The Natural History of Selborne

A fox ran up the street at noon-day.  No birds love to fly down the wind, which protrudes them too fast & hurries them out of their poise: besides it blows-up their feathers, & exposes them to the cold.  All birds love to perch as well a to fly with their heads to the windward.  FOOTNOTE:  The christenings at Faringdon near Alton, Hants from the year 1760 to 1777 inclusive were 152: the burials at the same place in the same period were 124.  So that the births exceed the deaths by 28.  I have buried many very old people there: yet of late several young folks have dyed of a decline.

This day the plasterers put a finishing hand to the ceiling, cornice, and side-plaster-work of my great parlor.  The latter is done on battin-work standing-out 3 inches from the walls.

For want of rain the millers are much in want of water.  Carried out many loads of dung from the cucumber beds on the great meadow.  Finished the cornice of the great parlor.

Finished plowing-up the Ewel-close, a wheat-stubble, to prepare it for barley, & grass-seeds it must be plowed thrice.  The ground is pretty dry, but tough & heavy, requiring naturally much meliorating.  This week Wolmer-pond was fished; & out of it was taken, an eye-witness tells me, a pike that weighed 30 pounds.

One black rat was killed at Shalden some months ago, & esteemed a great curiosity.  The Norway rats destroy all the indigenous ones.

The plasterer began the cornice of my new parlor.

Grey, sunny, & soft.

There is now in this district a considerable fight of woodcocks.  Large flocks of wood-pigeons now appear: they are the latest winter-birds of passage that come to us.

The brick-layers began to lay on the second coat of plaster in my new parlor.