The Natural History of Selborne

• 1789: January 31, 1789 – Farmer Knight’s wheat of a beautiful colour.  Children play at hop-scotch.  Rain in Jan. 4 inc. 48h.  I now see, that after the greatest droughts have exhausted the wells, & streams, & ponds, four or five inches of rain will completely replenish them.
• 1788: January 31, 1788 – Tubbed half an hog, weighing 8 score: put half a bush. of salt, & two ounces of salt petre.  The pork was well trod into the tub, & nicely stowed.
• 1787: January 31, 1787 – Small frost, sun, still, & pleasant.  Beautiful dappled sky.
• 1786: January 31, 1786 – Mr Richardson left us.
• 1785: January 31, 1785 – The wind blowed-off the fox’s tail.
• 1780: January 31, 1780 – The cabbage-plants that were to have stood the winter seem to be killed: lettuces under the fruit-wall are damaged.  Later note: but they have all recovered.
• 1776: January 31, 1776 – Below zero!! 32 deg. below the freezing point.  At eleven it rose to 16 1/2.  Rime.  A most unusual degree of cold for S.E. England.
• 1774: January 31, 1774 – The water above the tap in R. Knight’s cellar at Faringdon.  the land-springs begin to break-out on the downs beyond Andover  A certain token that they rich corn vales must suffer.
• 1769: January 31, 1769 – Sowed the meadows with ashes.

• 1784: January 30, 1784 – A long-billed curlew has just been shot near the Priory.  We see now & then one in the very long frosts.  Two, I understand, were seen.
• 1783: January 30, 1783 – Lambs fall apace.  Ground full of water.
• 1779: January 30, 1779 – Tulips begin to peep.
• 1772: January 30, 1772 – Much snow on the ground.
• 1771: January 30, 1771 – Hedge-sparrow essays to sing.

• 1791: January 29, 1791 – Three gallons of brandy from London.
• 1789: January 29, 1789 – Bantam-hens make a pleasant little note, expressive of a propensity towards laying.  Fog so deep that we could not see the alcove in the garden.
• 1788: January 29, 1788 – Rover sprung two brace of pheasants in the long coppice.
• 1784: January 29, 1784 – The dung & litter freeze under the horses in the stable.  The hares nibble off the buds of the espalier-pear-trees.
• 1779: January 29, 1779 – Out of the wind there is frost; but none where the S. wind blows.
• 1776: January 29, 1776 – An intense frost usually befalls in Jan: our Saxon fore-fathers call’d that month with no small propriety wolf-month; because the severe weather brought down those ravenous beasts out of the woods among the villages.
• 1774: January 29, 1774 – Snow-drop, wolfs bane, helleborus foetidus blow. Gnats appear.  Beetles buz in the evening.
• 1773: January 29, 1773 – Vast halo round the moon.
• 1772: January 29, 1772 – Thermor. abroad before sun rise at 11.  Bright sun.
• 1770: January 29, 1770 – Corylus avellana.  masc: fem.

• 1793: January 28, 1793 – Bees come out, & gather on the snow-drops.
• 1788: January 28, 1788 – Several slow-worms found under the bottom of an old hay-rick in a torpid state, but not without some motion.
• 1786: January 28, 1786 – Mr Richardson, & son William came.
• 1782: January 28, 1782 – Water-cresses come in.  The winter-spring, or lavant, runs from the hanger into gracious street.
• 1778: January 28, 1778 – Frost comes in a doors.  Little shining particles of ice, appear on the ceiling, cornice, & walls of my great parlor the vapor condensed on the plaster is frozen in spite of frequent fires in the chimney.  I now set a chafing dish of clear-burnt charcoal in the room on the floor.
• 1776: January 28, 1776 – Fierce frost, ice under people’s beds, & cutting winds. Thermr at Selborne: abroad, 7.
• 1774: January 28, 1774 – Titmouse begins to open.  Red-breast sings.  Song-thrush sings.
• 1771: January 28, 1771 – Turneps are very small this year, and are on the decay.
• 1770: January 28, 1770 – White wagtails sing a sort of song.  Paths are steady.
• 1768: January 28, 1768 – Sowed more cucumber seeds.  Fringillado, great titmouse, begins some of his spring notes.  Pricked out the cucumbers.

• 1792: January 27, 1792 – The Swallow, Lord Cornwallis’s advice sloop, arriv’d at Bristol from Madras, which it left on the 21st of Septemr.  The weather was so rough, that it could not get up the Bristol channel.
• 1791: January 27, 1791 – One of the Bantam hens begins to lay.  Mice devour the crucus’s.
• 1788: January 27, 1788 – Snow still lies a yard deep at Stair’s hill.
• 1780: January 27, 1780 – Hares, driven by the severity of the weather, crop the pinks in the garden.
• 1776: January 27, 1776 – Snow all day, fierce frost at night.
• 1773: January 27, 1773 – Wood-lark sings.
• 1772: January 27, 1772 – Dark, fog, & thaw.
• 1770: January 27, 1770 – Paplio urticae, Partial fog.

• 1788: January 26, 1788 – Salt-fish proves good.  The Creeper, certhia familiaris, appears in my orchard, & runs up the trees like a mouse.  Golden-crowned wren is also seen.
• 1785: January 26, 1785 – Planted two rows of garden-beans.
• 1784: January 26, 1784 – Cut my last year’s hay-rick.
• 1781: January 26, 1781 – My Heliotrope, which is J. Carpenter’s workshop, shows plainly that the days are lengthened considerably: for on the shortest day the shades of my two old chimneys fall exactly in the middle of the great window of that edifice at half an hour after two P.M., but now they are sifted into the quickset hedge, many yards to the S.E.
• 1778: January 26, 1778 – Snow on the ground, which is icy, & slippery.
• 1776: January 26, 1776 – Snow very thick on the roofs & in areas.

Notes:

Certhia familiaris, the treecreeper.

• 1784: January 25, 1784 – The turnips, that are not stacked, are all frozen and spoiled.
• 1783: January 25, 1783 – Snow gone.  The wryneck pipes.
• 1770: January 25, 1770 – Chaffinches in vast flock: mostly hens: some bramblings among them.
• 1769: January 25, 1769 – Soft day.  Bunting sings.  A snipe appears on the high downs among the wheat.  Royston crow.  Skylark sings.

Parus Major, the Great Tit. Photo: Marek Szczepanek

• 1784: January 24, 1784 – The Thermomr at Totnes, in the county of Devon abroad this evening, was, I hear, at 6.
• 1781: January 24, 1781 – Flood at Gracious street.
• 1775: January 24, 1775 – Dark & sharp, sun, cutting wind, hard frost. Icicles.  Note: Chaucer, speaking of Goassamer as a strange phenomenon, says, “As sore some wonder at the cause of thunder;/ on ebb, & flode, on gosomer, & mist;/And on all thing; ’till that cause is wist.”
• 1774: January 24, 1774 – Stone-curlews still appear on Temple farm.
• 1773: January 24, 1773 – Parus major sings.  Hedge-sparrow essays to sing.
• 1771: January 24, 1771 – Sky strangely streaked with blue and red.  Wind & rain in the night.  Larks rise & essay to sing.  Daws begin to come to churches.

• 1792: January 23, 1792 – Water-cresses come in.
• 1788: January 23, 1788 – Dan Wheeler plants his field with beans.
• 1785: January 23, 1785 – Boys play on the Plestor at marbles, & peg-top.  Thrushes sing in the coppices.  Thrushes & blackbirds are much reduced.
• 1780: January 23, 1780 – Vast rime on the trees all day.  The naked turnips suffer, especially where the fields incline to the sun: they are frozen, & then thawed, & so rot.  Those farmers are best off this winter, who pulled their turnips, & stacked them up in buildings, & under hedges. Lambs fall very fast.
• 1776: January 23, 1776 – Therm: in London areas 20.  The ground covered with snow & everything frozen up.
• 1772: January 23, 1772 – A gentle thaw all day: leaves drip all day.
• 1770: January 23, 1770 – Scarabaeus stercorarius.  Saw a bird which I suspected to be an Aberdevine, or siskin: it was the passer torquatus, or reed sparrow.  Woodlark, great titmouse, chaffinch sing.  Blackbird whistles.  Woodlark sings in the air before daybreak.  Thrush sings.  Missel-bird sings.

• 1789: January 22, 1789 – Now the ice is melted on Hartley-park pond, many dead fish come floating ashore, which were stifled under the ice for want of air.
• 1784: January 22, 1784 – Snipes come up the stream.
• 1779: January 22, 1779 – Bees come-0ut, & gather on the snow-drops.  Many gnats in the air.
• 1776: January 22, 1776 – Went to Farnham.  Grey & still.
• 1769: January 22, 1769 – Ice in the roads bears horse & man.  Vast halo round the moon.  The landsprings in part of N. Tidworth street not fordable: they run like a vast river.