The Natural History of Selborne

• 1791: November 1, 1791 – The young martins are out: one was found dead this morning in the parsonage garden.
• 1790: November 1, 1790 – Bror Benjn & his wife came to us.
• 1788: November 1, 1788 – Planted on the bank in the garden several dames violets raised from cutting under hand-glasses.  Sowed some seeds of the Zizania aquatica in Comb-wood pond.  The King’s stag-hounds came down to Alton, attended by a Huntsman & six yeoman prickers with horns, to try for the stag that has haunted Hartley wood, & it’s environs for so long a time. Many hundreds of people, horse & foot, attended the dogs to see the deer unharboured: but tho’ the huntsmen drew Hartley wood, & Temple hangers, yet no Stag could be found.   Lord Hinchinbroke, the master of the hounds, & some other Nobleman attended.  The royal pack, accustomed to have the deer turned-out before them, never drew the coverts with any address or spirit, as many people that were present observed; & this remark the event has proved a just one.  For as Harry Bright was lately pursuing a pheasant that was wing-broken in Hartley wood, he stumbled upon the stag by accident, & ran in upon him as he lay concealed amidst a thick brake of brambles, & bushes.
• 1787: November 1, 1787 – Split-out the great Monk’s-rhubarb plant into 7, or 8 heads, & planted them in a bed that they may produce stalks for tarts in the spring.  The N. Aurora makes a particular appearance forming itself into a broad, red fiery belt, which extended from E. to W. across the welkin: but th moon rising, at about 10 o’ the clock, in unclouded majesty on the E. put an end to this grand, but aweful, meteorous phenomenon.
• 1785: November 1, 1785 – Bror. Tho. Mr & Mrs Ben White, & Nep. Thos Holt White came from Fyfield.
• 1784: November 1, 1784 – Mr John Mulso was shot in the legs.
• 1782: November 1, 1782 – Some flocks of starlings on the wide downs between Andover, & Winton. Several martins were playing about over the chalk-bank at the E. end of Whorwel village.  Can any one suppose but that they came out of the bank that morning to enjoy the warm sunshine, & would retire into it again before night?
• 1781: November 1, 1781 – Much wheat-land not sown yet; because men are afraid to sow their corn in the dust.  Some water still in the pond on Selborne down; & the pond on Newton-farm, over the hedge, is half-full.  No drought, equal to the present, has been known since autumn 1740, which being preceeded by a dry summer & spring, & the terrible long frost of winter 1739, exhausted most of the wells & ponds, & distressed the country greatly.
• 1776: November 1, 1776 – Four swallows were seen skimming about in a lane below Newton.  This circumstance seems much in favor of hiding, since the hirundines seemed to be with drawn for some weeks.  It looks as if the soft weather had called them out of their retirement.  My Brother’s turkies avail themselves much of the beech-mast which they find in his grove: they also delight in acorns, & wallnuts, & hasel-nuts: no wonder therefore that they subsist wild in the woods of America, where they are supposed to be indigenous.  They swallow hasel-nuts whole.
• 1773: November 1, 1773 – Seed-clover cutting.  A ring-ouzel was shot in the high wood with a russet gorget, & russet spots on its wings.  Three or four more were seen.
• 1771: November 1, 1769 – An imperfect rainbow on the fog; a more vivid one on the dewy grass.  Grey crows, Cornix cinerea frugilega, near South Wick.  Mrs Snooke’s tortoise begins to scrape an hole in the ground in order for laying up.
• 1768: November 1, 1768 – Bucks grunt.

Notes:

Although the idea that swallows hibernated in caves over the winter now seems pretty ludicrous, it was still hotly debated as late as the mid-nineteenth century. Here is a nice quick history of alternate theories of where all the birds went.

It’s seems strange that so meticulous an observer as Gilbert White should have clung on to the hibernation theory for his swallows and martins even as it was becoming unfashionable, and even as he took notes on the migrations of other bird species. In hisexcellent biography of White, Richard Mabey suggests this may have been related to White’s personal dread of travelling. Later years in the journals begin to acknowledge the greater plausibility of migration– I think with his head Gilbert White knew his hirundines migrated, but with his heart he loved the idea of them sleeping peacefully “300 yards from the village”.

Migrationwatch’s map of European swallow sightings in Africa.