The Natural History of Selborne

The crop on my largest Apricot-tree is still prodigious, tho’ in May I pulled off 30, or 40 dozen.

Of those China hollyhocks that stood the winter the tall ones are plain & single: the stunted ones are double & variegated.

All the first meadow-hay about us was spoiled: all the latter was ricked in delicate order. Late in the evening the swifts course round with their young high in the air. They are some times so numerous that one might suspect they are joined by parties from other villages. The fly-catchers have quite forsaken my house & garden: they never breed twice.

The planet Mars figures every evening & makes a golden & spendid shew. This planet being in opposition to the sun, is now near us, & consequently bright.

House-martins abound at Lipock.

Bramshot-place

Lapwings haunt the uplands still.  Farmers complain that their wheat is blited.  At Bramshot-place, the house of Mr Richardson, in the wilderness near the stream, grows wild, & in plenty, Sorbus aucuparia, the quicken-tree, or mountain-ash, Rhamnus frangula, berry-bearing alder; & Teucrium scorodonia, wood-sage, & whortle-berries.  The soil is sandy.  In the garden at Dowland’s, the seat, lately, of Mr Kent, stands a large Liriodendrum tulipifera, or tulip-tree, which was in flower. The soil is poor sand; but produces beautiful pendulous Larches.  Mr R’s garden, tho’ a sand, abounds in fruit, & in all manner of good & forward kitchen-crops.  Many China-asters this spring seeded themselves there, and were forward; some cucumber-plants also grew-up of themselves from the seeds of a rejected cucumber thrown aside last autumn.  The well at Downland’s is 130 feet deep; at Bramshot place..  Mr R’s garden is at an average a fortnight before mine.

The sparrow-hawks continue their depredations.

Wheat-harvest begins at Headley.

The farmers complain of smut in their wheat.

The hay that is down is now entirely spoiled.  These soft rains sop & drench everything.  A young man brought me a live specimen of a Papilion Machaon, taken below Temple.  The first specimen that ever I saw of that species in these parts was in my own garden in last Augt. 2nd.