The Natural History of Selborne

Gathered-in the royal russets, & knobbed russets.  Tyed-up endive.  *My Arundo donax, which I receied from Gibraltar, is grown this year eight or nine feet high: I therefore opened the head of one stalk to see what approaches it had made towards blowing after so hot a summer.  When it was cut open we found a long series of leaves enfolded one within the other to a most minute degree, but not the least rudiments of fructification; so that the plant must have extended itself many feet before it could have attained to it’s full stature: and must have required many more weeks of hot weather before it could have brought any seeds to maturity.

Gathered in the golden-rennets.  Apples are too large from the much wet.

Gathered-in the swan’s eggs, & autumn burgamot-pears: a vast crop of the former.

Ring-ouzels appear on the common on their autumnal migration.  * The large female wasps begin to come in at a door, & seem as if they were just going to hide, & lay themselves up for the winter.  The common wasps are much abated in number.  On wednesday the 20 there was a violent storm of thunder & lightening at Fyfield between ten & eleven at night.

Showers, rainbow, bright.  Barley in a sad condtion about Basingstoke.  Rams begin to pay court to the ewes.

Wasps begin to abate.  *On friday, Sepr. 8th, at 10 at night a considerable earthquake was felt at Oxford, Bath, & several other towns.

Little barley housed towards Winton & Andover.  Many crops not ripe.

Good grapes every day, but not delicate.  Bag-ed more grapes.

Put 50 fine bunches of grapes in crape bags to secure them from wasps.

Much barley abroad, most of it standing: what is cut lies in a sad way.  Hop-picking becomes interrupted: hops become brown.