The Natural History of Selborne

Men begin to bag hops.  Celeri comes in.  Vine-leaves turn purple.

Rain.  Hops become very brown, & damaged.  The hop-pickers are wet through every day.

Hop-women complain of the cold.

Gil. White left us.  The flying ants of the small black sort are in great agitation on the zigzag, & are leaving their nests.  This business used to be carryed on in August in a warm summer.  While these emigrations take place, the Hirundines fare deliciously on the female ants full of eggs.  Hop-picking becomes general; & all the kilns, or as they are called in some counties, oasts are in use.  Hops dry brown, & are pretty much subject this year to vinny, or mould.

Hop-picking becomes general; & the women leave their gleaning in the wheat-stubbles.  Wheat grows as it stands in the shocks.

John Berriman’s hops at the end of the Foredown very fine.

Received a bag of hops from Mr. Hale, weight 61 pounds.

Some neighbours finish their hops.  The whole air of the village of an evening is perfumed by effluvia from the hops drying in the kilns.  Began to light a fire in the parlor.

Bad weather for the hops, & pickers.  When the boys bring me wasps nests, my Bantam fowls fare deliciously; & when the combs are pulled to pieces, devour the young wasps intheir maggot-state with the highest glee, and delight.  Any inscet-eating bird would do the same: & therefore I have often wondered that the accurate Mr Ray should call one species of buzzard Buteo apivorus, sive vespivorus, or the Honey-buzzard, because some combs of wasps happened to be found in one fo their nests.  The combs were conveyed thither doubtless for the sake of the maggots or nymphs, & not for their honey;  since none is to be found in the combs of wasps.  Birds of prey occasionally feed on insects: thus have I seen a tame kite picking up the female ants, full of eggs, with much satisfaction.

Hop-picking begins in Hartley gardens.  Cut 96 cucumbers.