The Natural History of Selborne

• 1793: May 25, 1793 – Cut down the greens of the crocus’s; they make good tyings for hops; better than rushes, more pliant, & tough.
• 1791: May 25, 1791 – Mole-cricket jars.  An old hunting mare, which ran on the common, being taken very ill, came down into the village as it were to implore the help of men, & dyed the night following in the street.
• 1790: May 25, 1790 – Sowed a specimen of some uncommon clover from farmer Street. Sowed a pint of large kidney beans, white: also Savoys, Coss lettuces, & bore-cole.
• 1788: May 25, 1788 – My winter lettuces all run-off to seed. The Culture of Virgil’s vines corresponds very exactly with the modern management of hops. I might instance in the perpetual diggings, & hoeings, in the tying to the stakes & poles, in pruning of the superfluous shoots &c.: but lately I have observed a new circumstance, which was Farmer Spencer harrowing the alleys between the rows of hops with a small triangular harrow, drawn by one horse, & guided by two handles. This occurrence brought to my mid the following passage:
  “.. ipsa/
  Flectere lucantis inter vineta juvencos.”        Second Georgic.
• 1786: May 25, 1786 – The prospect from my great parlor-windows to the hanger now beautiful: the apple-trees in bloom add to the richness of the scenery! the grass-hopper lark whispers in my hedges. That bird, the fern-owl, & the nightingale of an evening may be heard at the same time: & often the wood-lark, hovering & taking circuits round in the air at a vast distance from the ground.
  While high in the air, & pois’d upon its wings,/Unseen the soft, enamour’d wood-lark sings.
• 1785: May 25, 1785 – Wood-ruff blows.
• 1776: may 25, 1776 – The frost has killed the tops of the wallnut shoots, & ashes; & the annuals where they touched the glass of the frames; also many kidney-beans.  The tops of hops, & potatoes were cut-off by this frost.  Tops of laurels killed.  The wall-nut trees promised for a vast crop, ’til the shoots were cut off by ye frost.
• 1774: May 25, 1774 – The martins have just finished the shell of a nest left unfinished in some former year under the eaves of my stable.  Apis longicornis bores holes in the grass-walks.

Notes: Bore-cole: curly kale. From the Georgics of Virgil:

“Once you have set the seedlings, it remains to loosen the soil
Thoroughly at their roots, and ply the heavy hoe;
To discipline the soil with deep-pressed plough, and steer
Your straining oxen up and down the alleys of the vineyard.

The 1786 quotation is from White’s own “The Naturalist’s Summer Evening Walk”