The Natural History of Selborne

Hop picking becomes general.  The women earn good wages this year: some of them pick 24 bush. in a day, at 3 half-pence per bushel.

Tyed-up the unmoved endives.

Made five bottles, & a pint of catsup.

Earwigs damage the wall-fruit before it gets ripe, warm & moist. Young fowls die at Newton. Mushrooms are brought in the great plenty.

We kept a young fern-owl for several days in a cage, & fed it with bread, & milk.  It was moping, & mute by day; but, being a night bird, began to be alert as soon as it was dusk. *Sent it back to the brakes among which it was first found.

Mushrooms are brought me from Hartley.  I do not meet with one wasp.  Young fern-owls are found, a second brood.

Kidney-beans bear by heaps; & cucumbers abound.  Coveys of partidges are said to be very large.  Butchers meat keeps badly.

Mushrooms come in Mr White’s avenue at Newton.

Colchicum blows.

Say what retards, amidst the summer’s blaze/ Th’autumnal bulb, ’till pale, declining days?

Planted cuttings of dames violets, & slips of pinks under hand-glasses: planted also more sweet williams, & polyanths.