The Natural History of Selborne

Mr Churton left us, & went to Waverley.

Heavy showers.  Apples fall much.  The well at Temple is 77 feet deep: 60 to the water, & 17 afterward.  My well measures only 63 feet.

This cool, shady summer is not good for mens fallows, which are heavy, & weedy. Lettuces have not loaved, or bleached well this summer.

Preserved some cherries. My meadow-hay was carried, in decent order. As we were coming from Newton this evening, on this side of the Money-dells, a cock Fern-owl came round us, & showed himself in a very amusing manner, whistling, or piping as he flew. Whenever he settled on the turf, as was often the case, Mr Churton went, & sprung him, & brought him round again. He did not clash his wings over his back, so as to make them snap. At the top of the Bostal we found a bat hawking for moths. Fern-owls & bats are rivals in their food, commanding each great powers of wing, & contending who shall catch the phalaenae of the evening.

Took the black-bird’s nest the fourth time: it contained squab young.

Made rasp, & curran jam, & jelly.

Simeon Etty brought me two eggs of a Razor-bill from the cliffs of the Isle of Wight: they are large, & long, & very blunt at the big end, & very sharp & peaked at the small.  The eggs of these birds are, as Ray justly remarks, “in omnibus hujus beneris majora quam pro corporis mole.”  One of these eggs is of a pale green, the other more white; both are marked & dotted irregularly with chcolate-coloured spots.  Razor-bills lay but one egg, except the first is taken away, & then a second, & on to a third.  By their weight these eggs seem to have been sat on, & to contain young ones.

My meadow is begun to be mowed.

Men cut their meadows.  Mr Churton came.

Farmer Corps brought me two eggs of a fern-owl, which he found under a bush in shrub-wood. The dam was sitting on the nest; & the eggs, by their weight, seemed to be just near hatching. These eggs were darker, & more mottled than what I have procured before.