The Natural History of Selborne

Brickmakers, by Thomas Bewick or his school.

• 1792: October 7, 1792 – 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.
• 1791: October 7, 1791 – Gathered-in the Chaumontel, swans-egg, & Virgoleuse pears: the latter rot before they ripen.  Gathered also the kitchen apples at the end of the fruit-wall, & the knobbed russetings: of both there is a great crop.  Gathered the Cadillac pears, a small crop.
• 1790: October 7, 1790 – Timothy the tortoise came out into the walk, & grazed. Mr Edmd White, while he was at South Lambeth, this summer, kept for a time a regular journal of his Father’s barometer, which, when compared with a journal of my own for the same space, proves that the Mercury at S. Lambeth at an average stands full three tenths of an inch higher than at Selborne. Now as we have remarked that the barometer at Newton Valence is invariably three tneth lower than my own at Selborne, it plainly appears that the mercury at S. Lambeth exceeds in height at an average the mercury at Newton by six tenths at least. Hence it follows, according to some calculations, that Nweton vicarge house is 600 feet higher than the hamlet of S. Lambeth, which, as may be seen by the tide coming-up the creek before some of the houses, stands but a few feet above high water mark. It is much to be wished that all persons who attend to barometers would take care to use none but pure distilled Mercury in their tubes: because Mercury adulterated with lead, as it often is, loses much of it’s true gravity, & must often stand in tubes above it’s proper pitch on account of the diminution of it’s specific weight by lead, which is lighter than mercury. The remarks above show the futility of marking the plates of barometers with the words– fair, changeable, &c, instead of inches, & tenths; since by means of different elevations they are very poor directions, & have but little reference to the weather. After the servants have gone to bed, the kitchen-hearth swarms with young crickets, Blattae molendinariae, of all sized from the most minuted growth to their full proportions. They seem to live in a friendly manner together, & not prey the one on the other.
• 1789: October 7, 1789 – Many loads of hops set-out for wey hill.
• 1788: October 7, 1788 – Many gulls, & wildfowls on Wolmer pond.  Whitings brought.
• 1787: October 7, 1787 – My tall, streight Beech at the E. corner of Sparrow’s hanger, from a measurement taken by Rich. Becher & son, proves to be exactly 74 feet & 1/2 in in height.  The shaft is about 50 feet without a bough.
• 1786: October 7, 1786 – The great rains do not influence our wells in the least.  Niece Betsey returned to Fyfield.  On this day Miss Mary Haggitt of Rushton, Northamptonshire, by being married to my Nephew Sam Barker, encreased the number of my nephews & nieces to 47.
• 1776: October 7, 1776 – Gathered some keeping-apples.  The intercourse between tups and ewes seems pretty well over.  Ewes go, I think, 22 weeks.
• 1773: October 7, 1773 – Wasps cease to appear. Swallows & martins seem to be gone.

Notes:
This blog does not adequately convey the importance of barometers to Gilbert White (re, the 1790 entry)– I generally omit his daily barometric readings. Here’s some pictures of period baromters. Also of interest: how to set your mercury barometer.