The Natural History of Selborne

Tortoise eats all day. In Mrs. Snooke’s ponds are vast spiders, which dive and conceal themselves on the undersides of plants, lying on the water: perhaps aranea aquatica Linn: urinatoria. The swallow seems to be the only bird that washes itself as it flies, by dropping into the water.

Scarabaeus melolontha. Grasshopper-lark chirps.

Sphinx filipendula.  Emerges from it’s aurelia state.  Fixes it’s cods to the dry twigs in hedges;  is called in Hants the St foin fly; & is in its crawling state said to be very pernicious to that plant.

Small rain in the night. Ephemera cauda biseta. The angler’s may-fly.  Myriads of may-flies appear for the first time on the Alresford stream.  The air was crowded with them, & the surface of the water covered.  Large trouts sucked them in as they lay struggling on the surface of the stream, unable to rise till their wings were dryed.  This appearance reconciled me in some measure to the wonderful account that Scopoli gives of the quantities emerging from the rivers of Carniola.  See his Entomologia.

Poygala vulg. in flower.  Mole-cricket churs.

Chafers abound. Sanicula europea in flower.

Fleas abound on the steep sand-banks where the bank-martins build.

Chafers much suppressed by the cold & the rain.

Many sorts of dragon-flies appear for the first time.  Swifts devour the small dragon-flies as they first take their flight from out their aurelias, which are lodged on the weeds of ponds.  Chafers are eaten by the turkey, the rook, & the house-sparrow.

Backward apples begin to blow.  The chafers seem much incomoded by the cold weather.