The Natural History of Selborne

Bror Ben: cuts his Lucern a second time: the second crop is very tall.

Bro: Thmas’s gardener stops his vines, & tacks them.  Bro: Ben’s vines have good wood, & show for much fruit.

Many of Bror Thomas’s young fowls pine, & die; & so they did last summer.

Cauliflowers, Coss-lettuce, marrow-fat pease, carrots, summer-cabbage, & small beans in great profusion, & perfection.  Cherries begin to come in: artichokes for supper.  Bror Ben’s outlet swarms with the Scarabaeus solstitialis, which appears at Midsummer.  My two brothers gardens abound with all sorts of kitchen-crops.

Wheat is in bloom, & has had a fine, still, dry, warm season for blowing.  Nights miserably hot, & sultry.

Jasmine in warm aspects begins to blow.

My brother’s gardeners plant-out annuals.  The ground is well moistened.  They prick-out young cabbages, celeri, &c.

About Newton men were cutting their St foin: & all the way towards London their upland meadows, many of which, notwithstanding the drought, produce decent crops.  We had a dusty, fatiguing journey.  Bro Thos. has made his hay; & his fields are much burnt-up.

Grey, sprinkling, gleams with thunder.  Wavy, curdled clouds, like the remains of thunder.

In Richd Bulter’s garden there is a Fly-catcher’s nest built in a very peculiar manner, being placed on a shelf that is fixed against the wall of an out-house, not five feet from the ground;  & behind the head of an old rake lying on the shelf.  On the same spot a pair of the same birds built last year; but as soon as there were young the nest was torn down by a cat.