The Natural History of Selborne

Cinnamon-rose blows.

No may-chafers this year.  The intermediate flowers, which now figure between the spring, & solstitial, are the early orange, & fiery-lily, the columbine, the early honey-suckle, the peony, the garden red valeriam, the double rocket or dames violet, the broad blue flag-iris, the thrift, the double lychnis, spider-wort, monks-hood, &c.

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.

Flowers smell well this evening:  some dew.

Cinamon-roses blow.

Ophrys nidus-avis, and ophrys apifera blossom.

Lactuca virosa spindles for bloom: the milky juice of this plant is very bitter, & acrid.

Swifts are very gay, & alert.  Tulips are gone off.  Chafers abound:  they are quite a pest this year at, & about Fyfield.

Honey-suckles begin to blow.  Columbines very fine.  Mr. Richardson has left us.

Planted the bank in the garden, & the opposite border with China asters all the whole length.