The Natural History of Selborne

A house-martin drowned in the water-tub:  this accident seems to have been owing to fighting.

Standard honey-suckles, having lost their first shoots by the frosts, will produce little bloom this summer.

When the servants have been gone to bed some time, & the kitchen left dark, the hearth swarms with young crickets about the size of ants: there is an other set among them of larger growth: so that it appears two broods have hatched this spring.

My Bror. Thomas White nailed-up several large ‘scallop shells under the eaves of his house at South Lambeth, to see if the house-martins would build in them.  These conveniences had not been fixed half an hour, before several pairs settled upon them;  &, expressing great complacency, began to build immediately.  The shells were nailed on horizontally with the hollow side upward;  & should, I think, have a hole drilled in their bottoms to letoff moisture from driving rains.

Kidney-beans in a poor way: they have all been in danger of rotting.

Mr. Pink is obliged to leave 26 acres of barley-ground unsown. Feverish colds begin to be very freqent in this neighbourhood, & indeed the country over. Within the bills of mortality this disorder is quite epidemic, so that hardly an individual escapes. This complaint seems to have originated in Russia, & to have extended all over Europe. The great inclemency of the spring may best account for this universal malady.