The Natural History of Selborne

Mr Churton left us.

The great oak in Harteley avenue, just as you enter the pasture-field, measures in girth 14 feet.  It is a noble tree, & if sound worth many pounds.  Why it was left at the general sale does not appear.  The girth was taken at four feet above the ground.

Many horse-beans sprang up in my field-walks in the autumn, & are now grown to a considerable height.  As the Ewel was in beans last summer, it is most likely that these seeds came from thence; but the distance is too considerable for them to have been conveyed by mice.  It is most probably therefore that they were brought by birds, & in particular, by jays & pies, who seem to have hid them among the grass, & moss, & then to have forgotten where they had stowed them.  Some pease are also growing in the same situation, & probably under the same circumstances.  Mr Derham has recorded that mice hide acorns one by one in pastures in the autumn; & that he has observed them to be hunted-out by swine, who discovered them by their smell.

Total of rain in 1790, 32 inch. 27 h.

On this day Mrs Clements was delivered of a boy, who makes my nephews & nieces again 57 in number.  By the death of Mrs Brown & one twin they were reduced to 56.

H. & Ben Woods left us.

Thunder, lightening, rain, snow!  A severe tempest.  Much damage done in & about London: damage to some ships at Portsmouth. Vast damage in various parts!  Two men were struck dead in a wind-mill near Rooks-hill on the Sussex downs: & on Hind-head one of the bodies on the gibbet was beaten down to the ground.  Harry & Ben Woods came.

Thatch torn by the wind.

Blowing, rough day.

Mr Richardson left us.  Water-cresses come in.