The Natural History of Selborne

Leaves fall very fast.  The hangers begin to lose their picturesque beauties.

Flocks of large fieldfares.  Celeri finely blanched.

Redwings on the hawthorns.  Bat appears.

The arbutus casts it’s blossoms & discloses the rudiments of its fruit.  In thses two instances fructifcation goes on the winter through.  Three martins in the street.  Gossamer on every bent.  *Bynstede, the name of a parish near us, signifies locus cultus, vel habitatus.  This barish abuts on a wild woodland district, which is a royal forest, & is called the Holt.  This parish was probably cultivated when all around were nothing but woodlands, & forests.

My autumn crop of spinage this year runs much to seed.

The storm on thursday night tore all the remaining flowers to pieces.  *With us the country people call coppices, or brush-wood, ris, or rice: now hris in Saxon signifies frondes, & is no doubt whence our provincial term originates.  Hraed hriz is frondes celeres: hence probably Red Rice, the name of a hunting-seat standing in the midst of a coppice at Andover.

One swallow near Wallingford.  strong wind.  Acorns abound: the hogs in the lanes & woods seem to be half fat.

Vast rain with stormy wind, this storm damaged my trees, & hedges.  This storm occasioned much damage at sea, & in the river thames.

Turkies get up on the boughs of oaks in pursuit of acorns.

Mr Barker writes word that in Sep. last there fell in the county of Rutland near six inch. & 1/2 of rain.  The beeches on the hanger, & the maples in my fields are now beautifully tinged, & afford a lovely picturesque scape, very engaging to the imagination.