The Natural History of Selborne

Snails begin to engender, & some flew to lay eggs:  hence it is matter of consequence to destroy them before midummer.

I saw two swifts, entangled with each other, fall out of their nest to the ground, from whence they soon rose & flew away.  This accident was probably owing to amorous dalliance.  Hence it appears that swifts when down can rise again.  Swifts seen only morning & evening: the hens probably are engaged all the day in the business of incubation;  while the cocks are roving after food down to the forest, & lakes.  These birds begin to sit about the middle of this month, & have squab young before the month is out.

Martins begin building at half hour after three in the morning.

No one that has not attended to such matters, & taken down remarks, can be aware how much ten days dripping weather will influence the growth of grass or corn after a severe dry season.  This present summer 1776 yields a remarkable instance: for ’til the 30th of May the fields were burnt-up & naked, & the barley not half out of the ground; but now, June 10t there is an agreeable prospect of plenty.  A very intelligent Clergyman assured me, that hearing while he was a young student at the University, of toads being found alive in blocks of stone, & solids bodies of trees; he one long vacation took a toad, & put it in a garden-pot, & laying a tile over the mouth of the pot, buried it five feet deep  in the ground in his father’s garden.  in about 13 months he dug-up the imprisoned reptile, & found it alive & well, & considerably grown.  He buried it again as at first, & on a second visit at about the same period found it circumstanced as before.  He then deposited the pot as formerly a third time, only laying the tile so as not quite to cover the whole of its mouth: but when he came to examine it again next year, the toads was gone.  he each time trod the earth down very hard over the pot.

Fern-owl first seen; a late summer bird of passage.

The frost has killed the tops of the wallnut shoots, & ashes; & the annuals where they touched the glass of the frames; also many kidney-beans.  The tops of hops, & potatoes were cut-off by this frost.  Tops of laurels killed.  The wall-nut trees promised for a vast crop, ’til the shoots were cut off by ye frost.

Female wasps abound.  Young rooks venture-out to the neighbouring trees.

Medlar blows: this is the most uncouth tree in its growth, the boughs never continuing streight for two feet together.

Wheat on the downs begins to spindle for ear.

Spring-corn in a sad state, not half come up.