The Natural History of Selborne

Farmer Cannings has fine weather for his barley harvest, Mr Cannings has now 48 acres of barley abroad either standing or in cock: it was not sown ’til the rains came in the beginning of June.  He is now ricking one field; the other is standing.  The grain is lank, & the cocks cold, & damp.

The trufle-hunter was here this morning: he did not take more than half a pound, & those were small.

Four swallows were seen skimming about in a lane below Newton.  This circumstance seems much in favor of hiding, since the hirundines seemed to be with drawn for some weeks.  It looks as if the soft weather had called them out of their retirement.  My Brother’s turkies avail themselves much of the beech-mast which they find in his grove: they also delight in acorns, & wallnuts, & hasel-nuts: no wonder therefore that they subsist wild in the woods of America, where they are supposed to be indigenous.  They swallow hasel-nuts whole.

Grey crows return.  These are winter birds of passage, & are never seen with us in the summer.  The flocks are feeding down the green wheat on the downs, which is very forward, & matted on the ground.  They sow wheat on the downs sometimes as soon as the end of July provided the season is not showery.

The month of Oct. has been very dry: mill-ponds begin to want water.  Sheep frolick.

Larks frolick much in the air: when they are in that mood the larkers catch them in nets by means of a twinkling glass: this method they call daring.

One bunting in the northfield: a rare bird at Selborne.  * There is this year a remarkable failure of mushrooms: & the more to be wondered at, since the autumn has been both moist & warm.  There is a great failure also of trufles in my Brother’s outlet at Fyfield, notwithstanding in simular weather they abounded last year.  So that some secret cause influences alike these analogous productions of nature.

The nuthatches are busy rapping with their bills  about the wallnut trees: & as I find wall-nuts fallen down there, with holes picked in their shells; no doubt they were made by those birds.

A cock pheasant flew over my house, & across the village to the hanger.

The redbreast’s note is very sweet, & pleasing; did it not carry with it ugly associations of ideas, & put us in mind of the approach of winter.