The Natural History of Selborne

Field-crickets are pretty near silent; they begin their shilling cry about the middle of May.

Black-caps are great thieves among the cherries.  The flycatcher is a very harmless & honest bird, medling with nothing but insects.

The early brood of swallows are active & adroit, & able to procure their subsistence on the wing.  Fresh broods come forth daily.

Full moon.  Cherries begin to ripen, but are devoured by sparrows.  Began to cut my meadow-hay, a good crop, one 3rd more than last year.

Wheat generally in bloom.  The beards of barley begin to peep.

Flowers in the garden make a gaudy appearance.

No young partridges are flyers yet: but by the deportment of the dams it is plain they have chickens hatched; for they rise & fall before the horses feet, & hobble along as if wounded to draw-off attention from their helpless broods.  Sphinx forte ocellata.  A vast insect; appears after it is dusk, flying with an humming noise, & inserting it’s tongue into the bloom of the honey-suckle: it scarcely settles on the plants but feeds on the wing in the manner of humming-birds.  Omiah, who is gone on board the Resolution, is expected to sail this week for Otaheite with Capt. Cook.

Vine just begins to blow: it began last year June 7: in 1774 June 26.  Wheat begins to blow.  Thomas’s bees swarm, & settle on the Balm of Gilead fir.  first swarm.

Hay makes well.  The wind bangs the hedges & flowers about.

Cut my St foin; a large burden: rather over-blown: the nineth crop.  Libellula virgo, sive puella.  Dragon-fly with blue upright wings.

* As the way-menders are digging for stone in a bank of the street, they found a large cavern running just under the cart-way.  This cavity was covered over by a thin stratum of rock:  so that if the arch had given way under a loaded waggon, considerable damage must have ensued.