The Natural History of Selborne

Young minute frogs migrate from the ponds this showery weather, & fill the lanes and paths: they are quite black.

Wheat in general out of bloom.  After so kind a blowing time we may from the heat of the summer expect an early, & plentiful wheat harvest.

Pines begin to ripen at Hartley.  I have not seen the great species of bat this summer.

* Teals breed in Woolmer-forest: jack-snipes breed there also  no doubt, since they are to be found there the summer thro’.  A person assures me, that Mr Meymot, an old clergyman at North cappel in Sussex, kept a cuckow in a cage three or four years; & that he had seen it several times, both winter and summer.  It made a little jarring noise, but never cryed ‘cuckow’: It might perhaps have been a hen.  He did not remember how it subsided.

Hay makes at a vast rate.  Vast crops of plums, currants, & gooseberries.  House-martin which laid in an old nest, hatches.  House-martins, which breed in an old nest get the start of those that build in new ones by 10 days, or a fortnight.

Meadow-grass very short indeed.

Tremendous thunder, & vast hail yesterday at Bramshot, & Hedley with prodigious floods.  Vast damage done.  The hail lay knee-deep.  The shell-snail has hardly appeared at all this season on account of the long dry time.  Snails copulate about Midsumr; & soon after deposit their eggs in the mould by running their heads & bodies under ground.  Hence the way to be rid of them is to kill as many as possible before they begin to breed.  In six weeks after wheat is in ear, harvest usually begins; unless delayed by cold, wet, black weather.

We just had the skirts of a vast thunder-storm.

Red kidney beans begin to climb their sticks.  Mulberry-tree in full leaf.  Snails copulate.

The autumn-sown brown lettuces, which stood the winter, still continue good.  The dry season last friday morning had lasted just 3 months:  the 9, 10, & 11 of March were very wet.

Shower in the night.  Planted-out vast quantities of annuals both in the borders, & basons; both in the fields, & gardens.