The Natural History of Selborne

Hares eat down the pinks, & cloves in the the garden: & yet sportsmen complain that the breed this year is very small; alleging that dry summers, tho’ kindly for partridges, are detrimental to hares.

The tortoise came out of his coop, & has buried himself in the laurel-hedge.  When my great parlor is kept close shut-up it is not at all affected by condensations on on the wainscot or paper, tho’ the hall & entry are all in a float.

John Hale has cleansed the pond on the down, & carried out a large quantity of mud.  Husbandry seems to be much improved at Selborne within these 20 years, & their crops of wheat are generally better: not that they plough oftener, or perhaps manure more than they did formerly; but from the more frequent harrowings & draggings now in use, which pulverize our strong soil, & render it more fertile than any other expedient yet in practice.

The walls of the hall & entry are all afloat with condensation.

The wintry & huge constellation, Orion, begins now to make his appearance in the evening, exhibiting his enormous figure in the E.  Tho’ my grapes ripen in the most disadvantageous years: yet from the concurring circumstances of a hot summer, & a failure of wasps, I think my crop was never so delicate before, nor ever supplyed my table for so long.

Hogs, in eating acorns, chew them very small, & reject all the husks.  The plenty of acorns this year avails the hogs of poor men & brings them forward without corn.

Much wheat-land not sown yet; because men are afraid to sow their corn in the dust.  Some water still in the pond on Selborne down; & the pond on Newton-farm, over the hedge, is half-full.  No drought, equal to the present, has been known since autumn 1740, which being preceeded by a dry summer & spring, & the terrible long frost of winter 1739, exhausted most of the wells & ponds, & distressed the country greatly.

The water is so scanty in the streams, that the millers cannot grind barley sufficient for mens hogs.  Dairy-farms cannot fill the butter-pots of their customers.

The tortoise retires under ground, within his coop.

From the scantiness of the grass I have given for sometime 9 d pr pd. for butter; a price here not know before.