The Natural History of Selborne

A cellar in the back-street Faringdon is full of water.

Peter Well’s well is 36 feet deep, my own 63.  Peter Well’s well runs over: when this is the case, the springs are very high.  This overflowing lasted only two or three days.

Several white gulls, as usual, wading about in the stream beyond Alresford.

The downs are very heavy.

Mr Talbot turned-out a stag, which after wounding some hounds, & an horse, was taken alive.

Grey crows on the downs.

Mr Cane saw in one flock some hundreds of whistling plovers on the downs.

I sent a woman up the hill with a peck of beech-mast which she tells me she has scattered all round the down amidst the bushes & brakes, where there were no beeches before.  I also ordered Thomas to sow beech-mast in the hedges all round Baker’s-hill.

Bought 61 bushels of peat-ashes, & laid them up in the ash-house.

I have often observed many titmice in beechen woods: by a heap of beech-mast now lying in my orchard I see that t.mice feed on the kernels of the fruit of that tree: & that marsh-titmice are employed all day in carrying them away.