The Natural History of Selborne

Bramshot

Rode to Fir-grove in the parish of Bramshot, & saw the house & garden.  The south wall of the kitchen-garden is covered with a range of vines of the sort called the millers-grape.  Each vine was trained within a very narrow space, & their boughs upright: yet they had fine wood, & promised for much fruit, & were almost in full bloom.  Mr Richardson’s vines, my sort, did not blow then: but Fir-grove is much more sheltered than Bramshot-place.  The soils are the same, a warm sandy loam.  When we came to Evely-corner a hen-partridge came out of a ditch, & ran along shivering with her wings, & crying out as if wounded, & unable to get from us.  While the dam acted this distress, the boy who attended me, saw her brood, that was small & unable to fly, run for shelter into an old fox-earth under the bank.  So wonderful a power is instinct.