The Natural History of Selborne

Neither the pease or beans have the same flavour, & sweetness as in moist summers.

Cherries turn colour, & begin to be eatable; but are small for want of moisture: are netted.  A cat gets down the pots of a neighbour’s chimney after the Swallows nests.

A double scarlet Pomegranade buds for bloom.  A bunting appears about the walks: this is a very rare bird at Selborne.  The solstitial chafers swarm by thousands in my Brother’s grounds.  They begin to flie about sun-set, but withdraw soon after nine, & probably settle on the trees, to feed & to engender.  My chamber at S. Lambeth is much annoyed with gnats.

The scarbaei solstitiales begin to swarm in my Brother’s outlet. My Bror this spring turned one of his grass-fields into a kitchen-garden, & sowed it with crops: but the ground so abounded with the maggots of these chafers, that few things escaped their ravages. The lettuces, beans & cabbages were mostly devoured: & yet in trenching this enclosure his people had destroyed multitudes of these noxious grubs. The stalks & ribs of the leaves of the Lombardy polare are embossed with large tumours of an oblong shape, which by incurious observers have been taken for the fruit of the tree. These Galls are full of small insects, some of which are winged, and some not. The parent insect is of the Genus of Cynips. Some poplars of the garden are quite loaded with these excrescencies.

The bloom of the vines fills the chambers with an agreeable scent somewhat like that mignonette.

Dingy. Saw some red-backed butcher birds about Farnham.

Mr White of Newton fetches water from Newton pond to put into his tank.

My winter lettuces all run-off to seed. The Culture of Virgil’s vines corresponds very exactly with the modern management of hops. I might instance in the perpetual diggings, & hoeings, in the tying to the stakes & poles, in pruning of the superfluous shoots &c.: but lately I have observed a new circumstance, which was Farmer Spencer harrowing the alleys between the rows of hops with a small triangular harrow, drawn by one horse, & guided by two handles. This occurrence brought to my mid the following passage:

“.. ipsa/
Flectere lucantis inter vineta juvencos.”        Second Georgic.

Saint-foin & fiery lilly begin to blow.

Fly-catcher begins to make a nest in my vine.