The Natural History of Selborne

Neither veal nor lamb is so fat this summer as usual: the reason is, because the cows, & ewes were much reduced by the coldness & wetness of the last very ungenial spring: We have had no rain since June 13.  The ground is bound as hard as iron, & chopped & cracked in a strange mnnaer.  Gardens languish for want of moisture, & the spring-corn looks sadly.  The ears of wheat in general are very small. The wetter the spring is, the more our grounds bind in summer.

Louring, with cool gale, sun, mist on the hills, golden stripe in the W.  Double catchflies make a lovely show.

Serapias latifolia blossoms in the Hanger, & high wood.

The disorder seems rather to abate in these parts.  Some few sufferers have had relapses.

Jupiter makes, & has made for some weeks past a beautiful & resplendent appearance every evening to the S.E. Saturn, who is very near, is much obscured by the brilliancy of the former. The sun at setting shines along the hanger in these long days, & tinges the stems of the tall beeches of a golden colour in a most picturesque, & amusing manner!! Just at the summer solstice the sun at setting shines directly up my broad walk against the urn, & tall fir. Fox-gloves, thistles, butterfly-orchids, blow in the high wood. In the garden roses, corn-flags, Iris’s red valerian, lychniss’s, &c. blow.

The smoke from the lime-kilns hangs along the forest in level tracts for miles.

Apis longicornis swarms in my walk down Baker’s hill, & bores the ground full of holes, both in the grass, & brick-walk. Peat begins to be brought in. On this day there was a great thunder-storm in London. Probably much rain fell this day at some distance to the S.W. While the thunder was about, the stone pavement in some parts of the entry & kitchen sweated & stood in drops of water. The farmers say, that the chafers, which abound in some parts, fall off the hedges & the trees on the sheeps backs, where being entangled in the wooll they die, & being blown by flies, fill the sheep with maggots. The epidemic disorder rages in an alarming manner in our fleet. Sr John L. Ross has left the N. sea, & is returned to the downs, not being able to continue his cruize on account of the general sickness of his crews.

This hot weather makes the tortoise so alert that he traverses all the garden by six o’clock in the morning.  When the sun grows very powerful he retires under a garden-mat, or the shelter of some cabbage; not loving to be about in vehement heat.  In such weather, he eats greedily.

Hung-out my pendent meat-safe.  The martins over the garden-door have thrown-out two eggs; they had not been sat on.  A pair of partriges haunt Baker’s hill, & dust themselves along the verge of the brick walk.  Many people droop with this feverish cold: not only women & children, but robust labourers.  In general the disorder does not last long, neither does it prove at all mortal in these parts.

Ephemerae, may-flies, appear, playing over the streams: their motions are very peculiar, up & down for many yards, almost in a perpendicular line.