The Natural History of Selborne

Some few grapes just eatable: a large crop.  Housed all the billet wood.  Leaves fall in showers.  A curlew is heard loudly whistling on the hill towards the Wadden. On this day Mrs S. Barker was brought to bed of a boy, who advances my nepotes to the round & compleat number of 60.

Master Hale houses barley that looks like old thatch.  Much barley about the country, & some wheat.  Some pheasants found in the manour.  The sound of great guns was heard distinctly this day to the S.E. probably from Goodwood, where the Duke of Richmond has a detachment from the train of artillery encamped in his park, that he may try experiments with some of the ordnance.

Young martins, & their dams again.  Wood-cock on the down. Bro Ben, & wife, & Hannah left us, & went to Newton.

Saw a wood-cock on the down among the fern: Fyfield flushed it.

Bro. Ben, & wife Hannah came.  Woodcock, & red wings return, & are seen.

Two or three wood-cocks seen in the high wood: one was killed.  Fyfield improves, & promises to make a good cock-dog.

Large fieldfares, a great flock, seen on the hill.  Ravens on the down.  Wild wood-pigeons, or stock-doves, are seen at my wood at Holtham.

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.

There is a covey of partidges in the North field, seventeen in number.

A labourer has mown out in the precincts of Hartley-wood, during the course of this summer, as many pheasant’s nests as contained 60 eggs!  Bro. Thomas White came.