The Natural History of Selborne

The storms in the beginning of the week did great damage by sea, & land.

No hares frequent the garden.

Strong N. aurora: very red in the N.E.

A pair of ravens build in the hanger.

Stormy all night.  Much thatch blown-off, & some trees thrown down.

Sea-gulls appear: in stormy weather they leave the sea.

The nuthatch brings his nuts almost every day to the alcove, & fixing them in one corner of the pediment drills holes in their sides, & after he has picked out the kernels, throws the shells to the ground.

My Heliotrope, which is J. Carpenter’s workshop, shows plainly that the days are lengthened considerably: for on the shortest day the shades of my two old chimneys fall exactly in the middle of the great window of that edifice at half an hour after two P.M., but now they are sifted into the quickset hedge, many yards to the S.E.

Flood at Gracious street.

At the corner of my great parlor there is such a current of air that it has half killed a box-tree is nearly killed by the current of air; while a laurel in the same circumstance seems not to be affected at all.  Note: This laurel continues to flourish; Octr 1782