The Natural History of Selborne

Vast shower with hail.  Turned the horses into the great mead.  Much grass. A part of the orchard, where I laid the earth which came out of the garden, was sown in April with rye-grass, & hop trefoil, & has been mown already three times.

The barley coming-up unequally is not yet ripe.  Hops promise to be very small.

Fine harvest day.  Some corn housed.

Mr Woods of Chilgrove thinks he improves his flock by turning the east-country poll-rams among his horned ewes.  The east-country poll sheep have shorter legs, & finer wool; & black faces, & spotted fore-legs; & a tuft of wooll in their fore-heads.  Much corn of all sorts still abroad.  Was wetted thro’ on the naked downs near Parham-ash.  Some cuckoos remain.  N.B.  From Lewes to Brightehelmstone, & thence to Beeding-hill, where the wheat-ear traps are frequent no wheat-ears are to be seen: But on the downs west of Beeding, we saw many.   A plain proof this, that those traps make a considerable havock among that species of birds.

Full moon.  The rams begin to play court to the ewes.

The tortoise eats voraciously: is particularly fond of kidney-beans.  Vast halo round the moon.

Grey, sun, sweet day.

While the cows are feeding in moist low pastures, broods of wagtails, white & grey, run round them close up to their noses, & under their very bellies, availing themselves of the flies, & insects that settle on their legs, & probably finding worms & larvae that are roused by the trampling of their feet. Nature is such an oeconomist, that the most incongrous animals can avail themselves of each other! Interest makes strange friendships.

Timothy, the tortoise weighs just six pounds three quarters & two ounces & an half: so is encreased in weight, since Aug. 1775, just one ounce & an half.

Sun, & clouds, sultry, showers about.