The Natural History of Selborne

<

Venator: My friend Piscator, you have kept time with my thoughts; for the sun is just rising, and I myself just now come to this place, and the dogs have just now put down an Otter. Look ! down at the bottom of the
hill there, in that meadow, chequered with water-lilies and lady-smocks; there you may see what work they make; look! look! you may see all busy; men and dogs; dogs and men; all busy.–Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, 1653

Engraving by Thomas Bewick (the otter is in the lower right corner; click on the image for a larger version.) Otters, like nearly all predators competitive with man, were mercilessly hunted. An excellent if depressing book on the destruction of wildlife in this era, so in evidence in White’s journals, is Silent Fields, by the aptly named Roger Lovegrove.

• 1792: October 3, 1792 – Hirundines swarm around the Plestor, & up & down the street.
• 1790: October 3, 1790 – The row of ten weeks stocks under the fruit-wall makes a beautiful show.
• 1789: October 3, 1789 – Gathered in burgamot, & Creson burgamot pears.  Gathered some grapes, but they are not good.  B. Th. White sowed two pounds of furze-seed from Ireland on the naked part of the hanger.  The furze-seed sown by him on the same space in May last is come-up well.
• 1787: October 3, 1787 – Men sow wheat; but wish for more rain to moisten their fallows.  The quantity of potatoes planted in this parish was very great, & the produce, on ground unused to that root, prodigious.  David Long had two hundred bushels on half an acre.  Red or hog potatoes are sold for six pence pr bushel.  Mr Churton left us & went to Waverley: Nep. Tom & Harry left us, & went to Fyfield.
• 1786: October 3, 1786 – Gathered-in the apples called dearlings, which keep well, & are valuable kitchen apples.  My only tree of the sort stands in the meadow, & produced ten bushels of fruit.  Apples this year have sold at 8s per bushel: so had the price continued the produce would be worth four pounds.  Next year probably there will be no crop; because I do not remember to have seen this tree bear two years following.
• 1784: October 3, 1784 – 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.
• 1783: October 3, 1783 – The hanger is beatifully tinged.  Leaves fall apace.  Dug up carrots.  Many flesh-flies: here & there a wasp.  The cat frolicks, & plays with the falling leaves.
• 1782: October 3, 1782 – Rain 78 in my garden, on the tower 59.
• 1781: October 3, 1781 – Bought a bay-Welch Galloway mare. Out of the horses that were offered to me to try, there were ten mares to one gelding.
• 1780: October 3, 1780 – No ring-ouzels seen this autumn yet.  Timothy very dull.
• 1779: October 3, 1779 – Began lighting fires in the parlor.
• 1778: October 3, 1778 – White low fogs over the brooks.
• 1777: October 3, 1777 – What becomes of those massy clouds that often incumber the atmosphere in the day, & yet disappear in the evening.  Do they melt down into dew?  * Some of the store wethers on this down now prove fat, & weigh 15 pounds a quarter.  This incident never befals but in long dry seasons; & then the mutton has a delicate flavour.
• 1776: October 3, 1776 – Beautiful wheat season for the wet fallows.  The buzzard is a dastardly bird, & beaten not only by the raven, but even by the carrion-crow.  Gathered baking-pears.
• 1774: October 3, 1774 – Gathered in the more choice pears, Autumn burgamots, chaumontels, &c.; a good crop.
• 1773: October 3, 1773 – Grey, dark showers, dry & windy.  Glass falls at a vast rate.
• 1771: October 3, 1771 – Grapes turn black.  Vetches, & seed-clover housed.  Baromr sinks very fast.  Ring-ouzels.  Ring-ouzels affect to perch on the top twigs of tall trees, like field-fares.  When they flie off they chatter like black birds.  Apples are gathering.
• 1770: October 3, 1770 – Ring-ouzels again on the downs eastward.