The Natural History of Selborne

Bright, sun, golden even. Cut eight cucumbers. Mrs. Clement & children left us. Many swifts.

Watered well the white poplar at the foot of the bostal. Cut the slope hedge in the Bakers hill.  Mrs. Clement, & children came.

Bror. Benjn. & I measured my tall beech in Sparrow’s hanger, which, at five feet from the ground, girths six feet one inch, and three quarters.

The season is so cold, that no species of Hirundines make any advances towards building, & breeding.  Brother Benjamin & Mrs. White, & Mary White, & Miss Mary Barker came.

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.

Mr. & Mrs. Ben White left us, & went to Newton.

Saint foin blows, & the Stfoin fly Sphinx filipendula, appears. Rain at Emsworth. Fyfield sprung a fern-owl on the zig-zag which seemed confounded by the glare of the sun, & dropped again immediately. Mr. Bridger sends me a fine present of trouts caught in the stream down at Oakhanger. The distant hills look very blue in the evenings.

Bror Benjn cuts his grass, clover & rye, a decent burden, but much infested with wild chamomile, vulg: margweed: mayweed.

Rye in ear.  Green pease at supper, a large dish.  Young Cygnets on the Mole reiver at Cobham.  Hay made, & carrying at Wandsworth.  Roses, & sweet-briars beginning to blow in my brother’s outlet.

The bloom of the hawthorns is vast: every bush appears as if covered in snow.  Brother Thomas left us, & went to Fyfield.