The Natural History of Selborne

• 1793: May 31, 1793 – My great oak abounds in bloom, which is of a yellowish cast: the young shoots usually look red. The house-martins at Mareland, in the few hot days, began to build, but when the winds became cold again immediately desisted.
• 1792: May 31, 1792 – Grass grows very fast.  Honey-suckles very fragrant, & most beautiful objects!  Columbines make a figure.  My white thorn, which hangs over the earth-house, is now one sheet of bloom, & has pendulous boughs down to the ground.  One of my low balm of Gilead firs begins to throw out a profusion of cones;  a token this that it will be a short-lived, stunted tree.  One that I planted in my shrubbery began to decay at 20 years of age.  Miller in his gardener’s Dictionary mentions the short continuance  of this species of fir, & cautions people against depending on them as a permanent tree for ornamental plantations.
• 1791: May 31, 1791 – Flowers smell well this evening:  some dew.
• 1790: May 31, 1790 – Bottled-out the port-wine which came here in October, but did not get fine.
• 1786: May 31, 1786 – Swifts are very gay, & alert.  Tulips are gone off.  Chafers abound:  they are quite a pest this year at, & about Fyfield.
• 1785: May 31, 1785 – Thomas persists in picking the cocci off the vine, and has destroyed hundreds.
• 1784: May 31, 1784 – Cinnamon rose blows.
• 1783: May 31, 1783 – Goose-berries, & currans are coddled on the trees by the frost.  Planted the basons in the fields with the annuals.  Began to tack the vine-shoots:  there will be a tollerable bloom.  The potatoes in the meadow seem to be all killed.  Aphides prevail on the many fruit-trees.  Medlar-tree blows.  The sun at setting shines up my great walk.
• 1782: May 31, 1782 – From Jan. 1, 1782 to May 31 Dof inclusive, the quantity of rain at this place is 24 inch. 7 hund. This is after the rate of about 58 inch. for the whole year. This evening Chafers begin to fly in great abundance. They suit their appearance to the coming-out of the young foliage, which in kindly seasons would have been much earlier.
• 1780: May 31, 1780 – Master Etty went on board the Vansittart India-man at Spithead.  Thunderstorm in the night with a fine shower.
• 1779: May 31, 1779 – Cut my Saint foin, the 12th crop. The smoke lies low over the fields. Glow-worms begin to appear.
• 1775: May 30, 1775 – House-martins do not build as usual:  perhaps are troubled to find wet dirt.  Bees swarm.  Severe heat in the lanes in the middle of the day.
• 1774: May 31, 1774 – Pulled off many hundreds of nectarines, which grew in clusters.  The leaves are distempered, & the trees make few shoots.  Vast crop of wall-fruit.
• 1773: May 31, 1773 – Ashes & walnut trees naked yet.  Fern-owl chatters.  Thunder.
• 1770: May 31, 1770 – Backward apples begin to blow.  The chafers seem much incomoded by the cold weather.

Notes:
Balm of Gilead fir, or balsam, a North American tree now popular for Christmas trees. In White’s day its pleasant-smelling balm was popularly sold as ‘Balm of Gildead’, although that was probably camphor.
Charles Etty was the son of the vicar of Selborne (Gilbert was not the vicar, only the curate); Gilbert was godfather to his son Littleton. Charles Etty was a ship’s mate and world traveler who often brought specimens back to Selborne. Three years after his first posting on the Vansittart he encountered her again in dramatic circumstances, being rescued by her from a shipwreck. The Vansittart herself was wrecked on a shoal in 1789.