The Natural History of Selborne

Tortoise eats endive & poppies.

The late orange, & the white lilies blowing together, make a fine show.

Puff-balls appear in my grass-plot.

White Jasmine begins to blow. The solstitial chafer now flies: this insect is the food of fern-owls thro’ this month.

Seeds of lathraea squammaria ripen.

Finished my great parlor, by hanging curtains, & fixing the looking-glass.

Timothy eats voraciously; but picks out the hearts & stems of the Coss-lettuce, holding the outer leaves back with his feet.

The excrement of the tortoise is hard & solid: but when that creature urines, as it often does plentifully, it voids after the water a soft white matter, much like the dung of birds of prey, which dries away into a sort of chalk-like substance.

Began to cut the tall hedges.  Put a bed of moss round the white cucumbers.  Young partridges run.

Female ants, big with egg, come-out from under the stairs.