The Natural History of Selborne

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.

The black-cluster vines from Selborne are in bloom, & smell delicately!

A poor gardener in this parish who had three acres of kidney-beans, has lost them all by the frost of last week! Hay finely made, & making. The rudiments of the vine-bloom does not seem to be injured by the late frost.

Much damage done to the corn, grass & hops by the hail; & many windows broken! Vast flood at Gracious street! vast flood at Kaker bridge! Nipped-off all the rose-buds on the tree in the yard opposite the parlor window in order to make a bloom in the autumn. No bloom succeeded.

Young pheasants!