high volume. There was just, there wasn't enough data entry staff to be able to fit the need, right? And so we needed to replace those humans and take them out of that data entry cycle, pop in the bots. And so what we started to look at is, let's pick off the where it is that that data entry cycle starts and see what we could do to kind of replace that cycle. And we started off with a very discrete workload that was focused on some of our case interview data that was being turned into PDFs that somebody was using to enter into our systems and we said, well, before you do that, since we can't import it to the systems because it wasn't working, the import utilities weren't working, we got them into simple Excel spreadsheets, mapped those to the fields in our systems and let the bots do that over and over again. And we just started off with that one use case and just tuned it and went cycle after cycle, the bots just got better and better to the point where we had almost like 95% success rates on each submission of data transactions that we did every day. Okay, and you applied that automation, I don't know how many bots was it, roughly? We're now at like 30, we started with about five. Okay, oh, interesting. So you started with five and you applied them to this specific use case to handle the velocity and volume of data that was coming in. But that's obviously dynamic and it's changed, I presume it's shifted to other areas now. So how did you take what you learned there and then apply it to other use cases and other parts of the organization? So fortunately for us, the process that was being used to capture the information to generate the dashboards and analyses for the case interview data, which is what we started with, was essentially being used the same for the hospitalization data that we were getting and for tracking deaths as they were coming in as well. And so the bots essentially were just, we just took one process, take the same bots, copy them over essentially and had them follow very same process. We didn't try to introduce any different workflow than what was being done for the first one so we could replicate quickly. So I think it was lucky for us a lot of- You said it was that luck of our design. It was the same people doing the same analyses, right? So in the end, they were thinking about how to be efficient themselves. So they kind of had coalesced around a similar process. And so it was kind of like fortunate, but it was by design in terms of- It was logical to them. Logical to them to make it work. So for us to be able to insert the bots became pretty easy on the front end. It's just now, as we're trying to now expand to other areas that we're now encountering like unique processes that we just can't replicate that quickly. We're having to like now dig in a little bit. So how are you handling that? First of all, how are you determining which processes? Is it sort of process driven? Is it data driven? How do you determine that? So obviously right now the focus still is COVID. So the priority scale that we've set internally for analyzing those opportunities really is centered around, which things are really going to help our pandemic response, right? We're expecting another surge that's going to happen probably in the next couple of weeks. That'll probably take us through December. Hopefully at that point, things start to calm down. But that means high data volume again, these same process that we're looking at, optimizing the process that we have, what can we do to make those cycles better, faster, what else can we add? The data teams haven't stopped to try to figure out how else can they churn out new data reports, new data analysis to give us a different perspective on the new variants and the new different outbreaks and hotspots that are popping up. And so we also have to kind of keep up with where they're going on these data dashboards. So they're adding more data into these reports. So we know we have to optimize that. And then there's these kind of tangential work. So for example, COVID brought about unfortunately a lot of domestic violence reports. And so we have a lot of domestic violence agencies that we work with and that we have interactions with and to monitor their work, we have certain processes. So that's kind of like COVID adjacent, but it's because it's such a very critical task. We're looking at how we can kind of help in those processes and areas. Same thing like in our substance abuse area, we have substance use disorder treatment services that we provide. And we're delivering those at a higher rate because COVID kind of created more of a crisis than we would have liked. And so that's how we're prioritizing. It's really about what is the social need? What is the community need? And how can we put the technology work in those areas? So how do you envision the future of automation in your organization and the future of your organization? What does that look like? Paint a picture for us. I'm hoping that it really does, so we're going to take everything that's COVID related in the disease control areas, both in terms of our laboratory operations, in terms of our clinic operations, the way we respond, vaccination campaigns, things of that nature. And we're going to look at to see what efficiencies can we do there because it's a natural outgrowth of everything we've done on COVID up to this point. So it's almost like it's as simple as just, you're just replicating it with another disease. The disease might have different characteristics, but the work process that we follow is very similar. It's not like we're going to change everything and do something completely different for a respiratory condition as we would for some other type of foodborne condition or something else that might happen. So we certainly see very easy opportunities to just to grow out what we've already done in terms of processes to do that. So that's wave one is really focus on that grow out. The second piece I think is to look at these kind of other genital kind of community-based type of operations and see what operations we can do there. To kind of implement some improvements there. And then I'm certainly in my new role of in deputy director of operation, I was CIO before now that I'm in this operations role, I have access to the full administrative apparatus for the department. And believe me, there's enough to keep me busy there. And so that's going to be kind of my third prong is to kind of look at how we implement there. Go ahead Dave. Yeah, so this is going to be taking a step back kind of a higher level view. If we could direct the same level of rigor and attention towards some other thing that we've directed towards COVID, if you could snap your fingers and make that happen. What would that thing be in the arena of public health in LA County in particular, or you want to California, the United States? What is something that you feel maybe needs more attention than it's getting right now? So I think I touched on it a little bit earlier, but I think it's the thing we've always been trying to get to is how to really become just very intentional about how we share data more actively, right? I don't have to know everything about you, but there are certain things I care about when you go to the doctor. For that doctor, that's just going to tell me. Our physicians, our healthcare system, as you know, is always under a lot of pressure. Doctors don't have the time to sit down and write a form out for me and tell me everything that's going on. During COVID they did, because they cared about their patients so much and knew I need to know what's going on at every single moment. And if I don't tell you what's going on in my office, you'll never know and can't tell us what's going on in the community. So they had a vested interest in telling us, but on a normal day-to-day they don't have the time for that. I got to replace that. We got to make sure that when we get to, not me only, but everyone in this public health community has to be focused in working with our healthcare partners to automate the dissemination and the distribution of information so that I have the information at my fingers that I can then tell you here's what's going on in your local community, down to your neighborhood, down to your zip code, your census tract, down to your neighbor's homes, you'll be able to tell you, this is your risk. Here are the things that are going on. This is what you have to watch out for. And the more that we can be more that focused and laser focused on meeting that goal, we will be able to do our job more effectively. And you can do that while preserving people's privacy. Privacy, absolutely. And if people are informed then they can make their own decisions and they're not frustrated at the systems. David, we got a wrap, but maybe you can help us. What's your impression of the, first of all, is this your first forward? You've been to others? This is my first time. My first time. What's your takeaway when you go back to the office or home and people say, hey, how was the show? What did you learn? What are you going to say? Well, from just seeing all the partners here and kind of seeing all the different events I've been able to go to in the sessions, there's not many times I've gone to and say, we got to be doing that. And so there's certainly these opportunities for more AI, more automation opportunities that we just haven't even touched on really. I think that we really need to do that. I have to be able to, as a public institution, at some point our budgets get capped. We only have so much that we're going to receive. Even riding this wave, there's only so much we're going to be able to get. So we have to be very efficient and use our resources more. There's a lot more that we can do with AI, a lot more with the tools that we saw, some of the work product coming out at this conference that we think we can directly apply to kind of take the humans out of that, their traditional roles, get them doing higher level work so I can get the most out of them and have this other, more mundane type of work. Just have these systems just do it. I don't need anybody doing that necessarily, that work. I need to be able to leverage them for other higher level capabilities. Well, thank you for that. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. I really appreciate it. Dave. I'm great talking to you guys, thank you. Dave, you know, I love software shows because the business impact is so enormous and I especially love cool software shows. You know, first of all, the venue, 3,500 people here, very cool venue. I like the fact that it's not like booth in your face, booth competition.  This is really nice and clean and it's all about the experience. A lot of stake, not as much sizzle. Yeah, definitely. A lot of stake. The customer content at the UiPath events is always outstanding, but we are entering a new era for UiPath and we're talking, we heard a lot about the enterprise platform. You know, the big thing is this company's been in this quarterly shot clock since last April when it went public and it hasn't all been pretty. And so new co-CEO comes in. They've got resetting priorities around financials, go to market, they've got to have profitable growth. So we're watching that closely, but also product innovation. So the co-CEOs will be able to split that up, split their duties up. Daniel Dinez, the product visionary, product guru, Rob Enslin, you know, making the operations work, right? Operation business, yeah. We heard that Carl Eschenbach did the introduction. Carl's a major operator. Wanted that DNA into the company. Because they got to keep product innovation. And I want to see R&D spending stay relatively high. Product innovation, but under the heading of platform. And that's the key thing is just not being that tool set. The positioning has been, I think, accurate. That, you know, over history, we started with these RPA tools and now we've moved into business process automation and now we're moving into new frontiers where truly AI and ML are being leveraged. I love the re-enfer story about going in and using natural language processing, can't even say it, to go through messaging. That's sort of a next level of intelligence to be able to automate things that couldn't be automated before. So that whole platform story is key and they seem to have made a pretty good case for their journey into platform as far as I'm concerned. To me again, so always about the customers when they come to a event like this, you listen to what they say in the keynotes and then you listen to what the customer's saying is very strong alignment in the UI path community between the marketing and the actual implementation. Marketing's always going to be ahead, but we saw this a couple of years ago with platform and now we're seeing it throughout the customer base, 10,000 plus customers. I think this company could have easily double, triple, maybe even 10X that. All right, we got a wrap. Dave Nicholson, thank you. Two weeks in a row, good job. And let's see, check out siliconangle.com for all the news, check out thecube.net, wikibon.com as the research will be on the road, as usual, thecube, you can follow us. UI path, forward five, Dave Vellante for Dave Nicholson. We're out and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.


Llewon i ddweud i'r cyflwyno am yn siwr, erbyn mor eich cyflwyno ar ei fod, ac drwy rwy'n ymdweud o'n tynnu ar Fyreun, mae'r cinch ychydig yn y cyflwyno ar y Fyreun, ac mae'r busALL yn ymgyrch, ac mae'n fwy감 yn y fyddon mor yma, ac mae'n gweithio bobl yn ymgyrch. Mae'n hanesio i eisiau bod ei i'r meddwl yn gwybod amser, Ac a'r sgwp'r oed, rydyn ni'n gweithio, fel o'n gweld yn ffordd, ond byddwn ni'n galwadweud o'r ddweud, wedi bod yn iawn gweld yn cyfrifio'r ysgolwyd, wedi bod nhw'n glwso'r neid mewn Pateyson. Yn y gallwn ni'n bwysig, roedd yr ysgolwyd eftan yn ysgrifio'r ysgolwyd yn fwy. Rydyn ni'n gweithio, mae'n rhaid i'n gweithio'r ysgolwyd. Fe wnaeth yw i'w ddweud y gwasg yma, yna fydden nhw'n oed yn ddweud yn 35 sg. Ond efo'r cyffredin 15 o 20 o gwneud i gyntaf, Ond y golygu, efallai gael y golygu, mae ymwneud yn gwneud yn fwyaf. Mae'n ddweud o'r praswn i'n rai ar y hwyr i'r clerwys, i'r gwneud yn ddweud na'r cydwyr. Mae'n gweithio'n ddweud yn gweithio yw ddweud. A mae'n gweithio'n ddefnyddiad, hynny'n mewn gwir. iawn yn gwych yn ddechrau i'r poed, ac i amdano ni'n gwych, yn unrhyw gwrs. Ddaeth y fan sydd wedi'u bod pitho, a'i ddechrau'r bobl, ddaeth ei bod ni i gyd yn fwy hwnnw. Rwy'n ddweud â'r fagri ar ycan, a dweud i'n gyrfa ar alt yn gwir. Mae'r gweithio hefydighau cyfe, ond rydyn ni wedi bod yn gyntafolodd yn 15-20 peth gan brenfordd sydd yn cael gydigau'r paon. Fawrwch ei ddifanod ar gŷl, fawrwch ei ddifanod ddifanod fel'i gynnyddio. Fawrwch eich cwmdeithasio fel'i gweithio, ac rwy'n credu i chi oedd gwybod. Felly mae'n gweithio bach oherwydd yn y gweld, mae'n gweithio'r unrhyw oed, mae'n gweld o'n gweithio'r unrhyw oed i'r unrhyw oed. Fawrwch eich cwmdeithio'r unrhyw oed, mae'n gweithio'r unrhyw oed, mae'n gweithio'r unrhyw oed, gyntafbethoedd. The we can all high. You know, kind of level the game up a little bit. And that's exactly what we did. And I think the disappointing thing was we couldn't get the second goal. We had I think it might have been a wallaby off a co hon o weh bob a yardbroken. It looked for all the word, like it was going to be 2-0. And it was cleared off the line. Am adew o him narn ac M transforms are great chance, if the good worked on the right, the boel across the rail pushes it out, and it's oh narnwr, with an open Ond rydyn ni'n oes bwysig, ac mae'n oes bwysig o'r lliwyddon, gyda chi'n ffordd i'r gwaith yn gweithio, i'n ffordd i'r gwaith i'n gwybod i'r cyfu'r ganddau. Dyna'r ffordd i'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio, maen nhw'n mwyaf ar y ddiolch. Yna, dwi… dwi'n ddatblygu'r gwn i ddefnyddio'r gwybod, rydyn ni wedi'i bod wedi cael ei chiynau eich gangyrchu am i gyd ac yn gyntafol, sy'n cyfeiri'n mynd i fyfyrdd yn i'r gwaith i'r newid yn ymgyrch maen nhw, sydd yna cynnwys i'r holl yn ymgyrch a'r ddylch chi'n gwybod. Felly byddwch eich bwysig oherwydd yw'n mynd i amgyrch. Mae'n gymryd o'n meddwl hwn o'n meddwl hwn. pan oed at talking with the Brentford plays straight away and thought it may well have hit the mari greys hand. I hadn't seen it again, but I've been told it hits a chest and it's what hits its hand. Then that's the way it is. It's not a goal. But that would have been lovely to go in tune. When he came out the second half and I thought the first 10 of 15 it was still fine. It would have been nice and competitive. They obviously crept back into the game a bit. yw eu gyfnod yn ddechrau yn ei handful, ond y Ff5 eraill fod argynno, ac rôl drotswch eich percent oedd yn dda. Ffwrdd y Ff5, ac yn yr unrhyw ddefnyddio, mae'r ddiwedd wedi am ryddech chi'n rhaid. Diolch yn ddod y felly mae'r rhaid i ddechrau rhywbeth rôl drotswch, achos i ddeg, ac dweud o ddweud o ddod yn ddweud o ddweud. Mae'r rhaid i ddim yn ymdwy, ac ben fod yn y rhaid, mae'n ddeg yn edrych. o'r bobl. Sheamus Colman's made two brilliant blocks. We've had a couple of really scary moments where it looked like there may be someone there to put it in, Ivan Tony, or someone getting on the end of it. And we've had to grind it out and it was really, it was a difficult watch for the fact that it looked like if we'd carried on with the intensity or rupt it again in the second half. And she on-dite you could see and trying to get them going again, that there was an opportunity to put the game together. I think, I don't think they've been for the brilliant at the back. They gave us the ball back quite a few times. You must have made the wrong choices. Damari Gray tested the goalkeeper and I've won the ball back. So did Dwight McNeill. Comfortable shade for Ray and nothing, you know, nothing out of this world or ones that he'd expect to let in. But we just, you know, we couldn't get our corners right as well. A couple of penalty appeals which returned away. And we had to be careful with them. We had to defend for our lives at the time and battle for it and, you know, an injury time. Ray, it comes up and you're thinking, oh, please now. And he actually won the header and heads it wide.  Listen, we've won the game. And I'm not, it's not a negative. I just don't, I'm just not convinced we can play many more games like that in terms of just trying to defend for your life for such a long period of time. But today was all about getting the win. Obviously Liverpool had been beaten by Bournemouth, or Kelsa Price. And we knew we had to, we had to make sure we got three points against a very good side of the team. I think they were 12 unbeaten before today. The longest run in the Premier League.  And, you know, they haven't considered the goal in the games we've won. So 75% win rate at home you can't argue with. Can we get the odd away win if not two away wins? That would make a huge difference as well. But today's about today and it was a big win. And I'm absolutely delighted. There was a few candidates for man of the mat. I thought James Coleman was brilliant. He had a couple of moments where he lost the flight of the ball that I don't know why, what happened there. But overall he was very good. Tarkovsky was brilliant. I thought Dekorey was excellent. But Garnay, I think it was a toss-up between Tarkovsky and Garnay for me for the man of the mat. I think I'm going to go with Garnay, but I could understand if people would say Dekorey or Tarkovsky. I think those three were the stand-out and then Sheamus. So I'm going to give it to Adrisha Garnay, because I thought he was everywhere today. He was most of the things we did well. He was involved and so he was my man of the mat. But like I said, it could have been three or four quite easily and that's always a good sign. That's it for me. Have a great weekend. See you later.


Section 14 of Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne. The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White. Letters 59 to 66 to the Honourable Danes Barrington. The fossil wood buried in the bogs of Walmer 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 match 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, Chiradrius edichnemus. Some of them pass over or near my house almost every evening after it is dark, from the uplands of the hill and north field 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 other in the dark. The evening proceedings and manoeuvres 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 sell-borne down, where they wheel round in the air and sport and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices and making a loud calling, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village are below them, becomes a confused noise or chiding, or rather a pleasing murmur very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods or the rushing of the wind in tall trees or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep, beach and woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an occurrence, in the true spirit of physical theology, that the rooks were saying their prayers, and yet this child in the much too young to be aware that the scriptures have said of the deity, that he feedeth the ravens who call upon him. I am, et cetera. Letter 60 to the Honourable Danes Barrington. In reading Dr. Huxham's Observaciones de Aire, et cetera, written at Plymouth, I find, by those curious and accurate remarks, which contain an account of the weather from the year 1727 to the year 1748 inclusive, that though there is frequent rain in that district of Devonshire, yet the quantity falling is not great, and that some years it has been very small. For in 1731 the rain measured only 17.266 inches, and in 1741 20.354 inches, and again in 1743 only 20.908 inches. Places near the sea have frequent scuds that keep the atmosphere moist, yet do not reach far up into the country, making thus the maritime situations appear wet when the rain is not considerable. In the wettest years at Plymouth the doctor measured only once 36 inches, and again once, that is 1734, 37.114 inches. A quantity of rain that has twice been exceeded at Selbourn in the short period of my observations. Dr. Huxham remarks that frequent small rains keep the air moist, while heavy ones render it more dry by beating down the vapours. He is also of opinion that the dingy, smoky appearance of the sky in very dry seasons rises from the want of moisture sufficient to let the light through and render the atmosphere transparent, because he had observed several bodies more diaphanous when wet than dry, and did never recollect that the air had that look in rainy seasons. My friend who lives just beyond the top of the down brought his three swivel guns to try them in my outlet, with their muzzles towards the hangar, supposing that the report would have had a great effect, but the experiment did not answer his expectation. He then removed them to the alcove on the hangar, when the sound rushing along the lithe and combwood was very grand, but it was at the hermitage that the echoes and repercussions delighted the hearers, not only filling the lithe with the roar, as if all the beaches were tearing up by the roots, but turning to the left they pervaded the veil above combwood ponds, and after a pause seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend round heartily hangars, and to die away at last among the coppices and covets of Wardley Ham. It has been remarked before that this district is an anathoth, a place of responses or echoes, and therefore proper for such experiments. We may further add that the pauses in echoes, when they cease and yet are taken up again, like the pauses in music, surprise the hearers, and have a fine effect on the imagination. The gentleman above mentioned has just fixed a barometer in his parlour at Newton Valance. The tube was first filled here at Selbourne, twice with care, when the mercury agreed and stood exactly with my own. But being filled again twice at Newton, the mercury stood on account of the great elevation of that house, three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at this village, and so continues to do, be the weight of the atmosphere what it may. The plate of the barometer at Newton is figured as low as twenty-seven, because in stormy weather the mercury there will sometimes descend below twenty-eight. We have supposed Newton House to stand two hundred feet higher than this house, but if the rule holds good, which says that mercury in a barometer sinks one-tenth of an inch for every hundred feet elevation, then the Newton barometer, by standing three-tenths lower than that of Selbourne, proves that Newton House must be three hundred feet higher than that in which I am writing, instead of two hundred. It may not be impertinent to add that the barometers at Selbourne stand three-tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at South Lamberth, whence we may conclude that the former place is about three-hundred feet higher than the latter, and with good reason, because the streams that rise with us run into the Thames at Waybridge, and so to London. Of course, therefore, there must be lower ground all the way from Selbourne to South Lamberth, the distance between which all the windings and the indentings of the streams considered cannot be less than a hundred miles. I am, et cetera. Since the weather of a district is undoubtedly part of its natural history, I shall make no further apology for the four following letters, which will contain many particulars concerning some of the great frosts, and a few respecting some very hot summers that have distinguished themselves from the rest during the course of my observations. As the frost in January 1768 was, for the small time it lasted, the most severe that we had then known for many years, and was remarkably injurious to evergreens, some account of its rigor and reason of its ravages may be useful, and not unacceptable to persons that delight in planting and ornamenting, and may particularly become a work that professes never to lose sight of utility. For the last two or three days of the former year there were considerable falls of snow, which lay deep and uniform on the ground without any drifting, wrapping up the more humble vegetation in perfect security. From the first day to the fifth of the new year more snow succeeded, but from that day the air became entirely clear, and the heat of the sun about noon had a considerable influence in sheltered situations. It was in such an aspect that the snow on the author's evergreens was melted every day, and frozen intensely every night, so that the lorustines, bays, laurels, and arbutuses looked in three or four days as if they had been burnt in the fire, while a neighbour's plantation of the same kind in a high cold situation where the snow was never melted at all remained uninjured. From hence I would infer that it is the repeated melting and freezing of the snow that is so fatal to vegetation rather than the severity of the cold. Therefore it highly behoves every planter who wishes to escape the cruel mortification of losing in a few days the labour and hopes of years to bestow himself on such emergencies, and if his plantations are small to avail himself of mats, cloths, peas-horm, straw, reeds, or any such covering for a short time, or if his strawberries are extensive to see that his people go about with prongs and forks, and carefully dislodge the snow from the boughs, since the naked foliage will shift much better for itself than where the snow is partly melted and frozen again. It may perhaps appear at first like a paradox, but doubtless the more tender trees and shrubs should never be planted in hot aspects, not only for the reason assigned above but also because thus a circumstance they are disposed to shoot earlier in the spring and grow on later in the autumn than they would otherwise do, and so are sufferers by lagging or early frosts. For this reason also plants from Siberia will hardly endure our climate because on the very first advances of spring they shoot away and so are cut off by the severe nights of March or April. Dr. Fothergill and others have experienced the same inconvenience with respect to the more tender shrubs from North America, which they therefore plant under north walls. There should also perhaps be a wall to the east to defend them from the piercing blasts from that quarter. This observation might, without any impropriety, be carried into animal life, for discerning bee-masters now find that their hives should not in the winter be exposed to the hot sun because such unseasonable warmth awakens the inhabitants too early from their slumbers, and by putting their juices into motion too soon subjects them afterwards to inconveniences when rigorous winter returns. The coincidence attending this short but intense frost were that the horses fell sick with an epidemic distemper which injured the winds of many and killed some that colds and coughs were general among the human species, that it froze under people's beds for several nights, that meat was so hard frozen that it could not be spitted and could not be secured but in cellars, that several red wings and thrushes were killed by the frost, and that the large tit-mouse continued to pull straw lengthwise from the eaves of thatched houses and barns in a most adroit manner for a purpose that has been explained already. On the 3rd of January Benjamin Martin's thermometer within doors in a close parlor where there was no fire fell in the night to twenty and on the fourth to eighteen and on the seventh to seventeen point five a degree of cold which the owner never since saw in the same situation and he regrets much that he was not able at that juncture to attend his instrument abroad. All this time the wind continued north and northeast and yet on the eighth roost cocks which had been silent began to sound their clarions and crows to clamour as prognostic of milder weather and moreover moles began to heave and work and a manifest thaw took place. From the latter circumstance we may conclude that thaws often originate underground from warm vapours which arise else how should subterranean animals receive such early intimation of their approach? Moreover we have often observed that cold seems to descend from above for when a thermometer hangs abroad in a frosty night the intervention of a cloud shall immediately raise the mercury ten degrees and a clear sky shall again compel it to descend to its former gauge and here it may be proper to observe on what has been said above that though frosts advance to their utmost severity by somewhat of a regular gradation yet thaws do not usually come on by as regular a declension of cold but often take place immediately from intense freezing as men in sickness often mend at once from a paroxysm to the great credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers be it remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general havoc hence men should learn to ornament chiefly with such trees as are able to withstand accidental severities and not subject themselves to the vexation of a loss which may befall them once perhaps in ten years yet may hardly be recovered through the whole course of their lives as it appeared afterwards the Ilexes were much injured the Cypresses were half destroyed the Arbutuses lingered on but never recovered and the bays, lorustines and laurels were killed to the ground and the very wild hollies in hot aspects were so much affected that they cast all their leaves by the 14th of January the snow was entirely gone the turnips emerged not damaged at all save in sunny places the wheat looked delicately and the garden plants were well preserved for snow is the most kindly mantel that infant vegetation can be wrapped in where it's not for that friendly meteor no vegetable life could exist at all in northerly regions yet in Sweden the earth in April is not divested of snow for more than a fortnight before the face of the country is covered with flowers letter 62 to the Honourable Danes Barrington there were some circumstances attending the remarkable frost in January 1776 so single and striking that a short detail of them may not be unacceptable the most certain way to be exact will be to copy the passages from my journal which were taken from time to time as things occurred but it may be proper previously to remark that the first week in January was uncommonly wet and drowned with vast rains from every quarter from whence may be inferred as there is great reason to believe is the case that intense frosts seldom take place till the earth is perfectly cluttered and chilled with water and hence dry autums are seldom followed by rigorous winters note the autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet and particularly the month of September during which their fellow at Linden in the county of Rutland six inches and a half of rain and the terrible long frost of 1739 to 40 set in after a rainy season and when the springs were very high end note January the seventh snow driving all the day which was followed by frost sleet and some snow till the twelfth when a prodigious mass overwhelmed all the works of men drifting over the tops of the gates and filling the hollow lanes on the 14th the writers obliged to be much abroad and thinks he never before or since has encountered such rugged Siberian weather many of the narrow roads were now filled above the tops of the hedges through which the snow was driven into most romantic and grotesque shapes so striking to the imagination as not to be seen without wonder and pleasure the poultry dared not to stir out of their roosting places for cocks and hens are so dazzled and confounded by the glare of snow that they would soon perish without assistance the hairs also lay sullenly in their seats and would not move until compelled by hunger being conscious poor animals that is the drifts and heaps treacherously betray their footsteps and prove fatal to numbers of them from the 14th the snow continued to increase and began to stop the road wagons and coaches which could no longer keep on their regular stages and especially on the western roads where the fall appears to have been deeper than in the south the company at Bath that wanted to attend the Queen's birthday were strangely incommodated many carriages of persons who got in their way to town from Bath as far as Marlborough after strange embarrassments here met with the Neplus Ultra the ladies fretted and offered large rewards to labourers if they would shovel them a track to London but the relentless heaps of snow were too bulky to be removed and so the 18th passed over leaving the company in very uncomfortable circumstances at the castle and other inns on the 20th the sun shone out for the first time since the frost began a circumstance that has been remarked before much in favour of vegetation all this time the cold was not very intense for the thermometer stood at 29 28 25 and there about but on the 21st it descended to 20 the birds now began to be in a very pitiable and starving condition tamed by the season skylarks settled in the streets of towns because they saw the ground was bare rooks frequented dung hills close to houses and crows watched horses as they passed and greedily devoured what dropped from them hares now came into men's gardens and scraping away the snow devoured such plants as they could find on the 22nd the author had occasion to go to London through a sort of Laplandian scene very wild and grotesque indeed but the metropolis itself exhibited a still more singular appearance than the country for being bedded deep in snow the pavement of the streets could not be touched by the wheels or the horses feet so that the carriages ran about without the least noise such an exception from din and clatter was strange but not pleasant it seemed to convey an uncomfortable idea of desolation ipsa silentia terrent readers note the silence frightening end readers note on the 27th much snow fell all day and in the evening the frost became very intense at south Lambert for the four following nights the thermometer fell to eleven seven six six and at Selborn to seven six ten and on the 31st of January just before sunrise with rhyme on the trees and on the tube of the glass the quick silver sunk exactly to zero being thirty two degrees below the freezing point but by eleven in the morning though in the shade it sprung up to sixteen point five a most unusual degree of cold this for the south of England note at Selborn the cold was greater than at any other place that the author could hear of with certainty though some reported at the time that at a village in Kent the thermometer fell two degrees below zero that is 34 degrees below the freezing point the thermometer used at Selborn was graduated by Benjamin Martin end note during these four nights the cold was so penetrating that it occasioned ice in warm chambers and under beds and in the day the wind was so keen that persons of robust constitutions could scarcely endure to face it the Thames was at once so frozen over both above and below bridge that crowds run about on the ice the streets were now strangely encumbered with snow which crumbled and trod dusty and turning grey resembled bay salt what had fallen on the roofs was so perfectly dry that from first to last it lay twenty-six days on the houses in the city a longer time than had been remembered by the oldest housekeepers living according to all appearances we might now have expected the continuance of this rigorous weather for weeks to come since every night increased in severity but behold without any apparent cause on the first of February a thaw took place and some rain followed before night making good the observation above that frosts often go off as it were at once without any gradual declension of cold on the second of February the thaw persisted and on the third swarms of little insects were frisking and sporting in a courtyard at South Lambeth had felt no frost why the juices in the small bodies and smaller limbs of such minute beings are not frozen is a matter of curious inquiry severe frosts seem to be partial or to run in currents for at the same juncture as the author was informed by accurate correspondence at Linden in the county of Rutland the thermometer stood at nineteen at Blackburn in Lancashire at nineteen and at Manchester at twenty one twenty and eighteen thus does some unknown circumstance strangely over balance latitude and render the cold sometimes much greater in the southern and in the northern parts of this kingdom the consequences of this severity were that in Hampshire at the melting of the snow the wheat looked well and the turnips came forth little injured the laurels and lorustines were somewhat damaged but only in hot aspects no evergreens were quite destroyed and not half the damage sustained that befell in January seventeen sixty eight those laurels that were a little scorched on the south sides were perfectly untouched on the north sides the care taken to shake the snow day by day from the branches seemed greatly to avail the authors evergreens a neighbour's laurel hedge in a high situation and facing to the north was perfectly green and vigorous and the Portugal laurels remained unhurt as to the birds the thrushes and blackbirds were mostly destroyed and the partridges by the weather and poachers were so thin that few remained to breed the following year letter sixty three to the honourable Danes Barrington as the frost in December seventeen eighty four was very extraordinary you I trust will not be displeased to hear the particulars and especially and I promise to say no more about the severities of winter after I have finished this letter the first week in December was very wet with the barometer very low on the seventh with the barometer at twenty eight and five tenths came on a vast snow which continued all that day and the next and most part of the following night so that by the morning of the ninth the works of men were quite overwhelmed the lanes filled so as to be impassable and the ground covered twelve or fifteen inches without any drifting in the evening of the ninth the air began to be so very sharp that we thought it would be curious to attend to the motions of a thermometer we therefore hung out to one made by Martin and one by Dolland which soon began to show us what we were to expect for by ten o'clock they fell to twenty one and at eleven to four when we went to bed on the tenth in the morning the Quicksilver of Dolland's glass was down to half a degree below zero and that of Martin's which was absurdly graduated only to four degrees above zero sunk quite into the brass guard of the ball so that when the weather became most interesting this was useless on the tenth at eleven at night though the air was perfectly still Dolland's glass went down to one degree below zero this strange severity of the weather made me very desirous to know what degree of cold there might be in such an exalted and near situation as Newton we had therefore on the morning of the tenth written to Mr. Blank and entreated him to hang out his thermometer made by Adams and to pay some attention to it morning and evening expecting wonderful phenomena in so elevated a region at two hundred feet or more above my house but behold on the tenth at eleven at night it was down only to seventeen and the next morning at twenty two when mine was at ten we were so disturbed at this unexpected reverse of comparative local cold that we sent one of my glasses up thinking that of Mr. Blank must somehow be wrongly constructed but when the instruments came to be confronted they went exactly together so that for one night at least the cold at Newton was eighteen degrees less than at Selwarn and through the whole frost ten or twelve degrees and when we came to observe consequences we could readily credit this for all my lorustines, bays, ilaxes, arbutuses, cypresses and even my Portugal laurels and which occasions more regret my fine sloping laurel hedge was scorched up while at Newton the same trees have not lost a leaf note Mr. Miller in his gardener's dictionary says positively that the Portugal laurels remained untouched in the remarkable frost of 1739-40 so that either that accurate observer was much mistaken or else the frost of December 1784 was much more severe and destructive than that in the year above mentioned end note we had steady frost on to the 25th when the thermometer in the morning was down to ten with us and at Newton only to twenty one strong frost continued till the thirty first when some tendency to thaw was observed and by January the third 1785 the thaw was confirmed and some rain fell a circumstance that I must not admit because it was new to us is that on Friday December the tenth being bright sunshine the air was full of icy spiculae floating in all directions like atoms in a sunbeam let into a dark room we brought them at first particles of the rhyme falling from my tall hedges but were soon convinced to the contrary by making our observations in open places where no rhyme could reach us were they watery particles of the air frozen as they floated or were they evaporations from the snow frozen as they mounted we were much obliged to the thermometers for the early information they gave us and hurried our apples, pears, onions potatoes etc into the cellar and warm closets while those who had not or neglected such warnings lost all their stores of roots and fruits and had their very bread and cheese frozen I must not admit to tell you that during those two Siberian days my parlor cat was so electric that had a person stroke her and been properly insulated the shock might have been given to a whole circle of people I forgot to mention before that during the two severe days two men who were tracing hairs in the snow had their feet frozen and two men who were much better employed had their fingers so affected by the frost while they were thrashing in a barn that a mortification followed from which they did not recover for many weeks this frost killed all the furs and most of the ivy and in many places stripped the hollies it came at a very early time of the year before old November ended and yet it may be allowed from its effects to have exceeded any since 1739 to 40 Letter 64 to the Honourable Daines Barrington As the effects of heat are seldom very remarkable in the northerly climate of England where the summers are often so defective in warmth and sunshine as not to ripen the fruits of the earth so well as might be wished I shall be more concise in my account of the severity of a summer season and so make a little amends for the prolix account of the degrees of cold and the inconveniences that we suffered from late rigorous winters the summers of 1781 and 1783 were unusually hot and dry to them therefore I shall turn back in my journals without recurring to any more distant period in the former of these years my peach and nectarine trees suffered so much from the heat that the rind on the bodies was scalded and came off since which the trees have been in a decaying state this may prove a hint to assiduous gardeners to fence and shelter their wall trees with mats or boards as they may easily do because such annoyance is seldom of long continuance during that summer also I observed that my apples were coddled as it were on the trees so that they had no quickness of flavour and would not keep in the winter this circumstance put me in mind of what I have heard travellers assert that they never ate a good apple or apricot in the south of Europe where the heats were so great as to render the juices vapid and insipid the great pests of a garden are wasps which destroy all the finer fruits just as they are coming into perfection in 1781 we had none in 1783 there were myriads which would have devoured all the produce of my garden had we not set the boys to take the nests and caught thousands with hazel twigs dipped with bird-lime we have since employed the boys to take and to destroy the large breeding wasps in the spring such expedients have a great effect on these marauders and will keep them under though wasps do not abound but in hot summers yet they do not prevail in every hot summer as I have instanced in the two years above mentioned in the sultry season of 1783 honeydews were so frequent as to deface and destroy the beauties of my garden my honeysuckles which were one week the most sweet and lovely objects that the eye could behold became the next the most loathsome being enveloped in a viscous substance and loaded with black aphids or smotherflies the occasion of this clammy appearance seems to be this that in hot weather the effluvure of flowers in fields and meadows and gardens are drawn up in the day by a brisk evaporation and then in the night fall down again with the dews in which they are entangled that the air is strongly scented and therefore impregnated with the particles of flowers in summer weather our senses will inform us and that this clammy sweet substance is of the vegetable kind we may learn from bees to whom it is very grateful and we may be assured that it falls in the night because it is always seen first in the warm still mornings On chalky and sandy soils and in the hot villages about London the thermometer has been often observed to mount as high as 83 or 84 but with us in this hilly and woody district I have hardly ever seen it exceed 80 nor does it often arrive at that pitch the reason I conclude is that our dense clay-y soil so much shaded by trees is not so easily heated through as those above mentioned and besides the mountains cause currents of air and breezes and the vast effluvia from our woodlands temper and moderate our heats Letter 65 to the Honourable Danes Barrington The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one and full of horrible phenomena for besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunderstorms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of this kingdom the peculiar haze or smoky fog that prevailed for many weeks in this island and in every part of Europe and even beyond its limits were the most extraordinary appearance unlike anything known within the memory of man by my journal I find that I had noticed this strange occurrence from June the 23rd to July the 20th inclusive during which period the wind varied to every quarter without making any alteration in the air the sun at noon looked as blank as a clouded moon and she had a rust-colored ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms but was particularly lurid and blood-colored at rising and setting all the time the heat was so intense that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic and riding irksome the country people began to look suspicious or at the red, lowering aspect of the sun and indeed there was reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive for all the while Calabria and part of the Isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes and about that juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway on this occasion Milton's noble simile of the sun in his first book of Paradise Lost frequently occurred to my mind particularly applicable because towards the end it alludes to a superstitious kind of dread with which the minds of men are always impressed by such strange and unusual phenomena as when the sun and new risen looks through the horizontal misty air shorn of his beams or from behind the moon in dim eclips disastrous twilight sheds on half the nations and with fear of change perplexes monarchs Letter 66 to the Honourable Danes Barrington We are very seldom annoyed with thunderstorms and it is no less remarkable than true that those which arise in the south have hardly been known to reach this village for before they get over us they take a direction to the east or to the west or sometimes divide into two and go in part to one of these quarters and in part to the other as was truly the case in summer 1783 when though the country round was continually harassed with tempests and often from the south yet we escaped them all as appears by my journal of that summer the only way that I can at all account for this fact for such it is is that on that quarter between us and the sea there are continual mountains hill behind hill such as Nor Hill the Barnett, Butser Hill and Portsdown which somehow diverts the storms and give them a different direction High promontries and elevated grounds have always been observed to attract clouds and disarm them of their mischievous contents which are discharged into the trees and summits as soon as they come in contact with those turbulent meteors while the humble veils escape because they are so far beneath them but when I say I do not remember a thunderstorm from the south I do not mean that we never have suffered from thunderstorms at all for on June the 5th 1784 the thermometer in the morning being at 64 and at noon at 70 the barometer at 29 6 tenths one half and the wind north I observed a blue mist smelling strongly of sulphur hanging along our sloping woods and seeming to indicate that thunder was at hand I was called in about two in the afternoon and so missed seeing the gathering of the clouds in the north which they who were abroad assured me had something common in its appearance at about a quarter after two the storm began in the parish of Hartley moving slowly from north to south and from thence it came over northern farm and so to Grange farm both in this parish it began with vast drops of rain which were soon succeeded by round hail and then by convex pieces of ice which measured three inches in girth had it been as extensive as it was violent and of any continuance for it was very short it must have ravaged all the neighbourhood in the parish of Hartley it did some damage to one farm but Norton which lay in the centre of the storm was greatly injured as was Grange which lay next to it it did but just reached to the middle of the village where the hail broke my north windows and all my garden lights and handglasses and many of my neighbours windows the extent of the storm was about two miles in length and one in breadth it began to dine but was soon diverted from our repast by the clattering of tiles and the jingling of glass there fell at the same time prodigious torrents of rain on the farms above mentioned which occasioned a flood as violent as it was sudden doing great damage to the meadows and fallows by deluging the one and washing away the soil of the other the hollow lane towards Alton was so torn and disordered as not to be passable till mended by two hundred weight those that saw the effects which the great hail had on ponds and pools say that the dashing of the water made an extraordinary appearance the froth and spray standing up in the air three feet above the surface the rushing and roaring of the hail as it approached was truly tremendous though the clouds at South Lamberth near London were at that juncture thin and light and no storm was in sight nor within hearing yet the air was strongly electric the bells of an electric machine at that place rang repeatedly and fierce sparks were discharged when I first took the present work in hand I proposed to have added an Annos Historico naturalis or the natural history of the twelve months of the year which would have comprised many incidents and occurrences that have not fallen in my way to be mentioned in my series of letters but as Mr Akin of Warrington has lately published somewhat of this sort and as the length of my correspondence has sufficiently put your patience to the test I shall here take a respectful leave of you and natural history together and am with all due deference and regard your most obliged and most humble servant Gilbert White Selbourne, June the 25th 1787 the end of the natural history of Selbourne by Gilbert White


In 1914, my grandfather and grandmother homesteaded here, and I am third generation, and we have the fourth generation ranchers on the ranch today. The history of this ranch from a grazing point of view was season long grazed up until 1990 and 1991. In 1990, I went through the bootstraps program and had a range consultant come to the ranch and work with my dad and I, and that's when we started rotational grazing. We were standing on a ridge looking out over the prairie, Dwayne Breyer was the consultant and my dad Ski and I, and Dwayne said, fellas, you're going to need to start rotating these pastures. And my dad looked at him and said, Dwayne, that won't work. And then Dwayne's response was, well then, you better start small. And so in two years, my dad was the biggest fan. We couldn't progress fast enough, we couldn't subdivide pastures fast enough. When he started seeing results, he was all in. So I had tremendous support. We went from 12 pastures to close to 40 now. Every pasture that we have is different, they're different sizes. Some of them have a lot of badlands, some of them have a lot of trees, they have different season of grasses, some are cool season, some are warm season grasses. So every pasture is handled a little bit different than the last one. We have gone through in the past and done inventory on these pastures, what grasses are in there, how much they produce, and determine the amount of time that we're going to be in that pasture based off of that and how much of that grass we want to remove. And that changes year to year based on water a lot because our stock dams are going dry, we don't have water tanks everywhere, we've got a lot of water tanks, but we're working on getting a lot of above ground water line put in this year to scatter water out so that we can more effectively graze corners of the pasture that don't get touched quite as evenly I guess you could say, because they have to travel so far to go back to water. And then along with that we're starting to do more cross fencing. One of the benefits of living in a badland country here are the warm season grasses. We have a high percentage warm season grasses because up on the flats, on the hills we have clay kind of gumbo and down in the valleys, there's these badland overflow sites where the Cytos grama, big blue stem, little blue stem, just flourish. So when we started the rotation, those plants exploded and if they're 40% of the plant community in a lot of pastures, that was a really big improvement in production. In the first 10 years we saw a 30% increase in stocking rate and we've maintained that over the years now. The land has become healthier every year since. So now we're 30 years into this, or 25 really, and we're seeing some really good things with plant diversity, higher plant populations, and higher organic matter in the soil where it rains, water soaks into the ground more now than it used to by a lot. So we are more drought resilient. We've grown grass in every drought since the 90s now, some grass anyway, that part has been a big benefit. Growing food is really important and having the opportunity to grow food well in a way that builds soil and is part of the system rather than separate from it. It's hard to pinpoint exactly a spot in time where I realized the importance of soil and all of the moving pieces on a ranch as far as wildlife and plant diversity. It's just been such a big part of living here that I don't think there is one exact point in time where I realize how important it is. I think definitely as I get older I appreciate it more. I'm able to really see the difference it makes when you pay attention to the soil and all the life happening below the surface and how deeply that impacts everything above the surface from our daily life for just having peace of mind that we're doing the right thing for the landscape and for the animals and the wildlife. Right now we're starting the process of transitioning the fourth generation into the ranch. One of my main goals is to be able to sustain the ranch and keep it healthy enough that I can do that for my son in the future so he can be the fifth generation on the ranch and whoever else might be coming up at the time. Family is important and Donna and I are blessed that way. We have four kids, Blake and Amy have two and we have kids that want to come back and ranch and also just come here for fun. That's a valuable thing. That's worth a lot. These change the way this is managed so it accommodates not just the grass and the cattle but the people that live here so you get more efficient. So you're using the cattle to process the grass, not all the equipment. But in real practical terms it means you can raise a family and still have time for your family. I think every year that goes by and every grandchild that is born I tend to value the land and family even more. This place is an amazing, amazing place and it becomes part of us and we see the joy in our children about the place and the family and our grandkids as well. It's a wonderful feeling to see that love continue. It's deep inside us that this place has value, has family value, has history. It's a place that we have to take care of and to see that next generation with that same passion and effort and energy, that's just beyond words.


with my revolver one day just to kind of test it out and see what what it worked. So I recommend like what's going to happen is if you guys buy a gun you start carrying it you're going to have all these different a drawer full of holsters outside the waistband inside the waistband shoulder holsters, fanny packs, all this kind of stuff. I would never wear a fanny pack though. All right that was actually my segue because one of the things I do want to talk about too is 80% of shootings occur in low light situations. So if we could dim the lights for a second we're going to kick these off. I want to do a little demo and explain some stuff and actually I'm going to have Anthony help me out with this. You want them all? Yeah damn that one too please. There we go perfect. So he's going to be my bad guy and I want us to kind of just get used to the darkness for a second too I explain this. So first off you can see that cool picture that's actually me I was posing for something for a magazine for a catalog but I'm actually doing bad stuff with the gun you never have your gun low like that. I'm also backlit like I'm actually going in and all the lights are on behind me that's bad tactics FYI if anyone's looking at the picture of critiquing and I know that that's for a catalog. But 80% of shootings occur in low light situations. When do predators come out to pray at night? When is someone going to break in your house usually at night?  So if you have a firearm I highly recommend you have a flashlight a good flashlight with it and you guys have probably seen those big-ass mag lights before or stream lights those big ones you can blind people with you can hit them with it those suck I don't like them. I'm a big fan of these nice small ones and I'll show you guys more in detail when the lights are back on. But what I want to demo with this is just by having a good flashlight a lot of times this is all I have because if I'm out yeah no pictures if I'm out or when I was flying here I can't take a knife with me on an airplane I can't take my gun with me but I can have a flashlight with me and no one is going to think twice about a flashlight if I pepper spray someone in the face and I wasn't justified I can get in trouble if I stun gun someone I should have brought all that stuff I should have pepper spray and stun gun and taser jet I can get in trouble but if you shine someone in the eyes of the flashlight what are they going to do they're going to sound like a bitch if they're whining about that unless it's this flashlight so anyways what I'm going to do is this demo um take actually one step back and pretend that you are a bad guy with a handgun you're pointing it at my head so this is a big problem when I would teach military law enforcement they don't know how to use a flashlight properly so a lot of times they're kind of target fixated and they're looking at the gun and they're shining the flashlight at them but they're not really like shining it right in his eyes and of all of our senses our eyes are really the strongest that's why a lot of martial arts saying there's like if you take the eye you take the body pepper spray you want to hit him in the eyes if you take the eyes out of the fight it's pretty nasty so I'm going to move around and I want you to keep your fingers pointed at me yeah keep a point in my head so if I move he's able to trace me so just by being smart with this flashlight if I shine him in the eyes he can't even see me so when we actually we do advanced training when we're coming in rooms we'd have our flashlights out we'd keep it away from our body and we'd strobe and move around the whole room and this is why I wanted the lights to be off for a second because you guys get acclimated to I'm gonna blind everyone for a second just so you can see what this is like so imagine getting someone's trying to get in your face start a fight you're in a bar or something and they can't see you and this one's really cool too because it has a strobe feature which is even more fucked up lights on so I remember when I was working at my gun range this one guy Ken Good came in he works for the company Surefire if you guys have ever seen those weapon mounted lights on the AR-15s and on the shotguns and all that that's Surefire that's like the best stuff the shotgun light I have is like five six hundred dollars just for the light but it's a special light it's really bright really powerful this is an LED so no bulb to burn out it runs off the three volt lithiums which are the camera batteries so they have a 10-year shelf life so this light is like my oh shit light I keep it next to the bed I maybe keep my pocket if I'm out keep one in my car a lot of my you guys saw me with my bag earlier with my iPad bag I keep one of these in it I'll usually put a knife on the other side but again you got with a flashlight no one's gonna think anything of it this one's nice and small I actually have another one that's even smaller that I carry you to but I want you guys to see this one it's a like I said small easy to carry no one's gonna freak out if you have this I'll tuck it keep it in my back pocket had it out last night with me and then all you got to do is if I'm going somewhere where they're like gonna maybe look for things I'll untuck it put it in my pocket go yeah it's a flashlight and people just think it's like a little mini mag light or something even with the lights on you can see how bright it is pretty awesome but that's why I want you guys to get used to it because at nighttime it doesn't just get dark instantly people get used to the darkest they're in the bar for an hour or two you know how it is when you get up in the middle of the night to go piss and you flip on the light especially if you've been drinking or something you flip on the light you're like oh man like it fucking hurts so imagine be able to do that whenever you want some of these lights like I said are pretty expensive I really like this one it's a stream light protac 2l the other one is a 1l that's usually the one I carry it's just the three volt version this is the six volt version these retail for like 60 70 bucks so they went from being a couple years ago when I was teaching this full-time to 300 for some of the ones I have to now 50 60 bucks the place I used to work at two back in the day is called Arizona tactical and what I'm gonna try to do with them is if any of the guys are here want to order the stuff just google Arizona tactical it's arizona tactical calm and you guys can call them up and just say hey Steve Bravo he shows the flashlights a small black led one and they said they try to give you guys a discount on it I don't know for everyone who's watching this video years from now I don't know if it's going to work for you guys but for everyone in the near future they said they try to hook you up just is something cool to do like I don't get anything back from that so 80% of shootings occur in low light some people have seen those flashlights that go on the guns that mount on the bottom those are nice but the problem is if I hear a noise maybe I don't want to cover that with my muzzle yet maybe I'm not justified in pointing my gun at it yet so instead of pointing my gun at everything and then I turn out it's like a kid or something in the house or some kid in your backyard now I got my fucking gun on them I could go out with my flashlight and be ready if I need to and also they're blinding they don't see anything and like I said when we were doing training to keep it away from your body and they would actually shoot at the flashlight because they can't see you like right here if he couldn't even see me he couldn't fight so you could just blast someone I had some homeless guy come up to me one night acting really squirrely getting up my face wanted some money was drunk on something and I was like dude I don't want to like stay away from me I give me something kept getting close and I zapped him in the eyes with this and he whipped his head back so fast they stumbled and almost fell over just from that and they went what the fuck was that he's freaking out just from fucking shine the flashlight in his eyes so and I don't know if you guys noticed it but when police officers do stops they always kick on their high beams in the spotlight and they blind you that's they're doing that on purpose they walk up they shine the flashlight in your eyes right away or they shine it at like a white piece of paper or something it backlights you same thing they're trying to fuck up your eyes on purpose so that way if they have to get in a fight with you they're already at an advantage the other thing we used to teach was how to create a wall of light so if all these headlights are on eventually I'm going to have to cross this light and I'm going to get backlit like this picture see how you can totally see my silhouette if you're shooting at it well if this is getting shined in your eyes even if I'm backlit you can't see me actually for that picture I had to hold it down because it was too powerful it was too bright for that picture so they would actually stop create a wall of light with their headlights their search lights and all that well then as they're walking in front they get their handhelds out blind you and then they can get right up on your car and they don't you don't even know they're there because they've just it's white light until they're right on top of you but like I said something that you can carry with you all the time is it going to draw any weird looks you can't get in trouble for blinding someone for a second with it a flashlight so knives are fun I love them I got lots this is one of the ones I was carrying for a while I'll show you guys some it's called a karambit and they do all these moves with it we twirl it instead of like a ballet song knife where you flip it around which really is like back in the day they used to try to flip it and hit someone's hand like kind of disarm them or something with it this is actually cool because if I'm trying to like reach someone and I can't make contact with it I gotta be careful I don't cut the screen but you want to reach out you can't cut them I can actually extend it and now I can make contact with it you can also twirl it around and actually get two cuts with one move because it's curved it's actually it's designed where it'll puncture and everything that's gotten there as it cuts out it'll sever any predators teeth and fangs are shaped like this for a reason so I'm a big fan of this knife it's called a karambit I'll talk more about that maybe on the break or something I didn't want to start doing knife training and stuff on the video but I'm a big fan of knives but obviously for defending myself I don't want to get up close and fight with someone and all it takes is one lucky shot and I can be knocked unconscious I obviously always want to have space and have a firearm because that's going to be the best weapon so creating space use a superior weapon if I use a shotgun if I knew I was going to get into the gunfight I don't want to snipe a rifle I don't want to be as far away as possible save as possible never let me see me if I had to be a little closer and someone's coming at me with a knife or a handgun I'd want my shotgun or a rifle if it's even closer maybe a handgun I didn't have enough time to prepare I don't I always want to get into something with the best weapon I have but you always have to balance that out you don't want to be in level orange all the time when you go out and you can't relax that was one of my problems I could never relax I was always the guy at the bar or the restaurant with my friends let's see if I can do it now without making like without laughing but I was always the guy that they're like what's wrong why are you so angry and I was like I'm fine because it's hard for me to do now without even laughing I didn't teach myself how to do it I was really bad I like a stone face all the time but it was because all this training that I did and when I got divorced I was like man I got to learn how to relax and actually act normal and so I don't go out carrying a gun with three mags and all that stuff and I never did that but there's people that do it and they take it that far so you really have to balance this out with your life are you gonna go out always with three guns and four knives and all that stuff if I was going to war how many guns would I carry guess number throw it out there three I'd carry as many as I can as many as I can effectively carry and utilize that's what I'd carry knives weapons all that stuff as many as I can but if I'm just going to like Target I was gonna say Walmart but I don't go to Walmart I go to Target Tarjay so if you want to be a little fancier you go to Target I don't want to go out there with like five six guns like because I don't want my life you finally got it Tarjay that's what we used to say to LA um actually man Target in LA in Hollywood it was like the hottest girls you'd see celebrities and so that was one of the best places seemed to but you got to balance out your life with all this stuff now I don't have like crazy shit all in my house but I definitely have access to a weapon in the bathroom in the living room at my desk or something because if someone kicks in that door all of a sudden I don't want to have to then run and try to get something I always just want to be around something if I'm in my car I always have something around on me I always have something so but if you guys look at me I look like just a normal dude and


So I'm researching adaptive serious games that use cognitive load or working memory combined with performance to try and adapt serious games and simulation training to get best possible outcomes for learners and the education institutions as well as providing some really rich metrics to help people into the future. One of the things is serious games and simulation training are a huge industry and it's growing from schools right through to high-end military training. So they're becoming a big industry and at the moment it's a bit of a one-size-fits-all approach this simulation everybody does it and whether you like that or don't like that or if it suits you or doesn't suit you bad luck that's what you've got. So what we're looking at is adapting those games in real time so that the people who are learning or participating if they're struggling a bit the game will pick it up and help them achieve success. Furthermore we want to know whether someone's really succeeding or mastering the content and this is where some of the cognitive load aspects come in. So for example you might get 80% but you're cruising and you only use 50% of your cognitive load in this way we'd know that and we could adjust the game to make it more challenging to keep you interested and motivated. The current Game War experiment that I'm running is built around a Unity game engine and what we wanted to know was what happens to people's brains essentially when they're doing complex tasks. So a lot of research tends to be very isolated or focuses in on just one or two things so what we want to do is see what happens in a much broader context so playing a whole game with different tasks and different environments and different challenges what happens across that whole gamut of interactions. And what I'm trying to do is be able to produce beyond just the adaptive game element I'm actually also looking at what are the pedagogical or educational bases combined with the psychology to really make effective serious games even if you don't do a cognitive adaptive one just understanding how better to make them and design them is an important piece for me as well.