The Natural History of Selborne

Made two hand-glasses for celeri. A gross-beak seen at Newton parsonage-house.

Some rooks have built several nests in the high wood.  The building of rooks in the High wood is an uncommon incident, & never remembered but once before.  The Rooks usually carry on the business of breeding in groves, & clumps of trees near houses, & in villages, & towns.  Timothy weighs 6 Li. 11 oz.

Sowed a large plot of parsnips, & radishes in the orchard.  Crocus’s fade & go off.  Sowed also the Coss lettuce with the parsnips.

Cucumber-plants show bloom: but the bed is too hot, & draws the plants.  We sow our seeds too soon, so that the plants want to be turned out of the pots before the great bed can be got to due temperament.

Sowed onions, radishes, & lettuce: the ground harsh, & cloddy.

Soft wind.  The wood-pecker laughs.

A hen gross-beak was found almost dead in my outlet it had nothing in it’s craw.

Mr Burbey shot a cock Gross-beak which he had observed to haunt his garden for more than a fortnight.  Dr Chandler had also seen it in his garden.  I began to accuse this bird of making sad havock among the buds of the cherries, goose-berries, & wall-fruit of all the neighbouring orchards.  Upon opening its crop & craw, no buds were to be seen; but a mass of kernels of the stones of fruits.  Mr B. observed that this bird frequented the spots where plum-trees grow; & that he had seen it with some what hard in it’s mouth which it broke with difficulty; these were the stones of damasons.  The latin Ornithologists call this bird Coccothraustes, i.e., berry-breaker, because with it’s large horny beak it cracks & breaks the shells of stone-fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel.  Birds of this sort are rarely seen in England, & only in winter.   About 50 years ago I discovered three of these gross-beaks in my outlet, one of which I shot.

Sowed my own ashes on the great meadow.  Timothy hides himself again.  Men turn their sheep into the green wheat.  The hunters killed a female hare, which gave suck: so there are young leverets already.  Dr Chandler’s labourer, in digging down the bank in the midst of the parsonage garden called the grotto, found human bones among the rocks.  As these lay distant from the bounds of the church-yard, it is possible that they might have been deposited there before there was any church, or yard.  So again, in 1728, when a saw-pit was sunk on the Plestor under the wall of court-yard, many human bones were dug-u at a considerable distance from the church-yard.

Snow lies deep in Newton-lane, & under hedges in the uplands.  The hounds find no hare on all Selborne hill.