The Natural History of Selborne

Vast rains in the night!  Some few grapes left on the vines.

Vast flocks of wild fowls in the forest.  They are probably migraters newly arrived.

At Mr. Pink’s at Faringdon is a rook’s nest with young in it.

Nasturtiums nipped but still in bloom.

Snipes come up into the meadows.

Nasturtiums blow yet some few leaves are decayed.  Grapes delicate, but many bunches decay.  Paths dry.

Appears in my fields:  Elvela pileo deflexo, adnato, lobato, difformi: Linn. flo Suec: Elvela petiloata, lamina in formam capituli deorsum plicato-laciniata & crispa; petiolo fistuloso, striato, & rimoso: Gleditsch methodus fungorum.

Harsh air.

Oenas, sive vinago.  The stock-dove, or wood-pigeon appears.  Where they breed is uncertain.  They leave us in spring, & do not return ’til about this time.  Before the beechen woods were so much destroyed we had every winter prodigious flocks, reaching for a mile together as they went out from their roost of a morning.  Hartley-wood used to abound with them.  They were considerably less than the ring-dove, or queest, which breeds with us, and stays the whole year round.

Nasturtiums and other Indian flowers are still in bloom: a sure token that there has been no frost.