The Natural History of Selborne

Fog, sun, pleasant showers, moonshine.  Rain in the night.  Mushrooms begin to come.  I see only now & then a wasp.

Mr Thomas Mulso comes from London.  Wry-necks, birds so called, appear on the grass-plots and walks: they walk a little as well as hop, & thrust their bills into the turf, in quest, I conclude, of ants, which are their food.  While they hold their bills in the grass, they draw out their prey with their tongues, which are so long as to be coiled round their heads.

Mr Charles Etty returns from Canton.

Bees feed on the plums, & the mellow goose-berries.  They often devour the peaches, & nectarines.

Gathered a bushel-basket of well-grown cucumbers, 238 in number.  Molly White, & T.H. White left us, & went to London.

Michaelmass daisies begin to blow.

Colchicum autumnale, naked boys, blows.  Wheat-harvest goes on finely.

Tho. Holt White comes from Fyfield.

Sweet harvest weather.  Wheat ricked & housed.  Mr & Mrs S. Barker, & Miss E. Barker left us.

A fern-owl sits about on my field walks.