The Natural History of Selborne

This day the plasterers put a finishing hand to the ceiling, cornice, and side-plaster-work of my great parlor.  The latter is done on battin-work standing-out 3 inches from the walls.

For want of rain the millers are much in want of water.  Carried out many loads of dung from the cucumber beds on the great meadow.  Finished the cornice of the great parlor.

Finished plowing-up the Ewel-close, a wheat-stubble, to prepare it for barley, & grass-seeds it must be plowed thrice.  The ground is pretty dry, but tough & heavy, requiring naturally much meliorating.  This week Wolmer-pond was fished; & out of it was taken, an eye-witness tells me, a pike that weighed 30 pounds.

One black rat was killed at Shalden some months ago, & esteemed a great curiosity.  The Norway rats destroy all the indigenous ones.

The plasterer began the cornice of my new parlor.

Grey, sunny, & soft.

There is now in this district a considerable fight of woodcocks.  Large flocks of wood-pigeons now appear: they are the latest winter-birds of passage that come to us.

The brick-layers began to lay on the second coat of plaster in my new parlor.

Began planing the floor-battins for my new parlor: they are very fine, & without knots; 500 feet.

Men stack their turneps, a new fashion that prevails all at once; & sow the ground with wheat.  They dung the fields in summer as for wheat.