The Natural History of Selborne

Sharp, cutting wind!  Heath-fire in the forest makes a great smoke.

Nightingales heard in honey-lane.

“The Nightingall, that chaunteth all the springe,/
Whose warblinge notes throughout the wooddes are harde,/
Beinge kepte in cage, she ceaseth for to singe,/
And mourns, bicause her libertie is barde.”
— Geffrey Whitney’s Emblemes: 1586, p.81

Sharp, & biting wind.  Some crude oranges were put in a hot cupboard in order that the heat might mellow them, & render them better flavoured: but the crickets got to them, & gnawing holes thro’ the rind, sucked out all the juice, & devoured all the pulp.

When h. crickets are out, & running about in a room in the night, if surprised by a candle, they give two or three shill notes, as it were a signal to their fellows, that they may escape to their crannies & lurking-holes to avoid danger.

Small birds, Tanner says green finches, pull off my polyanth blossoms by handfulls.  A neighbour complained to me that her house was over-run with a kind of black-beetle, or, as she expressed herself, with a kind of black-bob, which swarmed in her kitchen when they get up in a morning before day-break.  Soon after this account, I observed an unusual insect in one of my dark chimney-closets; & find since that in the night they swarm also in my kitchen.  On examination I soon ascertained the Species to be the Blatta orientalis of Linnaeus, & the Blatta molendinaria of Mouffet.  The male is winged, the female is not; but shows somewhat like the rudiments of wings, as if in the pupa state.  These insects belonged originally to the warmer parts of America, & were conveyed fro thence by shipping to the East Indies; & by means of commerce begin to prevail in the more N. parts of Europe, as Russia, Sweden, & c.  How long they have abounded in England I cannot say; but have never observed them in my house ’till lately.  They love warmth, & haunt chimney-closets, & the backs of ovens.  Poda says that these, & house-crickets will not associate together; but he is mistaken in that assertion, as Linn. suspected that he was.  They are altogether night insects, lucifugae, never coming forth till the rooms are dark, & still, & escaping away nimbly at the approach of a candle.  Their antennae are remarkably long, slender, & flexile.

Chaffinches pull-off the finest flowers of the polyanths.  Ned White sailed on this day.

Bombylius medius, a hairy fly, with a long projecting snout, appears: they are seen chiefly in March & April.  “Os rostro porrecto, setaceo, longissimo, bivalvi.”  A dipterous insect, which sucks it’s aliment from blossoms.  On the 21st of March, a single bank, or sand-martin was seen hovering & playing round the sand-pit at short heath, where in the summer they abound.  I have often suspected that S. martins are the most early among the hirundines.

That noise in the air of some thing passing quick over our heads after it becomes dark, & which we found last year proceeded from the Stone-curlew, has now been heard for a week or more.  Hence it is plain that these birds, which undoubtedly leave us for the winter, return in mild seasons very soon in the spring; & are the earliest summer birds that we have noticed.  They seem always to go down from the uplands towards the brooks, & meads.  The next early summer bird that we have remarked is the smallest Willow-wren, or chif-chaf; it utters two sharp, piercing notes, so loud in the hollow woods at to occasion an echo, & is usually first heard about the 20th of March.

Timothy the tortoise lies very close in the hedge.

Dog’s toothed violets blow.