The Natural History of Selborne

Grass grows very fast.  Honey-suckles very fragrant, & most beautiful objects!  Columbines make a figure.  My white thorn, which hangs over the earth-house, is now one sheet of bloom, & has pendulous boughs down to the ground.  One of my low balm of Gilead firs begins to throw out a profusion of cones;  a token this that it will be a short-lived, stunted tree.  One that I planted in my shrubbery began to decay at 20 years of age.  Miller in his gardener’s Dictionary mentions the short continuance  of this species of fir, & cautions people against depending on them as a permanent tree for ornamental plantations.

My table abounds with lettuces, that have stood the winter; radishes; spinage; cucumbers; with a moderate crop of asparagus.

The missel-thrush has got young.

The old speckled Bantam sits on eight eggs.  Sorbus aucuparia, the Quickent-tree, or mountain-ash full of bloom.  The bunches of red berries would make a fine appearance in winter: but they are devoured by thrushes, as soon as they turn colour.  Tanner shot a hen Sparrow-hawk as she was sitting on her eggs in an old crow’s nest on one of the beeches in the High wood.  The bird fell to the ground, &, what was very strange, brought down with her one of the eggs unbroken.  The eggs of Sparrow-hawks, like those of other birds of prey, are round, & blunt-ended, & marked at one end with a bloody blotch.  The hen bird of this species is a fine large hawk; the male is much smaller, & more slender.  Hawks seldom build any nest.  This Hawk had in her craw the limbs of an unfledged lark.

The Fly-catcher comes to my vines, where probably it was bred, or had a nest last year. it is the latest summer bird, & appears almost to a day! “Amusive bird, say where your snug retreat?”! The white apples are out of bloom, being forward, the Dearling, a late keeping apple, but just in bloom. So the earlier the fruit ripens the sooner the tree blossoms. The Dearling bears only once in two years, but then an enormous burthen. It has produced 10, & 13 bushels of fruit at a crop. The bloom this year is prodigious! [late note:] the crop moderate, & the fruit small.

The cock missel-thrush sings on the tops of the tall firs.

The missel-thrush has a nest on the orchard pear-tree.  The thunder of this evening burnt the barns, & out houses of a farm between Gosport & Titchfield, & destroyed eight fine horses.

The middle Bantam brought forth nine chickens.

The fern-owl, or eve-jarr is heard to chatter in the hanger.  So punctual are they!

Sowed some Nasturtion seeds on the bank. Mr Charles Etty returns from Madras well in health, & not lame from the accident of breaking his leg; but thinner than he was. He went first to Bengal, & so home in a Danish India man.