The Natural History of Selborne

• 1793: March 7, 1793 – Trouts begin to rise: some angling takes place in this month. By Brother’s cucumbers are strong, & healthy.  Lady Stawell tells Mrs White that they have seen more woodcocks & snipes at their table this winter than usual.
• 1791: March 7, 1791 – Coltsfoot blows.  Stopped cucumbers.  Sowed dwarf lark-spurs.  Turned the dung.
• 1790: March 7, 1790 – The wheat in the N. field looks well: there has been no good crop since the year 1780.
• 1789: March 7, 1789 – Mr Richardson left us.
• 1786: March 7, 1786 – Snow drifted over hedges, & gates! Ring-doves, driven by hunger, come into John Hale’s garden, which is surrounded by houses! Black-birds, & thrushes die. A starving wigeon settled yesterday in the village, & was taken. Mention is made in the newspapers of several people that have perished in the snow. As Mr Ventris came from Faringdon, the drifted snow, being hard-frozen, bore his weight up to the tops of the stiles. The net hung over the cherry-trees is curiously coated over with ice.
• 1785: March 7, 1785 – Glazier’s bill… 2 -5 -10 for garden-lights, & hand-glasses.
• 1775: March 7, 1775 – Bror Harry’s strong beer, which was brewed last Easter monday with the hordeum nudum, is now tapped, & incomparably good: it is somewhat deeper-coloured than beer usually is in this country, not from the mat’s being higher dryed, but perhaps from the natural colour of the grain.  The barrel was by no means new, but old &  seasoned.  Wheat, it seems, makes also high-coloured beer.  Sad season for the sowing of spring-corn.  Just such weather this time twelvemonths.
• 1769: March 7, 1769 – Green woodpecker begins to laugh.  Last night I heard that short quick note of birds flying in the dark: if this should be the voice of Oedicnemus, as is supposed: then that bird, which is not seen in the dead of winter, is returned.  Blood-worms appear int he water: they are gnats in one state.
• 1768: March 7, 1768 – The Ground and paths drie very fast.  Wheat is fed down by sheep.  Beans are planted in ye fields.  Pease sown.  Cut down the new planted nectarines.

Notes:
“Hordeum nudum”– naked or Siberian barley. It was only introduced to England in 1768 so Gilbert’s brother was on the cutting edge. “Oedicnemus” is the Stone Curlew, a summer migrant with nocturnal habits. These were probably headed for Salisbury plain, where they can still be occasionally seen.

Just a reminder: Tomorrow night, Sunday the 8th, is the one-night-only one-man Gilbert White show at the Jermyn Street Theater!