The Natural History of Selborne

• 1793: March 30, 1793 – Made a new hand-glass bed for celeri in the garden.  The crocus’s still look very gay when the sun shines.
• 1791: March 30, 1791 – Some rooks have built several nests in the high wood.  The building of rooks in the High wood is an uncommon incident, & never remembered but once before.  The Rooks usually carry on the business of breeding in groves, & clumps of trees near houses, & in villages, & towns.  Timothy weighs 6 Li. 11 oz.
• 1789: March 30, 1789 – Sowed dwarf lark-spurs.
• 1787: March 30, 1787 – Chaffinches pull off the blossoms of the polyanths, which are beautifully variegated.
• 1786: Mrach 30, 1786 – Mr Taylor & his Bride came to Selborne.
• 1785: March 30, 1785 – Thick ice.  White frost.  Winter-aconites out of bloom: snow drops make still a fine.  Violets, & coltsfoot grow.
• 1782: March 30, 1782 – Apricots shew hardly any bloom: they exhausted themselves with bearing last year.  Peaches & nect: abound with blossoms just opening; as do the new, trained trees planted last Novr.
• 1780: March 30, 1780 – The tortoise keeps close.
• 1779: March 30, 1779 – Bombylius medius: many appear down the long Lythe.  Filed-crickets bask at the mouths of their holes: they seem to be yet in their pupa-state; as yet they show no wings.
• 1775: March 30, 1775 – Horse-ants retire under the ground.  Wheat-ears appear.
• 1773: March 30, 1773 – Hard frost, ice, cloudless, sharp wind.  No larks in the fields, & few birds to be heard or seen; probably this harsh dry air renders their food scarce, & sends them to the lower moister grounds.
• 1772: March 30, 1772 – Merula torquata on it’s spring visit.  Thunder.  One cock ring-ouzel appears on Nore-hill on it’s spring visit, but earlier than common.
• 1771: March 30, 1771 – Ground hard, & thick ice.  Crocuss in full bloom.  Birds mute.  Farmers feed yir sheep with bran & oates.
• 1770: March 30, 1770 – Papilio rhamni sucks the bloom of ye primrose.  Polyanths coddled with ye frost.
• 1768: March 30, 1768 – Raw fog.  Canes femininae catuliunt.

Notes:
Bombylius meduis– the bee-fly. Canes femininae catuliunt– female dogs in heat. Merula torquata– now turdus torquatus, the ring-ouzel.