The Natural History of Selborne

• 1791: August 11, 1791 – Half hogshead of portwine from Southhamton.  Gleaners come home with corn.
• 1789: August 11, 1789 – Got-in forest-fuel in nice order.  Farmer Knight begins wheat harvest.  Lovely weather.
• 1787: August 11, 1787 – The children in strawberry time found & destroyed several pheasant’s nests in Goleigh wood.  Nep. and Niece Ben White came from London.
• 1782: August 11, 1782 – Five swifts at E. Tisted.
• 1781: August 11, 1781 – Ponds & streams fail.  People in many parts in great want of water.  The reapers were never interrupted by rain one hour the harvest thro’.
• 1780: August 11, 1780 – The Papilio Machaon never appeared but once in my garden.
• 1774: August 11, 1774 – One of my vines looks pale & sickly.  Ivy budds for bloom: it blows in Octr & Novr. and the fruit ripens in April.
• 1772: August 11, 1772 – Wheat-harvest becomes pretty general.  Barom. sinks & rises to it’s former pitch.
• 1771: August 11, 1771 – Heavy clouds round the horizon.  Lambs play, & frolick.
• 1768: August 11, 1768 – Wheat harvest is pretty general.  The male and female flying ants, leaving their nests, fill the air.  See Gould on ants.

• 1790: August 10, 1790 – A labourer has mown out in the precincts of Hartley-wood, during the course of this summer, as many pheasant’s nests as contained 60 eggs!  Bro. Thomas White came.
• 1789: August 10, 1789 – Monotropa Hypopithys abounds in the hanger beyond Maiden dance, opposite to coney-croft hanger.
• 1787: August 10, 1787 – When the redbreasts have finished the currans, they begin with the berries of the honey-suckles, of which they are very fond.
• 1785: August 10, 1785 – Men bind their wheat as fast as they reap it.  Hops look black.
• 1784: August 10, 1784 – Mr & Mrs Mulso, &c., left us.
• 1780: August 10, 1780 – Sowed a crop of spinage for the winter, and spring, & trod the seed well in.
• 1779: August 10, 1779 – Wheat lies in a bad way.  Peaches, & plums rot.  Wheat grows.  Flying ants swarm in millions.  Inches of rain 3.
• 1776: August 10, 1776 – Hay not housed at Meonstoke & Warnford.
• 1774: August 10, 1774 – No swifts: are seen no more with us.
• 1773: August 10, 1773 – Most sultry night.
• 1772: August 10, 1772 – An autumnal coolness begins to take place, morning and evening.
• 1771: August 10, 1771 – Flying ants, male & female.
• 1769: August 10, 1769 – Mr Sheffield of Worcester Coll. went in to Wolmer-forest & procured me a green sand-piper, Tringa Aldrov; Tringa ochropus Lin.  They were in pairs & had been seen about by many people on the streams, & banks of the ponds.
• 1768: August 10, 1768 – Young pheasants are flyers.  White butter-flies gather in flocks on the mud of puddles.

• 1789: August 9, 1789 – The country people have a notion that the Fern-owl or Churn-owl, or Eve-jarr, which they also call a Puckeridge, is very injurious to weanling calves by inflicting, as it strikes at them, the fatal distemper known to cow-leeches as Puckeridge. Thus does this harmless, ill-fated bird fall under a double imputation, which it by no means deserves; in Italy, of sucking the teats of goats, whence it is called Caprimulgus; & with us, of communicating a deadly disorder to cattle. But the truth of the matter is, the malady above-mentioned is occasioned by the Oestrus bovis, a dipterous insect, which lays it’s eggs along the backs (chines) of kine, where the maggots, when hatched, eat their way thro’ the hide of the beast into the flesh, & grow to a very large size. I have just talked with a man, who says he has, more than once stripped calves who have died of the puckeridge; that the ail, or complaint lay along the chine, where the flesh was much swelled, & filled with purulent matter. Once myself I saw a large rough maggot of this sort taken (squeezed) out of the back of a cow. These maggots in Essex are called wornils. The least observation & attention would convince men, that these birds neither injure the goatherd, nor the grazier, but are perfectly harmless, & subsist alone, being night birds, on night-insects, such as scarabaei & phalaneae; thro’ the month of July mostly on the scarabaeus solstitialis, which in many districts abounds at that season. Those that we have opened, have always had their craws stuffed with large night-moths & their eggs, & pieces of chafers: nor does it anywise appear how they can, weak & unarmed as they are, inflict any harm upon kine, unless they possess the powers of animal magnetism, & can affect them by fluttering over them. Mr Churton informs me “that the disease along the chine of calves, or rather the maggots that cause them, are called by the graziers in Cheshire worry brees, & a single one worry-bree.” No doubt them mean a breese, or breeze, one name for the gad-fly or Oestrus, which is the parent of these maggots, & lays it’s eggs on the backs of kine. Dogs come into my garden at night, & eat my goose-berries. Levant weather.
• 1788: August 9, 1788 – Wheat harvest will mostly be finished by Monday; viz. in old July.
• 1785: August 9, 1785 – Mushrooms come in.  Fire gleams.  Fly-catchers, second brood, forsake their nest.
• 1783: August 9, 1783 – Flies come in a door, & swarm in the windows; especially that species called Conops calcitrans.  Nep. John White came by the coach from London.
• 1782: August 9, 1782 – Hops are injured by the late winds.  Swifts about Reading
• 1781: August 9, 1781 – One swift, perhaps a pair, going in & out of the eaves of the church.  Why do these linger behind the rest, which have withdrawn some days?  have they a backward brood delayed by some accident?
• 1774: August 9, 1774 – Young martins abound.  Wheat-harvest begins with us.  The swifts appear again.
• 1769: August 9, 1769 – Wheat begins to be cut at Selborne.  Swifts appear to be gone.  Swallows congregate in trees with their young & whistle much.  Young martins begin to congregate on ye wallnut trees.  Nuthatch chirps much.  One swift appears.  Caprimulgus chatters.

• 1792: August 8, 1792 – My lower wall nut-tree casts it’s leaves in a very unusual manner.  No wall-nuts; the crop dropped off early in the summer.
• 1791: August 8, 1791 – Some young broods of fly-catchers fly about.
• 1789: August 8, 1789 – Two poor, half-fledged fern-owls were brought me: they were found out in the forest among the heath.  Farmer Hewet of Temple cut 30 acres of wheat this week.  This wheat was lodged before it came into ear, & was much blighted.  It grew on low grounds: the wheat on the high malms at Temple is not ripe.
• 1785: August 8, 1785 – Pease lie in a sad state, & shatter-out.  Gleaning begins: wheat is heavy.  Agaricus pratensis champignion, comes-up in the fairey-ring on my grass-plot.
• 1781: August 8, 1781 – We have shot 31 black-birds, and saved our gooseberries.
• 1778: August 8, 1778 – Full moon.  The pair of martins which build by the stair-case window, where their first brood came-out on July 7: are now hatching a second brood, as appears by some egg-shells thrown-out.
• 1777: August 8, 1777 – Flocks of lap-wings migrate to the downs & uplands.
• 1775: August 8, 1775 – Broods of flycatchers come out.
• 1773: August 8, 1773 – Hops have been some time in bloom, & do not promise for much of a crop: they are lousy and do not run up the poles well.
• 1772: August 8, 1772 – Fog, sun, & brisk wind, serene. Ripening weather. Young martins (the first brood) congregate and are very numerous; the old ones breed again.
• 1771: August 8, 1771 – Rain in the night, with wind.  Swifts.  Sultry & moist: cucumbers bear abundantly.  Showers about.  Procured a second large bat, a male.

Title page to Robert Boyle’sThe Sceptical Chymist, concerning itself with pneumatics, or the laws whereby air is condensed, & rarifyed.

• 1792: August 7, 1792 – Several of my neighbours went up the Hill (this being the day of the great review at Bagshot heath) whence they heard distinctly the discharges from the ordnance, & small arms, & saw the clouds of smoke from the guns.  The wind being N.E. they smelled, or seemed to smell, the scent of the gunpowder.  Wickham bushes, the scene of action, is more than 20 miles from hence.  The crouds of people assembled upon this occasion were great beyond anything seen at such meetings!
• 1791: August 7, 1791 – Received from Farnham, well packed in a box, a picture of a mule pheasant, painted by Mr Elmer, & given me by Lord Stawell.  I have fixed it in a gilt, burnished frame, & hung it in my great parlor, where it makes an elegant piece of furniture.  The first broods of swallows, & house-martins, which congregate on roofs, & trees, are very numerous, & yet I have not this year one nest about my buildings.
• 1790: August 7, 1790 – Strawberries from the woods are over; the crop has been prodigious.  The decanter, into which wine from the cool cellar was poured, became clouded over with a thick condensation standing in drops.  This appearance, which is never to be seen but in warm weather, is a curious phaenomenon, & exhibits matter for speculation to the modern philosopher.  A friend of mine enquires whether the “rorantia pocula” of Tully in his “de senectute” had any reference to such appearances.  But there is great reason to suppose that the ancients were not accurate philosophers enough to pay much regard to such occurrences.  They knew little of pneumatics, or the laws whereby air is condensed, & rarifyed; & much less that water is dissolved in air, & reducible therefrom by cold.  If they saw such dews on their statues, or metal utensiles, they looked on them as ominous, & were awed with a superstitious horror.  Thus Virgil makes his weeping statues, & sweating brazen vessles prognostic of the violent death of Julius Caesar:.. “maestrum illacrymat templis ebur, aeraq sudant.” Georgic 1st
• 1789: August 7, 1789 – Mr & Mrs Barker, & Miss Eliz. Barker rode to Blackdown to see the prospect, & returned by 3 o’clock: they set out at six in the morning.
• 1788: August 7, 1788 – Two or three beeches below Bradshot are quite loaded with mast.  The King’s field is cleared, & thrown open.
• 1785: August 7, 1785 – Sarah Dewey came to assist in the family.
• 1784: August 7, 1784 – Many hop-poles are blown down.  Cool, autumnal feel.  Days much shortened.
• 1782: August 7, 1782 – Vast rains in the night.  The quantity of rain since Jan. 1st 1782, is 36 in. 1 h.!!!
• 1779: August 7, 1779 – Rain, rain, rain.  Wheat under the hedges begins to grow.
• 1777: August 7, 1777 – Finished the chimney of my parlor: it measures 30 feet from the hearth to the top.
• 1775: August 7, 1775 – Timothy, Mrs Snookes’ old tortoise has been kept full 30 years in her court before the house, wieghs six pounds three quarters, & one ounce.  It was never weighed before, but seems to be much grown since it came.
• 1774: August 7, 1774 – Much wheat blighted. Swifts have not appear’d for these two evenings.
• 1773: August 7, 1773 – The flight of the scarabaeus solstitiales seems to be over.  Measles still in some families.
• 1771: August 7, 1771 – Rye-harvest begins.  Procured the above-mentioned specimen of the bat, a male.
• 1770: August 7, 1770 – Those maggots that make worm-holes in tables, chairs, bed-posts, &c., & destroy wooden-furniture, especially where there is any sap, are the larvae of the ptinus pectinicornis.  This insect, it is probable, deposits its eggs on the surface, & the worms eat their way in.  In their holes they turn into the pupa state, & so come foth winged in July: eating their way thro’ the valences or curtains of a bed, or any other furniture that happens to obstruct their pasasge.  They seem to be most inclined to breed in beech; hence beech will not make lasting utensils, or furniture.  If their eggs are deposited on the surface, frequent rubbings will preserve wooden furniture.
• 1769: August 7, 1769 – Showers to the S.  Wheat, rye, oats, barley cutting round the forest.
• 1768: August 7, 1768 – Cold dew.  Mulberry begins to cast some leaves.  Tops of beeches in the hanger begin to look pale.

Cotinus coggygria, the smoke tree, in White’s time went by the Linnean name Rhus Cotinus.

• 1791: August 6, 1791 – Boys bring wasp’s nest.  Codlings, & stewed cucumber come in.  Housed, & piled 8 cords of beechen billet in fine order.  Watered the cucumbers; well very low.
• 1790: August 6, 1790 – The fern-owl churs still; grass-hopper lark has been silent some days.
• 1789: August 6, 1789 – Rhus Cotinus, sive Coccygria blows; it’s blossom is very minute, & stands on the extremities of it’s filiform bracteols, which have sort of feather-like appearance that gives the shrub a singular, & beautiful grace.  This tree does not ripen it’s berries with us.  Is a native of Lombardy, & to be found at the foot of the Apennine, & in Carniola.
• 1788: August 6, 1788 – Flight of lapwings comes up into the malm fallows.
• 1786: August 6, 1786 – Mrs Ben White, by being delivered of a boy this morning, has encreased my nephews, & nieces to the number of 46.
• 1785: August 6, 1785 – My young fly-catchers near fledge.
• 1783: August 6, 1783 – Our fields & gardens are wonderfully dryed-up: yet after all this long drought Well-head sends forth a strong stream. The stream at the lower end of the village has long been dry.  Mr Barker came from Rutland thro’ Oxford on horse-back.
• 1781: August 6, 1781 – Every ant-hill is in a strange hurry & confusion; & all the winged ants, agitated by some violent impulse, are leaving their homes; &, bent on emigration, swarm by myriads in the air, to the great emoulment of the hirundines, which fare luxuriously.  Those that escape the swallows return no more to their nests, but looking out for new retreats, lay a foundation for future colonies.  All the females at these times are pregnant.
• 1775: August 6, 1775 – Multitudes of swallows of the first brood cluster on the Scotch-firs.  The swifts, or the bulk of them, departed from Fyfield, about this day.
• 1774: August 6, 1774 – The trufle-hunter took one pound of trufles at Fyfield.  Swifts disappeared at Fyfield on this day. A colony of swifts builds in the tower of London.  Swifts in general seemed to withdraw from us on this day. Annuals are stunted, & not likely to blow well.
• 1773: August 6, 1773 – The male & femal ants of the little dusky sort come forth by myriads, & course about with great agility.
• 1772: August 6, 1772 – Wheat begins to be cut. Not a breath of air.  The nights are hot.
• 1771: August 6, 1771 – Nuthatch chirps; is very loquacious at this time of the year.  Large bat appears, vespertilio altivolans.
• 1770: August 6, 1770 – Levant weather: a brisk gale all day that dies away at sunset.

Notes: English truffles: today’s NHoS is ripped from the headlines!

Selborne Church by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, who did the engravings for the first edition of “The Natural History of Selborne”

• 1792: August 5, 1792 – The guns at the camp on Bagshot Heath were heard distinctly this evening.
• 1791: August 5, 1791 – Mrs H. White, & Lucy left us.  Two dobchicks in Combwood pond.  Young martins, & swallows cluster on the tower, & on trees, for the first time.  A pleasing circumstance, mixed with some degree of regret for the decline of summer!
• 1790: August 5, 1790 – Piled & housed all the cleft wood of eight cords of beech: the proportion of blocks was large.
• 1789: August 5, 1789 – Mrs Brown brought to bed of a daughter, who makes the number of my nephews & nieces 54.  Forest-fuel brought in. Beechen fuel brought in.  Wood straw-berries are over.
• 1788: August 5, 1788 – Farmer Spencer’s rick slipped down as it was building.
• 1781: August 5, 1781 – Small scuds of rain.  No rain to measure since July 14.  On this day a bloody & obstinate engagement happened between Admiral Hyde Parker, & a Dutch fleet off the Dogger-bank.
• 1780: August 5, 1780 – My pendent pantry, made of deal & fine fly-wire, & suspended in the great wallnut tree, proves an incomparable preservative rfor meat against flesh-flies.  The flesh by hanging in a brisk current of air becomes dry on the surface, & keeps ’til it is tender without tainting.
• 1776: August 5, 1776 – Mr Grim the artist left me.  Began to gather apricots.  Put out two rows of celeri: thr ground dry & harsh.
• 1771: August 5, 1771 – Young partridges, strong flyers.  Soft showers.  Swifts.  Pease are hacking.
• 1770: August 5, 1770 – Hops promise well, & throw out branches at every joint.

• 1791: August 4, 1791 – Farmer Tull begins to reap wheat.  The hop-garden at Kimber’s fails again, & looks black.
• 1789: August 4, 1789 – Sedum Telephim, orpine, & Hypericum Androsaemum, tutsan, growing in Emshot lane leading to Hawkey mill.
• 1784: August 4, 1784 – Skimmed my two pasture-fields.
• 1783: August 4, 1783 – Wheat seems very good.  Hops are quite gone.  They have some weak side-shoots without any rudiments of bloom.
• 1780: August 4, 1780 – Several broods of blackbirds & thrushes devour the currans, &c.: ’til the wild cherries are eaten they do not annoy the garden.
• 1775: August 4, 1775 – Little wheat housed.  Wheat is very fine in general.  A young cuckow is hatched every year in some part of Mrs Snooke’s outlet, most usually by red-breasts.  No cross-bills this year among the scotch pines. They usually appear about the beginning of July.  No fern-owls.
• 1774: August 4, 1774 – Swifts began to withdraw about this time at Blackburn in Lancashire.
• 1772: August 4, 1772 – Young black-caps abound, & eat the rasps. Trimmed the vines of their side-shoots.

• 1791: August 3, 1791 – Somewhat of a chilly feel begins to prevail in the mornings and evenings.  Sowed a pint of London prickly spinage seed to stand the winter.  The same quantity last year produced an incredible crop.  Trod & rolled in the seed.  In Mr Hale’s hop garden near Dell are several hills containing male plants, which now shed their farina: the female plants begin to blow.  Men hoe turnips, & hack pease.  Men house hay as black as old thatch.
• 1789: August 3, 1789 – Wheat reaped at Ropley.  Ripening weather.  Ant-flies begin to come forth on their business of emigration.
• 1786: August 3, 1786 – The fallows of good husbandmen are in a fine crumbling state, & very clean.  Sowed a crop of prickly-seeded spinage to stand the winter: the ground was very hard & cloddy, & would not rake; so we levelled it down as well as we could with a garden-roller, & sprinkled it over with fine, dustly mould to cover the seeds.
• 1785: August 3, 1785 – Harvest-bugs are troublesome.  Fly-catcher in Mr Mulso’s garden, that seem to have a nest of young. Tremella nostoch abounds in Mr Mulso’s grass walks.
• 1783: August 3, 1783 – My white pippins come-in for kitchen uses.  The aphides, of various species, that make many trees & plants appear loathsome, have served their generation, & are gone, no more to be seen this year; perhaps are all dead.  Thistle-down flies.
• 1781: August 3, 1781 – Now the ants, male, female, & workers, come forth from under my stairs by thousands.
• 1775: August 3, 1775 – Female viper taken full of young, 15 in number: gaped & menaced as soon as they were out of the belly of their dams.
• 1774: August 3, 1774 – First apricots: first french-beans.
• 1772: August 3, 1772 – Red-breast sings.  Hops are perfectly free from distemper, & promise a moderate crop.
• 1770: August 3, 1770 – Sweet day.  Vast dew.  Somewhat of an autumnal temperament seems to take place.  Young martins come out.  Young swifts seem to be out.
• 1768: August 3, 1768 – The whame, or barrel-fly of Derham, lays nits or eggs on the legs and sides of horses at grass.  See physicotheology.

Notes: The ‘see physico-theology’ note refers to Physico-theology, Or, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from His Works of Creation by William Derham a clergyman/naturalist like White and first person to systematically measure the speed of sound. Click the link for a facsimile of the whame-fly passage.

• 1791: August 2, 1791 – Sowed white turnip radishes.  Planted-out savoys, & other winter cabbages.
• 1789: August 2, 1789 – The goose-berries are bent to the ground with loads of fruit.
• 1788: August 2, 1788 – Many bats breed under the tiles of my house.  Five gallons, & one pint of brandy from London.
• 1784: August 2, 1784 – Wall-cherries, may dukes, lasted ’till this time, & were very fine.
• 1783: August 2, 1783 – Burning sun.  Workmen complain of the heat.
• 1780: August 2, 1780 – Papilio Machaon alis caudatis, concoloribus, flavis, limbo fusco, lunulis flavis, angulo ani fulvo, appears in my garden, being the first specimen of this species that I ever saw in this district.  In Essex & Sussex they are more common.  A person brought me a young snipe from the forest.
• 1777: August 2, 1777 – After ewes & lambs are shorn there is great confusion & bleating, neither the dams nor the young being able to distinguish one another as before.  This embarrassment seems not so much to arise from the loss of fleece, which may occasion an alteration in their appearance, as from the defect of that notus odor, discriminating each individual personally: which also is confounded by the strong scent of the pitch & tar wherewith they are newly marked; for the brute creation recognize each other more from the smell that the sight; & in matters of Identity & Diversity appeal much more to their noses than to their eyes.
• 1775: August 2, 1775 – Wheat harvest is general all about the downs.  When I came just beyond Findon I found wheatear traps which had been open’d about a week.  The shepherds usually begin catching about the last week in July.
• 1774: August 2, 1774 – Sun, sweet day.  A chilly autumnal feel in the mornings and evenings.
• 1773: August 2, 1773 – Apis manicata.  This bee is never observed by me ’til the Stachys germanica blows, on which it feeds all day: tho’ doubtless it had other plants to feed on before I introduced that Stachys.
• 1772: August 2, 1772 – Ground well moistened.  The frogs from James Kinght’s ponds travel in troops to the top of the Hanger.
• 1769: August 2, 1769 – Male-ants flie away & leave yir nests.