The Natural History of Selborne

• 1792: March 31, 1792 – Mrs Chandler was brought to bed of a daughter.
• 1791: March 31, 1791 – Made two hand-glasses for celeri. A gross-beak seen at Newton parsonage-house.
• 1790: March 31, 1790 – When h. crickets are out, & running about in a room in the night, if surprised by a candle, they give two or three shill notes, as it were a signal to their fellows, that they may escape to their crannies & lurking-holes to avoid danger.
• 1789: March 31, 1789 – Sowed a crop of onions, lettuce, & radishes.
• 1788: March 31, 1788 – Mr. Loveday’s tortoise is come-out.  Young goslins.
• 1787: March 31, 1787 – Turner shoots the chaffinches.  Mackarals come.  Bantam-hen lays.  Black & grey snails without shells.
• 1783: March 31, 1783 – The cellars almost dry by pumping.
• 1782: March 31, 1782 – The earth is glutted with water.
• 1778: March 31, 1778 – Three or four bank-martins were seen over Oakhanger-pond.  Flies abound in the pastry-cooks shops.
• 1776: March 31, 1776 – The willows in bloom diversify the coppices, & hedge-rows in a beautiful manner.
• 1775: March 31, 1775 – Birds eat ivy-berries, which now begin to ripen: they are of great service to the winged race at this season, since most other berries ripen in the autumn.  The shell-less snails, called slugs, are in motion all the winter in mild weather, & commit great depredations on garden-plants, & much injure the green wheat, the loss of which is imputed to earth-worms; while the shelled snail, does not come forth at all ’til about April the tenth; and not only lays itself up pretty early in the autumn, in places secure from frost; but also throws-out round the mouth of it’s shell a thick operculum formed from it’s own saliva; so that it is perfectly secured, & corked-up as it were, from all inclemencies.  Why the naked slug should be so much more able to endure cold than it’s housed congener, I cannot pretend to say.
• 1771: March 31, 1771 – The face of the earth naked to a surprising degree.  Wheat hardly to be seen, & no signs of any grass: turneps all gone, & sheep in a starving way.  All provisions rising in price.  Farmers cannot sow for want of rain.
• 1770: March 31, 1770 – Turkey & duck lay.  Goose sits.
• 1769: March 31, 1769 – Small flights of snow.
• 1768: March 31, 1768 – Black weather.  Cucumber fruit swells.  Rooks sit.  This day the dry weather has lasted a month.

• 1793: March 30, 1793 – Made a new hand-glass bed for celeri in the garden.  The crocus’s still look very gay when the sun shines.
• 1791: March 30, 1791 – Some rooks have built several nests in the high wood.  The building of rooks in the High wood is an uncommon incident, & never remembered but once before.  The Rooks usually carry on the business of breeding in groves, & clumps of trees near houses, & in villages, & towns.  Timothy weighs 6 Li. 11 oz.
• 1789: March 30, 1789 – Sowed dwarf lark-spurs.
• 1787: March 30, 1787 – Chaffinches pull off the blossoms of the polyanths, which are beautifully variegated.
• 1786: Mrach 30, 1786 – Mr Taylor & his Bride came to Selborne.
• 1785: March 30, 1785 – Thick ice.  White frost.  Winter-aconites out of bloom: snow drops make still a fine.  Violets, & coltsfoot grow.
• 1782: March 30, 1782 – Apricots shew hardly any bloom: they exhausted themselves with bearing last year.  Peaches & nect: abound with blossoms just opening; as do the new, trained trees planted last Novr.
• 1780: March 30, 1780 – The tortoise keeps close.
• 1779: March 30, 1779 – Bombylius medius: many appear down the long Lythe.  Filed-crickets bask at the mouths of their holes: they seem to be yet in their pupa-state; as yet they show no wings.
• 1775: March 30, 1775 – Horse-ants retire under the ground.  Wheat-ears appear.
• 1773: March 30, 1773 – Hard frost, ice, cloudless, sharp wind.  No larks in the fields, & few birds to be heard or seen; probably this harsh dry air renders their food scarce, & sends them to the lower moister grounds.
• 1772: March 30, 1772 – Merula torquata on it’s spring visit.  Thunder.  One cock ring-ouzel appears on Nore-hill on it’s spring visit, but earlier than common.
• 1771: March 30, 1771 – Ground hard, & thick ice.  Crocuss in full bloom.  Birds mute.  Farmers feed yir sheep with bran & oates.
• 1770: March 30, 1770 – Papilio rhamni sucks the bloom of ye primrose.  Polyanths coddled with ye frost.
• 1768: March 30, 1768 – Raw fog.  Canes femininae catuliunt.

Notes:
Bombylius meduis– the bee-fly. Canes femininae catuliunt– female dogs in heat. Merula torquata– now turdus torquatus, the ring-ouzel.

• 1793: March 29, 1793 – White sharp frost: thick ice: icicles.  Apricots blow: peaches & nectarines begin to open their buds.  Some thing again eats the young celeri.
• 1787: March 29, 1787 – Some swallows were seen over the lake of Geneva, & at Rolle.  On March 30 several were seen at the same place.
• 1785: March 29, 1785 – My niece Clement was brought to bed of a boy. This child makes my 42 nephew, & niece now living.
• 1774: March 29, 1774 – A fine regular bloom all over the apricot, peach, & nectarine trees.  Sheltered the bloom with some ivy-boughs.
• 1773: March 29, 1773 – Turned out the cucumbers into their hills.  Beds still too hot.  The dry weather has lasted just a month.  Roads all dryed up.
• 1770: March 29, 1770 – Dirt bears horse and man.  Boys slide on the ice.
• 1768: March 29, 1768 – Cock pheasant crows.  Blue stinking mist.

Hirundo rustica, photo by Malene Thyssen courtesy of Wikipedia.

• 1793: March 28, 1793 – Snow does not lie, ice, frost, & icicles all day.
• 1791: March 28, 1791 – Sowed a large plot of parsnips, & radishes in the orchard.  Crocus’s fade & go off.  Sowed also the Coss lettuce with the parsnips.
• 1790: March 28, 1790 – Small birds, Tanner says green finches, pull off my polyanth blossoms by handfulls.  A neighbour complained to me that her house was over-run with a kind of black-beetle, or, as she expressed herself, with a kind of black-bob, which swarmed in her kitchen when they get up in a morning before day-break.  Soon after this account, I observed an unusual insect in one of my dark chimney-closets; & find since that in the night they swarm also in my kitchen.  On examination I soon ascertained the Species to be the Blatta orientalis of Linnaeus, & the Blatta molendinaria of Mouffet.  The male is winged, the female is not; but shows somewhat like the rudiments of wings, as if in the pupa state.  These insects belonged originally to the warmer parts of America, & were conveyed fro thence by shipping to the East Indies; & by means of commerce begin to prevail in the more N. parts of Europe, as Russia, Sweden, & c.  How long they have abounded in England I cannot say; but have never observed them in my house ’till lately.  They love warmth, & haunt chimney-closets, & the backs of ovens.  Poda says that these, & house-crickets will not associate together; but he is mistaken in that assertion, as Linn. suspected that he was.  They are altogether night insects, lucifugae, never coming forth till the rooms are dark, & still, & escaping away nimbly at the approach of a candle.  Their antennae are remarkably long, slender, & flexile.
• 1789: March 28, 1789 – Snow did not lie.  Apricots begin to blow.  Earthed the nearing cucumber-bed.  The plants in the seedling-bed grow, & want room.  N. Aurora.
• 1787: March 28, 1787 – Timothy continues to lie very close.
• 1786: March 28, 1786 – On this day the streets of Lyons were covered with snow.
• 1782: March 28, 1782 – Poor Timothy was flooded in his hybernaculum amidst the laurel-hedge; & might have been drowned, had not his friend Thomas come to his assistance & taken him away.
• 1780: March 28, 1780 – The tortoise puts-out his head int he morning.
• 1776: March 28, 1776 – Hirundo domestica!  Hirundo agrestis!  Blackbirds are mostly destroyed by shooters.  Farmer Tredgold saw five hirundines at Willey-mill next Farnham playing about briskly over the mill-pond: four, he says, were house-swallows, & the fifth an house-martin with a white rump.  These birds are very early!  Some few bank-martins haunt round the skirts of London, & frequent the dirty pools in St. George’s fields, & near White-chappel: perhaps they build in the scaffold-holes of some deserted house; for steep banks there are none.
• 1774: March 28, 1774 – Hot sun.  Great thunder-shower at Winton.
• 1773: March 28, 1773 – Sharp air.  Three swallows were seen I hear this day over the paper-mill pond at Bramshot.
• 1772: March 28, 1772 – The ground too wet for ploughing.
• 1771: March 28, 1771 – Snow at night.  A flock of lapwings haunt about the common.
• 1769: March 28, 1769 – Oedicnemus appears & whistles.

Notes:

I was going to head this with a picture of a cockroach to commemorate one of the earliest mentions of the Oriental roach in Europe, but I went with the swallow instead. White is mistaken about the route of the roach– latest wisdom is that the species he mentions is from eastern Russia and spread from there to both Europe and America. Oedicnemus is the stone curlew.

• 1792: March 27, 1792 – The ground in a sad wet condition, so that men cannot plow, nor sow their spring-corn.  A wet March is very unkind for this district.
• 1787: March 27, 1787 – Swallows were first seen this year at Messina in Sicily.
• 1777: March 27, 1777 – A swarm of bees came forth at Kingsley, & were hived.  From that day to April the 10th harsh, severe weather obtained with frequent frosts & ice, & cutting winds.  How are these bees to subsist so early in an empty hive?  On March 26 & 27, two, sunny sultry days, swallows were seen at Cobham, in Surry.  Thermrs were at that time in London up at 66 in the shade.
• 1775: March 27, 1775 – The creeper, a pretty little nimble bird, runs up the bodies & boughs of trees with all the agility of a mouse.  It runs also on the lower side of the arms of trees with it’s back downward.  Stays with us all the winter.
• 1770: March 27, 1770 – Planted potatoes, five rows.  Flights of snow.  Red-wings congregate on trees & whistle inwardly.  In their breeding-country they are good songsters: See Fauna Suecica.

• 1793: March 26, 1793 – Snow, rain, harsh.  A sad wintry day!
• 1792: March 26, 1792 – Crocus’s go off.  The Kingsley miller assures me that he saw a Swallow skimming over the meadow near the mill.  Hirundines are often seen early near mill-ponds, & other waters.
• 1791: March 26, 1791 – Cucumber-plants show bloom: but the bed is too hot, & draws the plants.  We sow our seeds too soon, so that the plants want to be turned out of the pots before the great bed can be got to due temperament.
• 1789: March 26, 1789 – Icicles hang all day.  Hot-bed smokes.
• 1788: March 26, 1788 – Large Mackarel.
• 1787: March 26, 1787 – Transplanted some of the best, blowing seedling polyanths from the orchard to the bank in the garden.  Planted some scorpion-sennas from S. Lambeth.
• 1786: March 26, 1786 – Viper comes out.  Two swallows were seen at Nismes in Languedoc: & on the 28th several, tho’ the air was sharp, & some flakes of snow fell.
• 1785: March 26, 1785 – Sowed the great mead with ashes.
• 1779: March 26, 1779 – Made an asparagus bed: that which was made last spring was spoiled for want of ran.  Planted potatoes: sowed carrots.
• 1777: March 26, 1777 – Two sultry days; Mrs Snooke’s tortoise came forth out of the ground; but retired again to it’s hybernaculum in a day or two, & did not appear any more for near a fortnight.  Swallows appeared also on the same days, & withdrew again: a strong proof this of their hiding.
• 1776: March 26, 1776 – Flocks of fieldfares remain: no red-wings are seen.  No song-thrushes are heard; the seem to be destroyed by the hard weather.  Some wagtails survive.
• 1774: March 26, 1774 – Peaches, nectarines, & apricots in fine bloom.  No rain since the 9th: stiff ground still very wet.  Thomas began to mow the grass plot.  My new-laid turf, where not damaged by the continual standing of water after the vast rains, looks well.
• 1773: March 26, 1773 – Grass begins to grow.  A large flock of titlarks on the common, feeding & flitting on, probably going down to the forest to the moory moist places.
• 1772: March 26, 1772 – Planted-out some rudiments of stout cucumr plants into the bearing beds: rudiments of fruit show.
• 1771: March 26, 1771 – Thermorm at sunrise down at 17 abroad: at 10 o’clock at night 25: at sun rise 23 1/2.
• 1770: March 26, 1769 – Sowed carrots, parsneps, onions, coss-lettuce, leeks, lark-spurs.
• 1768: March 26, 1768 – Ground is all dust.  Sowed various sorts of seeds from the physic-garden at Oxford.

• 1792: March 25, 1792 – Mrs Clement came with her three daughters.
• 1791: March 25, 1791 – Sowed onions, radishes, & lettuce: the ground harsh, & cloddy.
• 1790: March 25, 1790 – Chaffinches pull-off the finest flowers of the polyanths.  Ned White sailed on this day.
• 1785: March 25, 1785 – Shoveled the alleys, & threw the mould on the borders, & quarters.
• 1780: March 25, 1780 – Sowed carrots, parsneps, planted potatoes.  Ground works well.  Tortoise sleeps.
• 1779: March 25, 1779 – Picturesque, partial fogs, looking like seas, islands, rivers, harbours, & c.!!  Vivid auroras.
• 1775: March 25, 1775 – Planted a raspberry bed.
• 1769: March 25, 1769 – Frogs croak: spawn abounds.
• 1768: March 25 – Apricot is covered with boards.  Lucern is 6 inches & 3/4 high; burnet 5 inch. & 1/2.

• 1793: March 24, 1793 – This evening Admiral Gardner’s fleet sailed from St Helens with a fair wind.
• 1789: March 24, 1789 – About this time sailed for Antigua Ned White, aboard the Lady Jane Halliday, Captain Martin.
• 1788: March 24, 1788 – Bright, grey, wet.
• 1775: March 24, 1775 – The apricot-bloom, which came out early , seems to be much cut by the late frosts.  Peaches & Nect. now in fine bloom.
• 1768: March 24, 1768 – Blue mist; & the smell (as the Country people say) of London smoke.

Sand-martin with nest holes, picture by Ejdzej courtesy of Wikipedia

• 1792: March 23, 1792 – Timothy the Tortoise comes out.  Crown imperials bud for bloom, & stink much.
• 1791: March 23, 1791 – Soft wind.  The wood-pecker laughs.
• 1788: March 23, 1788 – Mr Churton, who was this week on a visit at Waverley, took the opportunity of examining some of the holes in the sand-banks with which that district abounds.  As these are undoubtedly bored by bank-martins, & are the places where they avowedly breed, he was in hopes they might have slept there also, & that he might have surprised them just as they were awakening from their winter slumbers.  When he had dug for some time he found the holes were horizontal & serpentine, as I had observed before; & that the nests were deposited at the inner end, & had been occupied by broods in former summers: but no torpid birds were to be found.  He opened & examined about a dozen holes.  Mr Peter Collinson made the same search many years ago, with as little success.  These holes were in depth about two feet.
• 1787: March 23, 1787 – Timothy hides his head under the earth.
• 1782: March 23, 1782 – A farmer tells me he foresaw this extraordinary weather by the prognostic deportment of his flock; which, when turned-out on a down two or three mornings ago, gamboled & frolicked about like so many lambs.
• 1775: March 23, 1775 – Earthworms travel about in rainy nights, as appears from their sinuous tracks on the soft muddy soil, perhaps in search of food.
• 1773: March 23, 1773 – Coluber natrix.  Summer weather with a brisk wind.  Cock & hen wheatear.
• 1772: March 23, 1772 – Tussilago farfara.  Considerable mischief was done by this storm near & in London.
• 1771: March 23, 1771 – Severe frost, sun, & flights of snow.  Cutting wind.  Dr. Johnson says “that in 1771 the season was so severe in the island of Sky, that it is remembered by the name of the black spring.  The snow, which seldom lies at all, covered the ground for eight weeks, many cattle dyed, & those that survived were so emaciated & dispirited that they did not require the male at the usual season.”  The case was just the same with us here in the South: never were so many barren cows known as in the spring following that dreadful period.  Whole dairies missed being in calf together.
• 1770: March 23, 1770 – Thermometer abroad sunk to 29.  Plows are frozen out.  Great Northern aurora.
• 1769: March 23, 1769 – Regulus non cristatus minimus.  This bird appears the first of any of the summer-birds of passage, the jynx, or wryneck sometimes excepted.  It has only two harsh shrill notes.  Fine season for the husbandman.

Notes:

Into the mid-19th century debate raged in the natural philosophy community as to whether swallows and martins migrate or hibernate. Actually, there is one species of bird that does hibernate— an american relation of the nightjar or goat-sucker that often appears in these journals.
Coluber natrix– common grass-snake, now called Natrix natrix.
Tussilago farfara-Common coltsfoot.
Regulus non crisatus minimus– the chiff chaff.

Stone curlew, photo by Chrumps

• 1788: March 22, 1788 – On the 27th of February 1788, Stone-curlews were heard to pipe; & on March 1st, after it was dark some were passing over the village, as might be perceived by their quick, short note, which they use in their nocturnal excursions by way of watch-word, that they may not stray, & lose their companions.  Thus we see, that retire whithersoever they may in the winter, they return again early in the spring, & are, as it now appears, the first summer birds that come back. The smallest uncrested wren has been deemed the earliest migrater, but it is never heard ’till about the 20th of March.  Perhaps the mildness of the season may have quickened the emigration of the curlews this year.  They spend the day in high elevated fields & sheep-walks: but seem to descend in the night to streams & meadows, perhaps for water which their upland haunts do not afford them.
• 1787: March 22, 1787 – The tortoise comes forth from his hole.  Men open their hop-hills & cut their hops.
• 1786: March 22, 1786 – Some patches of snow still on the hanger: much snow in Newton hollow lane.
• 1785: March 22, 1785 – Wheat-fields look naked like fallows.  The surface of the ground is all dust.
• 1778: March 22, 1778 – Frogs spawn in ditches.
• 1776: March 22, 1776 – Came from London to Selborne.  Hot sun: summer-like weather.  When I arrived in Hants I found the wheat looking well, & the turneps little injured.  My laurels & laurustines somewhat injured; but only those that stood in hot sunny aspects.  No evergreens quite destroyed & not half the damage sustained that befell in Jan. 1768.  Those laurels that are somewhat scorched on the S. sides, are perfectly untouched on their N. sides.  The care I took in ordering the snow to be carefully shaken from the branches wherever it fell, seems greatly to have availed my laurels.  Mr Yalden’s laurels facing to the N. untouched.  Portugal laurels not hurt.
• 1775: March 22, 1775 – Snake appears: toad comes forth.  Frogs spawn.  Horse-ants come forth.
• 1773: March 22, 1773 – Gossamer floats about.
• 1772: March 22, 1772 – Least uncrest. wren appears: first summer bird of passage.
• 1770: March 22, 1770 – Ice very thick: ground growing dusty.  Blossom-buds of the pear-trees seem to be injured by the frost.

The stone-curlew almost gave up on England for a while, but England has not given up on the stone-curlew.