The Natural History of Selborne

Began to light fires in the parlor.  J.W. left us.

As most of the second brood of Hirundines are now out, the young on fine days congregate in considerable numbers on the church & tower: & it is remarkable that tho’ the generality is on the battlements & roof, yet many hang or cling for some time by their claws against the surface of the walls in a manner not practiced at any other time of their remaining with us.  By far the greater number of these amusing birds are house-martins, not swallows, which congregate on trees.  A writer in the Gent. Mag. supposes that the chilly mornings & evenings, at the decline of the year, begin to influence the feelings of the young broods; & that they cluster thus in the hot sunshine to prevent their blood from being benumbed, & themselves from being reduced to a state of untimely torpidity.

Sowed thirteen rods, on the twelfth part of an acre of grass ground in my own upper Ewel close with 50 pounds weight of Gypsom; also thirteen rods in Do. with 50 pounds weight of lime; thirteen rods more in Do. with 50 pounds weight of wood & peat-ashes: and four rods more on Do. with peat-dust. All these sorts of manures were sown by Bror T. W. on very indifferent grass in the way of experiment.

Gil. White left us.  The flying ants of the small black sort are in great agitation on the zigzag, & are leaving their nests.  This business used to be carryed on in August in a warm summer.  While these emigrations take place, the Hirundines fare deliciously on the female ants full of eggs.  Hop-picking becomes general; & all the kilns, or as they are called in some counties, oasts are in use.  Hops dry brown, & are pretty much subject this year to vinny, or mould.

Hop-picking becomes general; & the women leave their gleaning in the wheat-stubbles.  Wheat grows as it stands in the shocks.

The well at Temple is 77 feet deep: 60 to the water, & seventeen afterwards.  My well measures only 63 feet to the bottom.

Goleigh well to the water is 55 1/2 yrds  /166 feet; to the bottom 57 1/2 yrds / 172 1/2 feet; Heards well to the water is 70 2/3 yrds / 212 feet; to the bottom 83 1/3 yrds / 250 feet.

A stone was 4 1/2 seconds falling to the bottom of Heards well; & 4 seconds to the water of Goleigh.   The wells were measured accurately by the Revd. Edumund White on the 25th of August 1792, in the midst of a very wet summer.  Deep, & tremendous as is the well at Heards, John Gillman, an Ideot, fell to the bottom of it twice in one morning; & was taken out alive, & survived the strange accident many years.  Only Goleigh & Heards wells were measured by Mr E. White.

Grass grows on the walks very fast.  Garden beans at an end.

Many moor-hens on Comb-wood pond.

Men make wheat-ricks.  Mr Hale’s rick fell. Vivid rain-bow.

A fern-owl this evening showed-off in a very unusual, & entertaining manner, by hawking round, & round the circumference of my great spreading oak for twenty times following, keeping mostly close to the grass but occasionally glancing up amidst the boughs of the tree.  This amusing bird was then in pursuit of a brood of some particular phalaena belonging to the oak, of which there are several sorts; & exhibited on the occasion a command of wing superior, I think, to that of the swallow itself.  Fern-owls have attachment to oaks, no doubt on account of food: for the next evening we saw one again several times among the boughs of the same tree; but it did not skim round it’s stem over the grass, as on the evening before.  In May these birds find the Scarabaeus melolontha on the oak; & the Scarabaeus solstitialis at Midsummer.  These peculiar birds can only be watched & observed for two hours in the twenty-four, & then in dubious twilight, an hour after sun-set & an hour before sun-rise.