The Natural History of Selborne

The willows in bloom diversify the coppices, & hedge-rows in a beautiful manner.

Hirundo domestica!  Hirundo agrestis!  Blackbirds are mostly destroyed by shooters.  Farmer Tredgold saw five hirundines at Willey-mill next Farnham playing about briskly over the mill-pond: four, he says, were house-swallows, & the fifth an house-martin with a white rump.  These birds are very early!  Some few bank-martins haunt round the skirts of London, & frequent the dirty pools in St. George’s fields, & near White-chappel: perhaps they build in the scaffold-holes of some deserted house; for steep banks there are none.

Flocks of fieldfares remain: no red-wings are seen.  No song-thrushes are heard; the seem to be destroyed by the hard weather.  Some wagtails survive.

Came from London to Selborne.  Hot sun: summer-like weather.  When I arrived in Hants I found the wheat looking well, & the turneps little injured.  My laurels & laurustines somewhat injured; but only those that stood in hot sunny aspects.  No evergreens quite destroyed & not half the damage sustained that befell in Jan. 1768.  Those laurels that are somewhat scorched on the S. sides, are perfectly untouched on their N. sides.  The care I took in ordering the snow to be carefully shaken from the branches wherever it fell, seems greatly to have availed my laurels.  Mr Yalden’s laurels facing to the N. untouched.  Portugal laurels not hurt.

Great rains, & vast floods thro’ the month of February.

Part of the snow gone at Selborne.  It lay for many weeks in deep hollow lanes.

Snow now lying on the roofs for 26 days!  Thames frozen above and below bridge; crowds of people running about on the ice.  The streets strangely encumbered with snow, which crumbles & treads like bay salt– Carriages run without any noise or clatter.  Thaws,  have observed, frequently take place immediately from intense freezing; as men in sickness often begin to mend from a paroxysm.

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.

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.

Fierce frost, ice under people’s beds, & cutting winds. Thermr at Selborne: abroad, 7.