The Natural History of Selborne

Tortoise begins to bury himself in the laurel-hedge.

Planted many slips of pinks.

If a masterly lands-cape painter was to take our hanging woods in their autumnal colours, persons unacquainted with the country, would object to the strength & deepness of the tints, & would pronounce, at an exhibition, that they were heightened & shaded beyond nature.  Wonderful & lovely to the Imagination are the colourings of our wood-land scapes at this season of the year!

“The pale descending year, yet pleasing still,/A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf/Incessant rustles from the mournful grove,/Oft startling such as, studious, walk below,/And slowly circles thro’ the waving air./But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs/Sob, o’er the sky the leafy deluge streams;/Till chak’d & matted with the dreary shower,/The forest-walks, at every rising gale,Roll wide the wither’d wast, & whistle bleak.” — Thompson’s Autumn

The firing of the great guns at Portsmouth on this day, the King’s accession, shook the walls & windows of my house.

The poor make quite a second harvest by gathering of acorns.  Timothy Turner has purchased upwards of 40 bushels.  Two truflers came with their dogs to hunt our hangers, & beechen woods in search of truffles; several of which they found in the deep narrow part of the hill between coney-croft-hanger, & the high wood; & again on each side of the hollow road up the high-wood, known by the name of coach-road.

Nasturtiums in high bloom, & untouched by the frost!

Mowed & burnt the dead grass in my fields.  Rooks on the hill attended by a numerous flock of starlings.  The tortoise gets under the laurel-hedge, but does not bury himself.  Neps. T. H. & H. Holt white returned from Fyfield.  … “a crouded umbrage, dusk & dun,/Of ev’ry hue, from wan, declining green;/To sooty dark.”  Thomson.

Rover find pheasants every day; but no partridges.  The air is full of gossamer.  There is fine grass in the meadows.  …”see, the fading, many-coloured woods,/Shade deepening over shade, the coutnry round,/Imbrown.” Thomson.

Nep. Harry Woods left me, & went to Funtington.

The potatoes in the meadow small, & the ground very stiff.  Low creeping frogs.