The Natural History of Selborne

Bright, sun, golden even. Cut eight cucumbers. Mrs. Clement & children left us. Many swifts.

Watered well the white poplar at the foot of the bostal. Cut the slope hedge in the Bakers hill.  Mrs. Clement, & children came.

Bror. Benjn. & I measured my tall beech in Sparrow’s hanger, which, at five feet from the ground, girths six feet one inch, and three quarters.

The season is so cold, that no species of Hirundines make any advances towards building, & breeding.  Brother Benjamin & Mrs. White, & Mary White, & Miss Mary Barker came.

On this day Brother Benjamin quitted South Lambeth, & came to reside at His House at Mareland.

Some few grapes just eatable: a large crop.  Housed all the billet wood.  Leaves fall in showers.  A curlew is heard loudly whistling on the hill towards the Wadden. On this day Mrs S. Barker was brought to bed of a boy, who advances my nepotes to the round & compleat number of 60.

Began to light fires in the parlor.  J.W. left us.

Blackcaps eat the berries of the honey-suckles. Mrs J. White, after long & severe campaign carried on against the Blattae molendinariae, which have of late invaded my house, & of which she has destroyed many thousands, finds that at intervals a fresh detachment of old ones arrives; & particularly during the hot season: for the windows being left open in the evenings, the males come flying in at the casements from the neighbouring houses, which swarm with them. How the females, that seem to have no perfect wings that they can use, can contrive to get form house to house, does not so readily appear. These, like many insects, when they find their present abodes over-stocked, have powers of migrating to fresh quarters. Since the Blattae have been so much kept under, the Crickets have greatly encreased in number.

Mr Churton left us, & went to Waverley.

Men cut their meadows.  Mr Churton came.