May 28
Posted by sydney on May 28th, 2008
School of T. Bewick
- 2008: Amen! – Today marks the completion of my transcription of the journals of Gilbert White. In celebration, I will go the pub, but first trouble you all with a brief administrative post. If you would miss your daily Gilbert, fear not! Now that the heavy-typing is done, it’s a simple thing to call up the dates every day, so I will continue to post the daily entry as long as there is interest in this journal. At present the site fluctuates between 40 and 50 RSS subscribers plus about 20 or so daily visitors (if you read a lot of blogs and don’t yetuse RSS, I highly recommend it, by the way). I’ll also use this go-round to fix errors, and add notes and images to the earlier entries– if the notes are supported by the readership, that is! I’ve been of two minds on this journal whether to leave the entries unadorned; I started footnoting a few months ago because some things did seem to require explanation, such as obsolete Latin names or the migration/hibernation preoccupation. It would be great if people could leave some feedback in the comments on this question: more notation, less notation? More pictures, less pictures? I’m working towards some improvements for the site– there’s a pretty darn cool (or slightly scary, depending on how you feel about satellite images)new google map of Selborne, and I’ve done some small updates on the FAQ. I’m wrestling with the code for a few other features: – solving the pesky ’search by date’ problem – replacing the amazon shop with a non-commercial bookshelf… the shop is there because I wanted a way to show other books of interest, but it’s not ideal for this purpose. – integrating flickr. I’m made up a set of my own pictures of Selborne, that should probably be accessible somehow on the site iteself (I also need to go back to Selborne at a more pretty time of year!). I really should start a group for shots of Selborne itself, and of plants, animals, etc mentioned in the journals. If anyone is interested, use the contact page or the comments. – a family tree might be helpful, or a biography page. Possibly a who’s who of the occasion names that are mentioned, although this is not so easy to find out. – sprucing up the design generally Any other suggestions or feedback would be great, please use the comments to this entry.
- 1793: May 28, 1793 – My weeding-woman swept up on the grass-plot a bushel-basket of blossoms from the white apple-tree: & yet that tree seems still covered with bloom.
- 1793: May 28, 1793 – The season is so cold, that no species of Hirundines make any advances towards building, & breeding. Brother Benjamin & Mrs. White, & Mary White, & Miss Mary Barker came.
- 1791: May 28, 1791 – Bantam-hen brings out four chickens.
- 1789: May 28, 1789 – A fly-catcher has built a nest in the great apricot-tree, in which there is one egg.
- 1788: May 28, 1788 – The Flycatcher, which was not seen ’till the 18th, has got a nest and four eggs.
- 1784: May 28, 1784 – Timothy the tortoise has been missing for more than a week. He got out of the garden at the wicket, we suppose; & may be in the fields among the grass. Timothy found in the little bean-field short of the pound-field. The nightingale, fern-owl, cuckow, & grass-hopper lark may be heard at the same time in my outlet. Gryllo-talpa curs in the moist meadows.
- 1779: May 28, 1779 – Young pheasants!
- 1777: May 28, 1777 – Clouds flye different ways. Distant thunder.
- 1774: May 28, 1774 – The crows, rooks, & daws in great numbers continue to devour the chafers on the hanger. Was it not for those birds chafers would destroy everything. Rooks, now their young are flown, do not roost on their nest-trees, but retire in the evening towards Hartley-woods. Martins roost in the their new nests as soon as ever they are large enough to contain them.
- 1773: May 28, 1773 – Apis longcornis bores its nest in the field-walks.
Theme Ported to
May 29th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I subscribed by RSS to this as soon as I discovered it and have been meaning to thank you ever since.
The addition of a vast panoply of annotations and footnotes would be marvellous, so I am going to thank you for those in advance!
May 29th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
My pleasure! I don’t know if I’ll serve up a panoply.. more like a smattering… it’s incredible how deeply one can get sucked into googling things like ‘oak barking’!