The Natural History of Selborne

Two of my brother Henry’s gold-fish have been sick, & cannot live with the rest in the glass-bowl but in a tin-bucket by themselves they soon become lively, & vigorous. They were perhaps too much crouded in the bowl. When a fish sickens it’s head gets lowest; so that by degrees it stands as it were ont it’s head; ’till getting weaker & losing all poise, the tail turns over; & at last it floats on the water with it’s belly uppermost. Gold & silver-fishes seem to want no aliment, but what they can collect from pure water frequently changed. They will eat crumbs, but do better without; because the water is soon corrupted by the pieced of bread, & turns sour. Tho’ they seem to take nothing, yet the consequences of eating frequently drop from them: so that they must find many animalcula, & other nourishment. With their pinnae pectorales they gently protrude themselves forward or backward: but it is with their strong muscular tails only that Fishes move with such inconceivable rapidity.

It has been said that the eyes of fishes are immoveable: but these apparently turn them forward or backward in their sockets as their occasions require. They take little notice of a lighted candle, though applied close to their heads, but flounce and seem much frightened by a sudden stroke of the hand against the support whereon the bowl is hung; especially when they have been motionless, and are perhaps asleep. As fishes have no eyelids, it is not easy to discern when they are sleeping or not, because their eyes are always open.

Nothing can be more amusing than a glass bowl containing such
fishes: the double refractions of the glass and water represent them, when moving, in a shifting and changeable variety of dimensions, shades, and colours; while the two mediums, assisted by the concavo-convex shape of the vessel, magnify and distort them vastly; not to mention that the introduction of another element and its inhabitants into our parlours engages the fancy in a very agreeable manner.

The gold & silver-fish lie sleeping all day in their silver-bowl towards the surface of the water: people that have attended to them suppose this circumstance prognostic of rain.  Jupiter & Saturn approach to each other very fast.

Grapes at this place eatable: the sort, black cluster, come from Selborne.

My brother’s children & plantations strangely grown in two years.  On the downs the green wheat looked very chearful & pleasant.  Some wheat & turnips covered with charlock in full bloom.  This proves, it seems, but a poor trufle-year at Fyfield; so they fail some times in very wet years, as well as in very dry ones.

No corn abroad but a few vetches. Lord Howe had a skirmish with the combined fleet, in which he ad 68 killed, and 208 wounded.

Lord Howe completed the relief of Gibraltar.

No baking pears.  Gathered-in medlars.  Dug up carrots, a good crop, but small in size.  THe tortoise not only gets into the sun under the fruit-wall; but he tilts one edge of his shell against the wall, so as to incline his back ot it’s rays: by which contrivance he obtains more heat than if he lay in his natural position.  And yet this poor reptile has never read, that planes inclining to the horizon receive more heat from the sun than any other elevation!  At four P.M. he retires to bed under the broad foliage of a holyhock.  He has ceased to eat for some time.

Gathered-in my apples.  Knobbed russetings, & nonpareils, a few.  Near four bushels of dearlings on the meadow-tree: fruit small.

Sister Barker & her two daughters left Selborne.

The great farmer at Newton has 105 acres of barley abroad.  Mr Pink still has 40 acres of barley abroad.