The Natural History of Selborne

After the servants are gone to bed the kitchen-hearth swarms with minute crickets not so large as fleas, which must have been lately hatched.  So that these domestic insects, cherished by the influence of a constant large fire, regard not the season of the year; but produce their young at a time when their congeners are either dead, or laid up for the winter, to pass away the uncomfortable months in the profoundest slumbers, & a state of torpidity.

Housed 8 cords of beech billet, which had taken all the rains of the late wet summer, & autumn, & is therefore of course in but indifferent order.

Rime on the hanger.

The miller supplies us with cold, damp flour, & says he can get no other: he adds, that the best wheat is at the bottom of the mows, & will not come forth till the spring.  The latter part of the wheat harvest was very wet.

Do left us.  Flood at Gracious street.

Few woodcocks; & few pheasants left.  Many hares have been found on our hill: the wetness of the season, it is supposed, induces them to leave the vales, & to retreat to the uplands.  Reb. & Hannah White came from Newton.

A flock of red-wings.  Men have not finished their wheat season: some low grounds too wet to be sown.

Bror & Sister Benj. left us, & went to Newton.  Tortoise almost covered.

The tortoise is going under ground, but not quite buried: he is in motion, & pushing himself beneath the turf.

The hermitage capped with snow.