The Natural History of Selborne

• 1791: September 10, 1791 – Young broods of swallows come out.  Cut 171 cucumbers; in all 424 this week.  Sweet moon light!
• 1790: September 10, 1790 – Cut 140 cucumbers.  Hops light, & not very good.  Sister Barker & Molly & Betsy left us, & went to London: Charles White also, & Bessy returned to Fyfield.
• 1785: September 10, 1785 – Boys bring the 26th wasp’s nest.  Mens second crop of clover cut, & spoiled by the rains.  A bad prospect with respect to winter fodder!  Farmer Spencer sows some wheat-stubbles with rye for spring feed.
• 1784: September 10, 1784 – Uncrested wrens seem to be withdrawn.  Mr Richardson’s wall fruit at Bramshot-place is not good-flavoured, nor well-ripened & his vines are so injured by the cold, black summer, as not to be able to produce any fruit, or good wood for next year.  Mr Dennis’s vines at Bramshot also are in poor state.
• 1783: September 10, 1783 – Gathered-in the white pippins, a great crop.  Cleansed-out the zig-zag.  Tho. Holt White, & Henry Holt White came.  Bessy White, Sam White, & Ben Woods came from Fyfield.  The Virginian Creeper is grown up to the eaves; but will probably shoot no farther, as the leaves at bottom begin to turn red.  Total eclipse of the moon.
• 1781: September 10, 1781 – Red-breasts feed on elder-berries, enter rooms, & spoil the furniture.  Bror. T. & M. came to Selborne.  Timothy, whose appetite is now on the decline, weighs only 7 pounds & 3/4 of an ounce:  at Midsummer he wighed 7 ae 1 oun.
• 1780: September 10, 1780 – The motions of Timothy the tortoise are much circumscribed: he has taken to the border under the fruit-wall, & makes very short excursions: he sleeps under a Marvel of Peru.  Lapwings frequent the upland fallows.
• 1779: September 10, 1779 – Gloomy, still, sultry, soft showers.
• 1774: September 10, 1774 – Oats housed all day.  Swifts retire usually between the 10th & the 20th of Aug: flycatchers, stoparolae, which are the latest summer birds of passage, not appearing ’til the 20 of May, withdraw about the 6th of September.
• 1773: September 10, 1773 – Sad harvest & hop-picking weather!  Rain damages the wall-fruit.
• 1772: September 10, 1772 – Swallows & martins congregate in vast clouds.
• 1771: September 10, 1771 – Spring sown wheat is cut.  Hirundines swarm under the hanger.
• 1770: September 10, 1770 – The hop-picking at Farnham is just beginning.  About 8,000 people beside natives are employed.  A vast crop.  Much wall fruit at Farnham castle; but void of flower.
• 1769: September 10, 1769 – Land rail.
• 1768: September 10, 1768 – Hedge-hogs bore holes in the grass-walks to come at the plantain roots, which they eat upwards.

• 1792: September 9, 1792 – As most of the second brood of Hirundines are now out, the young on fine days congregate in considerable numbers on the church & tower: & it is remarkable that tho’ the generality is on the battlements & roof, yet many hang or cling for some time by their claws against the surface of the walls in a manner not practiced at any other time of their remaining with us.  By far the greater number of these amusing birds are house-martins, not swallows, which congregate on trees.  A writer in the Gent. Mag. supposes that the chilly mornings & evenings, at the decline of the year, begin to influence the feelings of the young broods; & that they cluster thus in the hot sunshine to prevent their blood from being benumbed, & themselves from being reduced to a state of untimely torpidity.
• 1791: September 9, 1791 – Gathered in the white apples, a very fine crop of large fine fruit, consisting of many bushels.
• 1790: September 9, 1790 – Two stone-curlews in a fallow near Southington.  A fern-owl flies over my house.
• 1789: September 9, 1789 – Hops are not large.  The fly-catchers, which abounded in my outlet, seem to have withdrawn themselves.  Some grapes begin turn colour.  Men bind wheat.  Sweet harvest, & hop-picking weather.  Hirundines congregate on barns, & trees, & on the tower.  The hops are smaller than they were last year.  There is fine clover in many fields.
• 1788: September 9, 1788 – On the brow of the cliff that looks down on Candover’s farm-house my Brother found a lime-tree which had been cut down to a stool, when the coppice was cut formerly.  Was it a wild tree or planted?
• 1783: September 9, 1783 – Mr. Etty’s well is still foul.  Began to light fires in the parlor.  Brother Thomas, & Molly White came.
• 1781: September 9, 1781 – Red-breasts whistle agreeably on the tops of hop-poles, &c., but are prognostic of autumn.  Young fern-owl.
• 1780: September 9, 1780 – My kindey-beans are much withered for want of rain: cucumbers bear: peaches begin to come: endives large, & tyed-up.  Gathered-in the Burgamot-pears; they easily part from their stems.  Hop-picking partly ended.  Myriads of flying ants, of the small pale, yellow sort, fly from their nests & fill the air.
• 1779: September 9, 1779 – The greens of the turneps in light shallow land are quite withered away for want of moisture.
• 1775: September 9, 1775 – Wasps somewhat abated.  The day & night insects occupy the annuals alternatelly: the papilios, muscae, & apes are succeeded at the close of the day by phalanae, earwigs, woodlice, etc.  My tallest beech measures in girth at least three feet from the ground six feet & four inches.  It grows at the S.E. end of Sparrow’s hanger, & appears to be upwards of 70 feet high.
• 1774: September 9, 1774 – Mushrooms.  Hops distempered.
• 1773: September 9, 1773 – Little barley housed.
• 1771: September 9, 1771 – Missel-thrushes flock.

• 1792: September 8, 1792 – Sowed thirteen rods, on the twelfth part of an acre of grass ground in my own upper Ewel close with 50 pounds weight of Gypsom; also thirteen rods in Do. with 50 pounds weight of lime; thirteen rods more in Do. with 50 pounds weight of wood & peat-ashes: and four rods more on Do. with peat-dust. All these sorts of manures were sown by Bror T. W. on very indifferent grass in the way of experiment.
• 1789: September 8, 1789 – Bror T. W. & Th. H. W. came from London.
• 1787: September 8, 1787 – Mrs Brown brought to bed of a boy, who added to 49 before, encreased my nephews & nieces to the round number of 50.
• 1786: September 8, 1786 – Made a pint of catsup.  Heavy rain.
• 1785: September 8, 1785 – Mr S. Barker came. Planted a Parnassia, which he brought out of Rutland in full bloom, in a bog at the bottom of Sparrow’s hanger.
• 1783: September 8, 1783 – Ponds are filled.  Hirundines skulk about to avoid the cold wind.  Mr Sam. Barker left us, & went to Fyfield.
• 1782: September 8, 1782 – People complain of harvest-bugs.  Thermr in the sun 110.  On this day Mrs Brown, of Uppingham in the County of Rutland, eldest daugher of my Sister Barker, was brought to bed of a daugher, her third child.  My nephews & nieces living are now 17 nephews: 15 nieces: 2 grand nephews: 2 grand nieces: 2 nephews by marriage: total 38.  One Niece since, 39.  8 nephews & nieces dead.
• 1780: September 8, 1780 – Barley-harvest on the downs.
• 1776: September 8, 1776 – A sharp, single, crack of thunder at Faringdon: the air was cold, & chilly.
• 1775: September 8, 1775 – Wasps abound, & mangle the graps: we have, I should think, destroyed 50000.
• 1774: September 8, 1774 – Wheat housing. Whitethroats still seen.
• 1771: September 8, 1771 – Blowing and winter-like.

Swallows congregating, E.H. Shepard, from “The Wind in the Willows”

• 1791: September 7, 1791 – Cut 125 cucumbers.  Young martins, several hundreds, congregate on the tower, church, & yew-tree.  Hence I conclude that most of the second broods are flown.  Such an assemblage is very beautiful, & amusing, did it not bring with it the association of ideas tending to make us reflect that winter is approaching; & that these little birds are consulting how they may avoid it.
• 1789: September 7, 1789 – Mr Thomas Mulso left us & went to Winton.
• 1782: September 7, 1782 – Many Selborne farmers finished wheat-harvest.  The latter housings are in delicate order: the early housed will be cold, & damp.  The swifts left Lyndon in the county of Rutland, for the most part, about August 23.  Some continued ’till August 29: & one till September 3!!  In all our observation Mr Barker & I never saw or heard of a swift in September, tho’ we have remarked them for more than 40 years.  All nature this summer seems to keep pace with the backwardness of the season.
• 1781: September 7, 1781 – Dines at Bramshot-place.
• 1779: September 7, 1779 – No mushrooms for want of more moisture.
• 1777: September 7, 1777 – Swallows & house-martins dip much in ponds.  Vast Northern Aurora.
• 1775: September 7, 1775 – In the dusk of the evening when beetles begin to buz, partridges begin to call; these two circumstances are exactly coincident.
• 1774: September 7, 1774 – Hops brown & small, & not esteemed very good. Wheat out still.
• 1773: September 7, 1773 – People begin to pick hops.
• 1772: September 7, 1772 – Peaches begin to ripen.
• 1768: September 7, 1768 – First blanched endive.  Some wheat standing still.  A few wasps.  Inyx still appears.

In the osiers which fringed the bank he spied a swallow sitting. Presently it was joined by another, and then by a third; and the birds, fidgeting restlessly on their bough, talked together earnestly and low.

`What, already,’ said the Rat, strolling up to them. `What’s the hurry? I call it simply ridiculous.’

`O, we’re not off yet, if that’s what you mean,’ replied the first swallow. `We’re only making plans and arranging things. Talking it over, you know — what route we’re taking this year, and where we’ll stop, and so on. That’s half the fun!’

“The Wind in the Willows”, Kenneth Grahame, 1908

• 1791: September 5, 1791 – Cut 107 cucumbers. Nectarines  are finely flavoured, but eaten by bees, & wasps.  Churn-owl is seen over the village: fly-catchers seem to be gone.
• 1790: September 5, 1790 – Boiled a mess of autumnal spinage, sown Aug. 3rs.  Nep J. White left us, & returned to Sarum.  There is a fine thriving oak near the path as you go to Combwood, just before you arrive at the pond, round which, at about the distance of the extremities of the boughs, may be seen a sort of circle in the grass, in which the herbage appears dry & withered, as if a fariy-ring was beginning.  I remember somewhat of the same appearance at the same place in former years.
• 1787: September 5, 1787 – Stone-curlews pass over followed by their young, which make a piping, wailing noise.
• 1782: September 5, 1782 – The air is full of flying ants, & the hirundines fare luxuriously.
• 1777: September 5, 1777 – Sultry & gloomy.  Wasps abound.
• 1776: September 5, 1776 – Some wasps on the wall-fruit.  Where wasps gnaw a hole, the honey-bees come & suck the pulp.  Al fruits are backward, watry, & bad.
• 1775: September 5, 1775 – Grey, spitting, bright & sultry, distant lightening.  Wasps swarm.
• 1774: September 5, 1774 – Most people in Selborne begin picking their hops.  Wheat housed all day.
• 1772: September 5, 1772 – Rain.  Oats grow as they lie.  Some wheat abroad.  Bad for hop-picking.  A strange yellow tint in the sky at sunset.  Distant thunder & lightening in the evening.
• 1771: September 5, 1771 – Dark. Sun. Wheat pretty well cut-down.  Soft & still.

• 1792: September 4, 1792 – Hop-picking becomes general; & the women leave their gleaning in the wheat-stubbles.  Wheat grows as it stands in the shocks.
• 1789: September 4, 1789 – Mr Thomas Mulso comes from London.  Wry-necks, birds so called, appear on the grass-plots and walks: they walk a little as well as hop, & thrust their bills into the turf, in quest, I conclude, of ants, which are their food.  While they hold their bills in the grass, they draw out their prey with their tongues, which are so long as to be coiled round their heads.
• 1788: September 4, 1788 – Vast showers about.  Were all wet thro’ in our return from Faringdon.  Under the eaves of an house at Faringdon are 22 martin’s nests, 12 of which contain second broods now nearly fledge: they put out their heads, & seem to long to be on the wing.
• 1787: September 4, 1787 – Vast numbers of partidges.  A young fern-owl shot at Newton.
• 1786: September 4, 1786 – Cut my new rick;  the hay is good.
• 1785: September 4, 1785 – Boys bring the 25th wasp’s nest.
• 1784: September 4, 1784 – My Nep. Edmund White launched a balloon on our down, made of a soft, thin paper; & measuring about two feet & a half in length, & 20 inches in diameter. The buoyant air was supplyed at bottom by a plug of wooll, wetted with spirits ofwine, & set on fire by a candle. The air being cold & moist this machine did not succeed well abroad; but in Mr Yalden’s stair-case it rose to the ceiling, & remained suspended as long as the spirits continued to flame, & then sunk gradually. These Gent. made the balloon themselves. This small exhibition explained the whole balloon affair very well: but the position of the flame wanted better regulation; because the least oscillation set the paper on fire. Golden weather, red even.
• 1783: September 4, 1783 – Tremella nostoc appears on the walks.  Tho’ the weather may have been ever so dry & burning, yet after two or three wet days this strange jelly-like substance abounds.
• 1782: September 4, 1782 – Began to cut the first endive: finely blanched.  Curlews clamour.
• 1781: September 4, 1781 – Gathered one bunch of black grapes, which was ripe & well-flavoured.  It grew close to the wall, pressed down by a bough.
• 1780: September 4, 1780 – The trufle-man came & hunted my brother’s grove for the first time: but found only half a pound of trufles, & those shrivelled & decayed, for want of moisture.
• 1778: September 4, 1778 – Ladies-traces blow, & abound in the long Lithe.  A rare plant.  * The young house-martins of the first flight are often very troublesome by attemtping to get into the nest among the second callow broods; while their dams are as earnest to keep them out, & drive them away.
• 1775: September 4, 1775 – Linnets congregate.  Wasps swarm about the Grapes, tho’ so many nests have been destroyed.
• 1774: September 4, 1774 – Wood-owls hoot much.
• 1772: September 4, 1772 – Spring corn in a bad way where cut.  Barley in general not ripe.  Hot & moist.  Grass grows.
• 1771: September 4, 1771 – Hop-picking begins.  Hops small.  Much wheat not ripe yet.
• 1770: September 4, 1770 – The ring-ousel appears again in it’s autumnal visit; but about twenty days earlier than usual.
• 1769: September 4, 1769 – Hop-picking begins.  A very slender crop.

• 1791: September 3, 1791 – Bad weather for the hops, & pickers.  When the boys bring me wasps nests, my Bantam fowls fare deliciously; & when the combs are pulled to pieces, devour the young wasps intheir maggot-state with the highest glee, and delight.  Any inscet-eating bird would do the same: & therefore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr Ray should call one species of buzzard Buteo apivorus, sive vespivorus, or the Honey-buzzard, because some combs of wasps happened to be found in one fo their nests.  The combs were conveyed thither doubtless for the sake of the maggots or nymphs, & not for their honey;  since none is to be found in the combs of wasps.  Birds of prey occasionally feed on insects: thus have I seen a tame kite picking up the female ants, full of eggs, with much satisfaction.
• 1790: September 3, 1790 – Some hop-poles blown donw.  Mr Prowting of Chawton begins to pick hops.
• 1789: September 3, 1789 – Mr Charles Etty returns from Canton.
• 1787: September 3, 1787 – Bror Thos. sons & daughter come from Fyfield.
• 1782: September 3, 1782 – Nep. Thomas Holt White & Henry came from Fyfield.
• 1777: September 3, 1777 – The working-wasps are very small, perhaps half starved in their larva-state for want of pears, plums, etc.
• 1776: September 3, 1776 – The season for shooting is come; but scarce any partidges are to be found: the failure of breed is remarkable.  The tops of the beeches begin to be tinged with a yellow hue.
• 1775: September 3, 1775 – Great rain.  Hops sadly washed.  Destroyed the 26th wasps-nest, a vast colony.
• 1774: September 3, 1774 – Turned the horses into the great mead: there is good after-grass considering that the field was not mown ’til July 16.
• 1773: September 3, 1773 – Young wagtails come out.  Delicate peaches & nectarines in plenty.  * The beards of cone-wheat do not long preserve the grain from sparrows: for as the corn gets ripe those aritae are shaken off by the wind.
• 1772: September 3, 1772 – Some wasps appear.  Museli plums become ripe.
• 1771: September 3, 1771 – Nuthatch chirps flying.  Swallows feed their young perchers.
• 1769: September 3, 1769 – Winged ants migrate from their nests.  Tame buzzard eats the winged ants.  Swallows congregate in vast flocks.
• 1768: September 3, 1768 – Much wheat still abroad.  Hop-picking becomes general: there is a vast crop.

• 1792: September 2, 1792 – The well at Temple is 77 feet deep: 60 to the water, & seventeen afterwards.  My well measures only 63 feet to the bottom.
  Goleigh well to the water is 55 1/2 yrds  /166 feet; to the bottom 57 1/2 yrds / 172 1/2 feet; Heards well to the water is 70 2/3 yrds / 212 feet; to the bottom 83 1/3 yrds / 250 feet.
  A stone was 4 1/2 seconds falling to the bottom of Heards well; & 4 seconds to the water of Goleigh.   The wells were measured accurately by the Revd. Edumund White on the 25th of August 1792, in the midst of a very wet summer.  Deep, & tremendous as is the well at Heards, John Gillman, an Ideot, fell to the bottom of it twice in one morning; & was taken out alive, & survived the strange accident many years.  Only Goleigh & Heards wells were measured by Mr E. White.
• 1791: September 2, 1791 – Cut 62 cucumbers.  Holt White left us, & went to Newton.
• 1789: September 2, 1789 – Bees feed on the plums, & the mellow goose-berries.  They often devour the peaches, & nectarines.
• 1788: September 2, 1788 – J. Hale’s crop of hops under the S. corner of the hanger is prodigious: many hills together produce a bushel each, some two, & some three!  Mr White of Newton cuts some Saint foin a second time.  Nep. Ben came from London.  Barley, & seed-clover are housed.
• 1783: September 2, 1783 – Nectarine, one of the new trees, the fruit delicate. Two of the new peach, & Nect. Trees this year are distempered, & one barren: one nect: has a crop of well-flavoured fruit.
• 1782: September 2, 1782 – Contrary to all rule the wheat this year is heavy, & the straw short: last year, tho’ so much heat prevailed, the wheat was light & the straw was long.
• 1779: September 2, 1779 – Partridges innumberable.  Barley-harvest finished here.
• 1776: September 2, 1776 – Vast shower with hail.  Turned the horses into the great mead.  Much grass. A part of the orchard, where I laid the earth which came out of the garden, was sown in April with rye-grass, & hop trefoil, & has been mown already three times.
• 1775: September 2, 1775 – Gathered first grapes: they look well; & are large; but not highly flavoured yet.  Sad hop-picking: a large crop in this district.  Barley in the suds.
• 1774: September 2, 1774 – Hop-picking begins at Faringdon.  Wasps abound.
• 1773: September 2, 1773 – Some perennial asters begin to blow.  Grapes rather small as yet.  Several bunches begin to turn.
• 1772: September 3, 1772 – Hibiscus syriacus.  Grapes begin to change colour.  Some wheat still out.  The weather bad for hop-picking.
• 1771: September 2, 1771 – Corn is housed.  Swallows feed their young flying.
• 1769: September 2, 1769 – Wheat harvest finished.  A comet, having a tail about six degrees in length, appears nightly in the constellation of Aries, between the 24, 29, & 51 stars of that constellation in the English catalogue.

• 1792: September 1, 1792 – Grass grows on the walks very fast.  Garden beans at an end.
• 1788: September 1, 1788 – A sand-piper shot at Hawkley.
• 1787: September 1, 1787 – The shooters find many coveys, but not large ones. Not one wasp.
• 1785: September 1, 1785 – Dogs eat the goose-berries when they become ripe; & now they devour the plums as they fall; last year they tore the apricots off the trees.
• 1784: September 1, 1784 – Farmer Town began to pick his hops: the hops are many, but small.  They were not smitten by the hail. Because they grew at S.E. end of the village.  Hopping begins at Hartley.  The two hop-gardens, belonging to Farmer Spencer & John Hale, that were so much injured, as it was supposed, by the hail-storm on June 5th shew now a prodigious crop, & larger & fairer hops than any in the parish.  The owners seem now to be convinced that the hail, by beating off the tops of the binds, has encreased the side-shoots, & improved the crop.  Query:  should not the tops of hops be pinched-off when the binds are very gross, & strong?  We find this practice to be of great service with melons, & cucumbers.  The scars, & wounds on the binds, made by the great hailstones are still very visible.
• 1783: September 1, 1783 – Red sunshine.  Sowed a bed of Coss-lettuce.
• 1781: September 1, 1781 – We have caught about 20 hornets with bird-lime.
• 1777: September 1, 1777 – Cold, white dew, sun, brisk air, clouds about, sun breaks out.  Destroyed a small wasp’s-nest: the combs were few, but full of young.
• 1776: September 1, 1776 – The barley coming-up unequally is not yet ripe.  Hops promise to be very small.
• 1775: September 1, 1775 – Barley begins to be injured.  Many fields of barley,  green & not mowed.
• 1773: September 1, 1773 – Orleans plums begin to ripen.  Hops continue small & have not grown kindly since the storm.
• 1770: September 1, 1770 – Not one wasp appears notwithstanding the long dry season.  Cuckows skim over the ponds at Oakhanger, & catch libellulae on the weeds, & as the flie in the air.  I can give no credit to the motion that they are birds of prey.  They have a weak bill & no talons.
• 1768: September 1, 1768 – Transplanted some plants of the Helleborus viridis from the Honey-lane near Norton to the shrubbery in the orchard.  Smallest Regulus non cristatus chirps.  Owls have young still in the nest.