The Natural History of Selborne

Drew-out from the port-wine hogsh: for my share, eleven bottles more of wine so that my proportion was 17 dozen and, & three bottles. Thanks-giving for the peace.

Planted bore-cole, &c.  Yellow horizon.  Bror Henry left us.

The wind broke-off a great bough from Molly White’s horse-chestnut tree.

Bro. Henry and his son Sam came.  Saw an old swift feed it’s young in the air: a circumstance which I could never discover before.

Mr. Chr. Etty has taken the young Cuckow, & put it in a cage, where the hedge-sparrows feed it.  No old Cuckow has been seen to come near it.  Mr CHarles Etty brought down with him from London in the coach his two finely-chequered tortoises, natives of the island of Madagascar, which appear to be Testudo geometrica, Linn., and the Testudo tessellat, Raii.  One of them was small, & probably a male, weighing about five pounds; the other , which was undoubtedly a female, because it layed an egg the day after it’s arrival, weighed ten pounds and a quarter.  The egg was round, & white, & much resembling in size & shape the egg of an owl.  Ray says of this species that the shell was “Ellipticae seu ovatae figurae solidae plus quam dimidia pars”: & again, “Ex omnibus quas unquam vidi maxime concava.” Ray’s quadrup: 260.  The head, neck, & legs of these were yellow.  These tortoises in the morning when put into the coach at Kensignton were brisk, & well; but the small one dyed the first night that they came to Selborne; & the other, two nights after, having received, as it should seem, some Injury on their Journey.  When the female was cleared of the contents of her body, a bunch of eggs of about 30 in number was found in her.

Phallus impudicus, a stink-pot, comes up in Mr Burbey’s asparagus-bed.  Received a Hogsh. of port-wine, imported at Southampton.

Papilio Machaon in Mrs Etty’s garden.  They are very rare in these parts.

Finished ripping, furring, & tiling the back part of my house; a great jobb.  Garden-beans come in.

My horses, which lie at grass, have had no water now for about 8 weeks: nor do they seem to desire any when they pass by a pond, or stream.  This method of management is particularly good for aged horses, especially if their wind is at all thick.  My horses look remarkably well.

The young cuckow gets fledge, & grows bigger than its nest.  It is very fierce, & pugnacious.