Planted some hand-glass plants in the frames of the fruiting cucumber-bed: cut down the lining, & worked it up with some grass-mowings. Some young fly-catchers are out, & fed by their dams.
Beat the banks; & planted cabbages in the meadow-garden.
Mr Burbey has got eleven martins nests under the eaves of his old shop.
In Alton
Went, & dined with my Brother Benjamin White at Mareland, to which he & his wife were come down for two or three days. We found the house roomy, & good, & abounding with conveniences: the out-door accommodations are also in great abundance, such as a larder, pantry, dairy, laundry, pigeon-house, & good stables. The view from the back front is elegant, commanding sloping meadows thro’ which runs the Wey (the stream from Alton to Farnham) meandering in beautiful curves, & shewing a rippling fall occasioned by a tumbling bay formed by Mr. Sainesbury, who also widened the current. The murmur of this water-fall is heard from the windows. Behind the house next the turnpike are three good ponds, & round the extensive outlet a variety of pleasant gravel walks. Across the meadows the view is bounded by the Holt: but up & down the valley the prospect is diversifyed, & engaging. In short Mareland is a very fine situation, & a very pleasing Gentleman’s seat. I was much amused with the number of Hirundines to be seen from the windows: for besides the several martins and swallows belonging to the house, many Swifts from Farnham range up & down the vale; & what struck me most were forty or firty bank-martins, from the heaths, & sand-hills below, which follow the stream up the meadows, & were the whole day long busied in catching the several sorts of Ephemerae which at this season swarm in the neighbourhood of the waters. The stream below the house abounds with trouts. Nine fine coach-horses were burnt in a stable at Alresford.
Cut-off the cones of the balm of Gilead fir in such numbers that they measured one gallon & a half. So much fruit would have exhausted a young tree. The cones grow sursum, upright; those of the Spruce, deorsum, downward.
The mare lies out. St foin begins to blow.
One Fly-catcher builds in the Virginia Creeper, over the garden-door: & one in the vine over the parlor-window. Between Newton & us we heard three Fern-owls chattering on the hill; one at the side of the High-wood, one at the top of the Bostal, & one near the Hermitage. That at the top of the Bostal is heard distinctly in my orchard. Fern-owls haunt year by year nearly the same spots.
No may-chafers this year. The intermediate flowers, which now figure between the spring, & solstitial, are the early orange, & fiery-lily, the columbine, the early honey-suckle, the peony, the garden red valeriam, the double rocket or dames violet, the broad blue flag-iris, the thrift, the double lychnis, spider-wort, monks-hood, &c.
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