The Natural History of Selborne

Made a new hand-glass bed for celeri in the garden.  The crocus’s still look very gay when the sun shines.

White sharp frost: thick ice: icicles.  Apricots blow: peaches & nectarines begin to open their buds.  Some thing again eats the young celeri.

Snow does not lie, ice, frost, & icicles all day.

Snow, rain, harsh.  A sad wintry day!

This evening Admiral Gardner’s fleet sailed from St Helens with a fair wind.

Parted the bunches of Hepatica’s, that were got weak, & planted them again round the borders.

Planted 30 cauliflowers brought from Mareland; & a row of red cabbages.  The ground is so glutted with rain that men can neither plow, nor sow, nor dig.

On friday last my Brother & I walked up to Bentely church, which is more than a mile from his house & on a considerable elevation of ground.  From thence the prospect is good, & you see at a distance Cruxbury hill, Guild down, part of Lethe hill, Hind-head, & beyond it to the top of one of the Sussex downs.  There is an avenue of aged yew-trees up to the church: & the yard, which is large, abounds with brick-tombs covered with slabs of stone: of these there are ten in a row, belonging to the family of the Lutmans.  The church consists of three ailes, & has a squat tower containing six bells.  From the inscriptions it appears that the inhabitants live to considerable ages.  There are hob-grounds along on the north side of the turn-pike road, but none on the south towards the stream.  The whole district abounds with streams.  The largest spring on my brother’s farm issues out of the bank in the meadow, just below the terrace.  Some body formerly was pleased with this fountain, & has, at no small expence bestowed a facing of Portland stone with an arch, & a pipe, thro’ which the water falls into a stone bason, in a perennial stream.  By means of a wooden trough this spring waters some part of the cirucumjacent slopes.  It is not so copious as Well head.

Papilio rhamni, the brimstone butterfly, appears in the Holt.  Trouts rise, & catch at insects.   A dob-chick comes down the Wey in sight of the banks.  Timothy the tortoise comes forth, & weighs 6 ae 5 1/2 z.  Took a walk in the Holt up to the lodge: no bushes, & of course no young oaks: some Hollies, & here & there a few aged yews: no oaks of any great size.  The soil wet & boggy.

During my absence Thomas parted-out my polyanths, & planted them in rows along the orchard walk, & up the border of Baker’s Hill by the hot beds.  My Brother has a pigeon-house stocked with perhaps 50 pairs of birds, which have not yet begun to breed.  He has in the yard Turkeys, a large breed of ducks, & fine fowls.  On the ponds are geese, which begin to sit.