The Natural History of Selborne

Frost under the hangar, Selborne 2007

• 1788: November 27, 1788 – Some light snow.  Boys slide on lakes.  Turned up much fine rotten earth from among the rubbish carryed out of the garden.
• 1786: November 27, 1786 – Grey crows on the downs.
• 1782: November 27, 1782 – Fierce frost. Rime hangs all day on the hanger.  The hares, press’d by hunger, haunt the gardens & devour the pinks, cabbages, parsley, &c.  Cats catch the red-breasts.  Timothy the tortoise sleeps in the fruit-border under the wall, covered with a hen-coop, in which is a good armfull of straw.  Here he will lie warm, secure, & dry.  His back is partly covered with mould.
• 1781: November 27, 1781 – Began to use some of the advertised Celeri, which, I think, is crisper & finer flavoured than any sort that I have met with.
• 1778: November 27, 1778 – Finished trimming & tacking my vines: the wood is pretty well ripened for next year.  Not withstanding the vehemence of last summer, & the lasting heat, yet my grapes were not so early nor so well ripened as in some moderate years.  In particular in 1775 my crops began to be gathered the first week in Septemr: & were in high perfection all the autumn: whereas this year we could not gather at all  ’til Octobr & then the flavour was not delicate & many clusters never ripened at all.  A proof this that somewhat more is requisite in the production of fine fruits than mere heat.  My peaches & nectarines also this summer were not in such perfection as in some former seasons.
• 1777: November 27, 1777 – Began planing the floor-battins for my new parlor: they are very fine, & without knots; 500 feet.
• 1773: November 27, 1775 – Arrangement of parts is both smell & color: thus a sweet, & lovely flower when bruized both stinks & looks ugly.  We may add that arrangement of parts is also flavor: since muddled liquors & frozen meats immediately lose it.
• 1772: November 27, 1772 – Vast flocks of wild fowls in the forest.  They are probably migraters newly arrived.
• 1771: November 27, 1771 – A large flock of red-wings, Turdus iliacus, appear.
• 1769: November 27, 1769 – Green-finches in a vast flock: them seem to feed on the seeds of echium vulgare.

Notes:
“Arrangement of parts” is an ancient convention of the philosophy of what makes something beautiful.. Googling the phrase turns up a lot of hits on David Hume, a near-contemporary of White’s. It’s intriguing to think of the clerical but empiricist White being influenced by Hume, but I’d need to read great deal more of Hume to make this assertion! Most likely the use of the phrase “arrangement of parts” is a product of their mutual education in the Greek philosophers.