The Natural History of Selborne

Sam & Charles came from Fyfield.  The harvest seasons are very beautiful!  Farmer Spencer makes a hay-rick.  Wheat very fine and heavy.

My Nephew Edmd White’s tank at Newton runs over.  On the first of August, about half an hour after three in the afternoon the people of Selborne were surpried by a shower of Aphides which fell in these parts.  I was not at home; but those who were walking the streets at that juncture found themselves covered with these insects, which settled also on the trees, & gardens, & blackened all the vegetables where they alighted.  My annuals were covered with them; & some onions were quite coated over with them when I returned on Aug. 6th.  These armies, no doubt, were then an a state of emigration, & shifting their quarters; & might come, as far as we know, from the great hop-plantations of Kent or Sussex, the wind being that day at E.  They were observed at the same time at Farnham, & all along the vale to Alton.  Of the conveyance of Insects from place to place, see Derhams’s Physico-Theology. p. 367.

Black-caps eat the berries of the honey-suckle, now ripe.  Pheasant-cocks crow.

Men bind their wheat as fast as they reap it.  Hops look black.

Mushrooms come in.  Fire gleams.  Fly-catchers, second brood, forsake their nest.

Pease lie in a sad state, & shatter-out.  Gleaning begins: wheat is heavy.  Agaricus pratensis champignion, comes-up in the fairey-ring on my grass-plot.

Sarah Dewey came to assist in the family.

My young fly-catchers near fledge.

Harvest-bugs are troublesome.  Fly-catcher in Mr Mulso’s garden, that seem to have a nest of young. Tremella nostoch abounds in Mr Mulso’s grass walks.

All the way as we drove along, we saw wheat harvest beginning.  The ponds at Privet, where they have been much distressed for water, are nearly full.  The down-wheat, about Meonstroke a poor crop.  Many turnips fail.  The fly-catchers hover over their young to preserve them from the heat of the sun.