The Natural History of Selborne

• 1792: February 9, 1792 – Tubbed, & pickled a fat porker: weight nine scores, & eleven pounds: price 8s & 4d, from farmer Hoar.
• 1791: February 9, 1791 – Sowed cucumber-seeds in pots plunged in the hot-bed: bed heats well.
• 1783: February 9, 1783 – Vast rain in the night, with some thunder, & hail.  Peter Well’s well runs over.
• 1782: February 9, 1782 – Venus sheds again her silvery light on the walls of my chamber, &c. & shadows very strongly.
• 1779: February 9, 1779 – The garden works well: sowed pease, & planted beans.  Crocus’s blow.
• 1777: February 9, 1777 – Very harsh day.  The fieldfares now feed on sloes, which abound on the hedges.  ‘Til now I never observed that any birds touched the sloes.
• 1775: February 9, 1775 – Many species of Insects are stirring thro’ every month in mild winters.
• 1774: February 9, 1774 – Jupiter & Venus approximate very fast. Venus is very bright, & makes strong shadows on the floors, & walls.
• 1773: February 9, 1773 – Made hot bed.
• 1772: February 9, 1772 – Red-breasts and hedge-sparrows whistle.  Snow gone, save under hedges.  Ravens seem paired.
• 1771: February 9, 1771 – A Decanter of water froze in my chamber. Thermomr abroad 28. Eggs in the ovary of a turkey-pullet about the size of mustard-seeds. Mem: to enquire when the pullets of the same brood will begin to lay.

Notes:

It’s hard to believe in this light-polluted age that Venus could cast visible shadows, but it does!