The Natural History of Selborne

Put a large cross on the hermitage.  A trufle-hunter tryed my tall hedges, & found some bulbs of those peculiar plants, which have neither roots, nor branches, nor stems.

My brother gathered a sieve of mush-rooms: they come up in the flower-borders, which have been manured with dung from the old hot beds.

Green wheat comes up well.  Stewed some trufles: the flavour of their juice very fine, but the roots hard, & gritty.  They were boiled in water, then sliced, & stewed in gravy.

Dr Chandler buys of the Holiburne trufle-man one pound of trufles; price 2s. 6d.

I conclude that the Holiburne trufler finds encouragement in our woods, & hangers, as he frequently passes along the village: he is a surly fellow, & not communicative.  He is attended by two little cur-dogs, which he leads in a string.

Boiled a mess of autumnal spinage, sown Aug. 3rs.  Nep J. White left us, & returned to Sarum.  There is a fine thriving oak near the path as you go to Combwood, just before you arrive at the pond, round which, at about the distance of the extremities of the boughs, may be seen a sort of circle in the grass, in which the herbage appears dry & withered, as if a fariy-ring was beginning.  I remember somewhat of the same appearance at the same place in former years.

Colchicums, a fine double sort, still in bloom.  Ivy blows.  Some mushrooms with thick stems, & pale gills.

A trufle-hunter called on us, having in his pocket several large trufles found in this neighbourhood.  He says these roots are not to be found in deep woods, but in narrow hedge rows & the skirts of coppices.  Some trufles, he informed us, lie two feet within the earth; & some quite on the surface: the latter, he added, have little or no smell, & are not so easily discovered by the dogs as those that lie deeper.  Half a crown a pound was the price which he asked for this commodity.  Some few bunches of grapes just eatable.  Some of the latter nectarines well-flavoured.  On this day, Dr Chandler saw several swallows, flying as usual, near Cologne: he had observed none at Rolle since the beginning of September, nor none on his way to Cologne.  On the 12, in his way to Brussels, he saw more.

We find no mushrooms on the down, nor on Nore hill.  Women continue to glean, but the corn is grown in the ears.  Will Trimming has wheat still abroad.  Gathered-in the white pippins, a large crop.

No mushrooms in the pastures below Buarrant-hangers.  Here & there a wasp.  The furze-seed which Bro. Tho. sowed last may on the naked part of the hanger comes up well.  Some raspberry-trees in the bushes on the common.  Trees keep their verdure well.