The Natural History of Selborne

Cauliflowers, Coss-lettuce, marrow-fat pease, carrots, summer-cabbage, & small beans in great profusion, & perfection.  Cherries begin to come in: artichokes for supper.  Bror Ben’s outlet swarms with the Scarabaeus solstitialis, which appears at Midsummer.  My two brothers gardens abound with all sorts of kitchen-crops.

Wheat is in bloom, & has had a fine, still, dry, warm season for blowing.  Nights miserably hot, & sultry.

Jasmine in warm aspects begins to blow.

My brother’s gardeners plant-out annuals.  The ground is well moistened.  They prick-out young cabbages, celeri, &c.

About Newton men were cutting their St foin: & all the way towards London their upland meadows, many of which, notwithstanding the drought, produce decent crops.  We had a dusty, fatiguing journey.  Bro Thos. has made his hay; & his fields are much burnt-up.

Grey, sprinkling, gleams with thunder.  Wavy, curdled clouds, like the remains of thunder.

Potted nine tall balsams, & put the potts in a sunk bed. Dragon-flies have been out some days. The oaks in many places are infested with caterpillars of the Phalaena quercus to such a degree as to be quite naked of leaves. These palmer-worms hang down from the trees by long threads. The apple-trees at Faringdon are annoyed by an other set of caterpillars that strip them of all their foliage. My hedges are also damaged by the caterpillars.

Mr Richardson came.

Much gossamer.  The air is full of floating cotton from the willows.  There are young lapwings in the forest.  Female wasps about: they rasp particles of wood from sound posts & rails, which being mixed-up with a glutinous matter form their nests.  Hornets collect beech-wood.

The prospect from my great parlor-windows to the hanger now beautiful: the apple-trees in bloom add to the richness of the scenery! the grass-hopper lark whispers in my hedges. That bird, the fern-owl, & the nightingale of an evening may be heard at the same time: & often the wood-lark, hovering & taking circuits round in the air at a vast distance from the ground.

While high in the air, & pois’d upon its wings,/
Unseen the soft, enamour’d wood-lark sings.