The Natural History of Selborne

The crop of stoneless berberries is prodigious!  Among the many sorts of people that are injured by this very wet summer, the peat-cutters are great sufferers:  for they have not disposed of half the peat & turf which they ave prepared; & the poor have lost their season for laying in their forest fuel.  The brick-burner can get no dry heath to burn his lime, & bricks: nor can I house my cleft wood, which lies drenched in wet.  The brick-burner could never get his last makings of tiles & bricks dry enough for burning the autumn thro’ so they must be destroyed, & worked up again.  He had paid duty for them; but is, I understand, to be reimbursed.

Many Hirundines: several very young swallows on the thatch of the cottage near the pound.  The evening is uncommonly dark.

Hirundines swarm around the Plestor, & up & down the street.

Flying ants, male & female, usually swarm, & migrate on hot sunny days in August & Septembr; but this day a vast emigration took place in my garden & myriads came forth in appearance, from the drain which goes under the fruit-wall; filling the air & adjoining trees & shrubs with their numbers.  The females were full of eggs.  This late swarming is probably owing to the backward, wet season.  The day following, not one flying ant was to be seen.  The males, it is supposed all perish: the females wander away; & such as escape the Hirundines get into the grass, & under stones, & tiles, & lay the foundation of future colonies.

Wheat out at Buriton, Froxfield, Ropely, & other places.