The Natural History of Selborne

Poultry begin to moult.

Fly-catcher feeds his sitting hen, Mrs H.W., Bessy, & Lucy came.

Bull-finch eats the berries of the honey-suckle.  Bror Tho. came.

Piped many shoots of elegant pinks.  There are some buntings in the N. field: a very rare bird at Selborne.  They love open fields, without enclosures.  Jennetings, apples so called, come in to be eaten.  Potatoes come in.

Codlins came in for stewing. Wasps encrease & gnaw the cherries. Hung bottles to take the wasps.
“Contemplator item, cum se Nux plurima silvis
Induet in florem, & ramos curvabit olentis:
Si superant foetus, pariter frumenta sequenterur;
Magnaque cum mango veniet tritura calore.”*
If by Nux in this passage Virgil meant the Wall-nut, then it must follow, that he must also mean that a good wall-nut year usually proves a good year for wheat. This remark is verifyed in a remarkable manner this summer with us; for the wallnut trees are loaded with a myriad of nuts, which hang in vast clusters; & the crop of wheat is such as has not been known for many seasons. The last line seems also to imply, that this coincident, even in Italy, does not befall but only in a dry, sultry summer. Tho’ wall-nut-trees in England blow long before wheat; yet it is probable that in Italy, where wheat is more early than with us, they may blossom together. And indeed unless these vegetables had accorded in the time of their bloom, the Poet would scarce have introduced together as an instance of concomitant fertility.

There are now some fallow-deer, & a red deer in Hartely wood.

Bunches of snake’s eggs are found under some straw near the hot-beds.  Several snakes haunted my out-let this summer, & cast their sloughs in the garden, & elsewhere.  Cran-berries are offered at the door.

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

Mrs White made much Rsp, & curran jams.

The late burning season has proved fatal to many deer in elevated situations, where the turf being quite scorched up, the stock in part perished for want.  This is said in particular to have been the case at Up-park in Sussex.  A want of water might probably have been one occasion of this mortality. Some fallow deer have dyed in the Holt.