The Natural History of Selborne

Daws from the church take the chafers on my trees, & hedges.  Thomas picks the caterpillars that damage the foliage of the apricot-trees, & roll up their leaves.

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

Thomas persists in picking the cocci off the vine, and has destroyed hundreds.

When the servants have been gone to bed some time, & the kitchen left dark, the hearth swarms with young crickets about the size of ants: there is an other set among them of larger growth: so that it appears two broods have hatched this spring.

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.

Dragon-flies.  Bees swarm.  Sheep are shorn.

The phalaena called the swift nighthawk appears.

Cut my Saint foin, the 12th crop. The smoke lies low over the fields. Glow-worms begin to appear.

The bees gather earnestly from the flowers of the buck-thorn.  Tho’ we are exempt from chafers this season round this district; yet between Winchester & Southampton they swarm so as to devour everything; the country stinks of them.

Forest-fly begins to appear.  Grass & corn grow away.