The Natural History of Selborne

Our fields of pease are in a sad lousy order.

Finished cutting the St foin, which has stood full long.  The 14th crop.  Sold it to John Hale.  In some parts a good burden.

Much thunder, & vast showers to the westward.  Vast storm & rain at Winton.  These storms were very terrible at Sarum, & in the vale of the white-horse, etc.

A strange swarm of bees came and settled on my Balm of Gilead fir.

The st foin is in a bad way about the neighbourhood.

My garden in nice order, & full of flowers in bloom.  Lilies, roses, fraxinellas, red valerians, Iris’s, &c., now make a gaudy show.

We have planted-out a vast show of annuals, which will want no watering.

The house-martins which build in old nests begin to hatch, as may be seen by their throwing-out the egg-shells.

Wheat very gross in some fields.

Killed some hundreds of shell-less snails about the garden.  The boys every day kill some large wasps, that feed on the sycamore-bloom, on the Plestor.  Several small wasps appear as well as large breeders.