The Natural History of Selborne

Cut 43 cucumbers.  Wheat is binding.  Blackstonia perfoliata, yellow centory, blossoms, on the right hand bank up the North field hill.  The Gentiana perfoliata Lannaei.  It is to be found in the marl-dell half way along the N. field lane on the left; on the dry bank of a narrow field between the N. field hill, & the Fore down; & on the banks of the Fore down.

The last gathering of wood-strawberries.  Bull-finches & red-breasts eat the berries of the honey-suckles.

Young Hirundines cluster on the trees.  Harvest-bugs bite the ladies.

Sister Barker, & nieces, Mary, & Eliz. came.

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.

Strawberries from the woods are over; the crop has been prodigious.  The decanter, into which wine from the cool cellar was poured, became clouded over with a thick condensation standing in drops.  This appearance, which is never to be seen but in warm weather, is a curious phaenomenon, & exhibits matter for speculation to the modern philosopher.  A friend of mine enquires whether the “rorantia pocula” of Tully in his “de senectute” had any reference to such appearances.  But there is great reason to suppose that the ancients were not accurate philosophers enough to pay much regard to such occurrences.  They knew little of pneumatics, or the laws whereby air is condensed, & rarifyed; & much less that water is dissolved in air, & reducible therefrom by cold.  If they saw such dews on their statues, or metal utensiles, they looked on them as ominous, & were awed with a superstitious horror.  Thus Virgil makes his weeping statues, & sweating brazen vessles prognostic of the violent death of Julius Caesar:.. “maestrum illacrymat templis ebur, aeraq sudant.” Georgic 1st

The fern-owl churs still; grass-hopper lark has been silent some days.

Piled & housed all the cleft wood of eight cords of beech: the proportion of blocks was large.

The circumference of trees in my outlet planted by myself, at one foot from the ground.

Oak by alcove in 1730: 4′ 5”;
Ash by Do. in 1730: 4′ 6 1/2”;
Great fir, bakers hill, 1751: 5′ 0”;
Greatest beech, 1751: 4′ 0”;
Elm, 1750: 5′ 3”;
Lime over at Mr Hale’s planted by me in 1756: 5′ 5”;
My single great oak in the meadow, age unknown: 10′ 6 1/2”;
The diameter of it’s boughs three ways is 24 yards, or 72 feet: circumference of it’s boughs 72 yards.

Mr White’s single great oak at Newton measures at one foot above the ground 12 feet 6 inch: the exact dimensions of that belonging to, & planted by Mr Marsham.  A vast ree must that be at Stratton to have been planted by a person now living!

Some mushrooms, & funguses appear on the down.  Mrs J. White made Rasp, & strawberry jam, & red curran jelly, & preserved some cherries.