The Natural History of Selborne

A person took a trout in the stream at Dorton, weighing 2 pounds, & an half; a size to which they seldom arrive with us, because our brook is so perpetually harassed by poachers.

Mr R: left us.  It has been the received opinion that trees grow in height only by their annual upper shoot.  But my neighbour over the way, Tanner, whose occupation confines him to one spot, assures me, that trees are expanded & raised in the lower parts also.  The reason that he gives is this: the point of one of my Firs in Baker’s hill began for the first time to peep over an opposite roof at the beginning of summer; but before the growing season was over, the whole shoot of the year, & three or four joints of the body beside became visible to him as he sits on his form in his shop.  According to this supposition, a tree may advance in height considerably though the summer shoot should be destroyed every year.

Mr Richardson came.

Mr Harry White, & Lucy left us.

A vast flock of ravens over the hanger: more than sixty!

Two young men killed a large male otter, weighing 21 pounds, on the bank of our rivulte, below Priory longmead, on the Hartely-wood side, where the two parishes are divided by the stream.  This is the first of the kind ever remembered to have been found in this parish.

Gathered-in the Swan’s egg, autumn-burgamot, Cresan-burgamot, Chautmontelle, & Virgoleuse pears: a great crop.  The Swan-eggs are a vast crop. A wood-cock was killed in Blackmoor-woods; an other was seen the same evening in Hartley-wood.