The Natural History of Selborne

Pig and piglets, T. Bewick

• 1793: May 17, 1793 – Set the second Bantam hen over the saddle cup-board in the stable with eleven dark eggs.
• 1792: May 17, 1792 – Sowed some Nasturtion seeds on the bank. Mr Charles Etty returns from Madras well in health, & not lame from the accident of breaking his leg; but thinner than he was. He went first to Bengal, & so home in a Danish India man.
• 1791: May 17, 1791 – Fly-catcher returns.  The fern-owl, or eve-jar returns, & is heard in the hanger.  These birds are the last summer-birds of passage: when they appear we hope the summer will soon be established.
• 1789: May 17, 1789 – The mice have infested my garden much by nestling in my hot-beds, devouring my balsoms, & burroughing under my cucumber-basons: so that I may say with Martial…. “Fines Mus populatoru, & colono /Tanquam Sus Calydonius temetur.”  Epigramm: XIX. lib. XI.
• 1786: May 17, 1786 – Timothy Turner’s Bantham sow brings 20 pigs, some of which she trod-on, & overlaid; so that they were soon reduced to 13.  She has but 12 teats.  Before she farrowed her belly swept on the ground.
• 1783: May 17, 1783 – Wells sink: Benham’s is dry.  Sprinkled & washed the foliage of the fruit-trees, that were honey-dewed, & began to be affected with aphides.  Stocks blow finely.  Tulips, thro’ heat, will continue but a small time in bloom.
• 1777: May 17, 1777 – Sun, fine day, showers.  Most vivid rainbow.
• 1774: May 17, 1774 – Rooks bring out their young: they & the crows, & daws & ravens, frequent the top of the hanger, & prey on chafers.
• 1772: May 17, 1772 – Very little barley above ground.
• 1770: May 17, 1770 – No redstarts whistle yet about the village.

Notes:
I can find no references anywhere to what a “Bantham pig” is, short of a pig from Bantham, Devon; there is a reference to a Bantam pig in Swift’s The Metamorphosis of the Town, where it is stuffed with ambergis and served with bird’s nest soup, among other mad delicacies. I believe the Martial epigram reads, “My borders a mouse ravages, and is feared by the tenant as much as a Caledonyan boar,” although I could be mistaken, it’s suprisingly hard to find translations of Martial online.