The Natural History of Selborne

Boys bring me female-wasps.  Apis longicornis bores it’s nests & copulates.

Soft rain.  Grass & corn improved by the rain already.  The long-horned bees bore their holes in the walks.

Sultry, & heavy clouds. Smell of sulphur in the air. Paid for near 20 wasps: several were breeders; but some were workers, hatched perhaps this year.

House-martins do not build as usual:  perhaps are troubled to find wet dirt.  Bees swarm.  Severe heat in the lanes in the middle of the day.

Bees gather much from the bloom of the buck-thorn, rhamnus catharticus: & somewhat from the new shoots of the laurel.

The leaves of the mulberry-tree hardly begin to peep.  The vines promise well for bloom.  Apis longicornis works at it’s nest in the ground only in a morning while the sun shines on the walk.  Earth-worms make their casts most in the mild weather about March & April:  they do not lie torpid in winter, but come forth when there is no frost.

The crows, rooks, & daws in great numbers continue to devour the chafers on the hanger. Was it not for those birds chafers would destroy everything. Rooks, now their young are flown, do not roost on their nest-trees, but retire in the evening towards Hartley-woods. Martins roost in the their new nests as soon as ever they are large enough to contain them.

Here & there a single chafer this year.

Lampyris noctiluca.  Thunder & lightening & moderate rain half the inght.  The corn & grass & gardens look well after ye rain.

Apis longcornis bores its nest in the field-walks.