The Natural History of Selborne

• 1792: April 26, 1792 – Two nightingales within hearing: cuckoos come round the village.
• 1791: April 26, 1791 – Some of the oaks, planted on the commons between Odiham & Reading about the time that I first knew that road, begin to be felled.  Swallows.  Goslings.  Cherries, apples, & pears in beautiful bloom along the road: grass forward, & corn looks well.
• 1789: April 26, 1789 – This morning I saw a certificate from the town of Wymburn Mistner in the country of Dorset to the parish of Selborne, acknowledging William Dewye to be parishioner of the said town.  This paper is dated Apr. 20, 1729: so that Will: Dewye, & wife, both still living, have been certificate people here exactly 60 years.
• 1788: April 26, 1788 – Harsh, windy unpleasing weather for many days.
• 1786: April 26, 1786 – My hay is out.  Many cock-pheasants are heard to crow on Wick-hill farm. We have a large stock of partridges left to breed-round the parish.
• 1785: April 26, 1785 – My brother Thom. made his melon-bed.  Red-start sings.
• 1784: April 26, 1784 – Sowed a crop of onions, & several sorts of cabbage: pronged the asparagus beds.  Radishes grow.
• 1783: April 26, 1783 – Several swallows on the road.  Fine clover in Oxfordshire, & Berks.  Barley-fields work finely.  Vivid Aurora.
• 1781: April 26, 1781 – A pair of Nightingales haunt my fields: the cock sings nightly in the Portugal-laurel, & balm of Gilead fir.
• 1779: April 26, 1779 – Opened the leaves of the Apricot-trees, & killed many hundreds of caterpillars which infest their foliage.  These insects would lay the tree bare.  They roll the leaves up in a kind of web.  N.B. By care & attention the leaves were saved this year.
• 1776: April 26, 1776 – Pheasants crow.  Ring-doves coe.  Nect: & peaches swell.  Hops are poling.  The latest summer birds of passage generally retire the first: this is the case with the hirundo apis, the caprimulgus, & the stoparola.  Birds are never joyous in dry springs: showery seasons are their delight for obvious reasons.
• 1774: April 26, 1774 – No house-martins seen yet, save one by chance.  Apricots, peaches, & nectarines swell: sprinkled the trees with water, & watered the roots.
• 1773: April 26, 1773 – Went to London with Bro: & sister J. W.
• 1772: April 26, 1772 – Barley-fields like to be very wet, & lumpy.
• 1771: April 26, 1771 – Wheat begins to mead.  Redstart whistles.  Cuckow sings this year long before ye leaf appears.
• 1769: April 26, 1769 – Herrings abound, & are the usual forerunners of mackerels.
• 1768: April 26, 1768 – I saw a small Ichneumon-fly laying it’s eggs on, ir in the aurelia of a papilio.

Notes:
The certificate in the 1789 entry has its history in the Poor Relief Act of 1662. Anyone leaving the parish in which they were born was required to obtain a Settlement Certificate, which obligated their home parish to pay for their return and upkeep if age or illness required them to resort to the primitive welfare system. It was repealed in 1836.