The Natural History of Selborne

Three martin’s nests at Mr Burbey’s are now full of young!

The row of ten weeks stocks under the fruit-wall makes a beautiful show.

Bro. Thomas, & his daughter Mrs Ben White left us, & went to London.  Lord Stawell sent me from the great Lodge in the Holt a curious bird for my inspection.  It was found by the spaniels of one of the keepers in a coppice, & shot on the wing.  The shape, & air, & habit of the bird, & the scarlet ring round the eyes, agreed well with the appearance of a cock pheasant; but then the head & neck, & breast & belly, were of a glossy black: & tho’ it weighed 3 ae 3 1/2 oun., the weight of a large full-grown cock pheasant, yet there were no signs of any spurs on the legs, as is usual with all grown cock pheasants, who have long ones.  the legs & feet were naked of feathers; & therefore it could be nothing of the Grous kind.  In the tail were no long bending feathers, such as cock pheasants usually have, & are characteristic of the sex.  The tail was much shorter than the tail of an hen pheasant, & blunt & square at the end.  The back, wing-feathers, & tail, were all of a pale russet, curiously streaked, somewhat like the upper parts of an hen partridge.  I returned it to the noble sender with my verdict, that it was probably a spurious or hen bird, bred between a cock pheasant and some demestic fowl.  When I came to talk with the keeper who brought it, he told me, that some Pea-hens had been known last summer to haunt the coppices & coverts where this mule was found.  *Hen pheasants usually weigh only 2 ae 1 oun. My advice was that his Lordship would employ Elmer of Farnham, the famous game-painter, to take an exact copy of this curious bird.  — His Lordship did employ Elmer, & sent me as a present a good painting of that rare bird.

Cut 81 cucumbers. On this day Mrs Brown was brought to bed at Stamford of twins, making my nephews & nieces 58 in number.  The night following this poor, dear woman dyed, leaving behind her nine young children.

The innoculated at Hartley sicken.

A vast flock of lapwings, which has forsaken the moors & bogs, now frequents the uplands.  Some ring-ouzels were seen round Nore-hill.

Thomas cut 130 cucumbers.

Coss-lettuce finely loaved & bleached!  Nep. B. White left us, & went to London.

Mrs Clement, & six of her children, four of which are to inoculated, & Mrs Chandler, & her two children the youngest of which is also to undergo the same operation, are rettired to Harteley great house.  Servants & all, some of which are to be inoculated also, they make 14 in a family.

On this day Lord Stawell sent me a rare & curious water-fowl, taken alive a few days before by a boy at Basing, near Basingstoke, & sent to the Duke of Bolton at Hackwood park, where it was put into the bason before the house, in which it soon dyed.  This bird proved to be the Procellaria Puffinus of Linnaeus, the Manks puffin, or Shear-water of Ray.  Shear-waters breed in the Calf of Man, & as Ray supposes, in the Scilly Isles, & also in the Orkines: but quit our rocks & shores about the latter end of August; & from accounts lately given by navigators, are dispersed over the whole Atlantic.  By what chance or accident this bird was impelled to visit Hants is a question that can not easily be answered.