The Natural History of Selborne

The great fieldfare returns.  Beetles abound every evening.  Farmer Canning’s new barley-ricks smoke & ferment like hot-beds already.

Flies abound.  They stay long after the hirundines are withdrawn.  Tipulae sport in the air.

Farmer Cannings has fine weather for his barley harvest, Mr Cannings has now 48 acres of barley abroad either standing or in cock: it was not sown ’til the rains came in the beginning of June.  He is now ricking one field; the other is standing.  The grain is lank, & the cocks cold, & damp.

The trufle-hunter was here this morning: he did not take more than half a pound, & those were small.

Four swallows were seen skimming about in a lane below Newton.  This circumstance seems much in favor of hiding, since the hirundines seemed to be with drawn for some weeks.  It looks as if the soft weather had called them out of their retirement.  My Brother’s turkies avail themselves much of the beech-mast which they find in his grove: they also delight in acorns, & wallnuts, & hasel-nuts: no wonder therefore that they subsist wild in the woods of America, where they are supposed to be indigenous.  They swallow hasel-nuts whole.