The Natural History of Selborne

Lapwings leave the bogs, & moors in large flocks, & frequent the uplands.

Farmer Spence & Farmer Knight are beginning to lime their respective farms at Grange & Norton.

By observing two glow-worms, which were brought from the field to the bank in the garden, it appeared to us, that those little creatures put-out their lamps between eleven & twelve, & shine no more for the rest of the night.

No garden-beans gathered yet.  Threw the hay in the meadows into large cocks.  The lime-trees with their golden tassels make a most beautiful show.  Hops throw out their side branches, which are to bear the fruit.  Cran-berries at bin pond not ripe.  Hog pease are hacking at Oakhanger.

Farmer Knight sold two loads of wheat for 36 ae!  Brisk gale.  Hay makes well.

Anthericum ossifragum, Lancashire asphodel, a beautiful plant, found by Mr Barker in bloom among the bogs of Womer forest.  Monotropa Hypobithys blossoms on the hanger.  Thistles begin to blow.  The naked part of the hanger is now covered with thistles; but mostly with the carduus lanceolatus.  There are also the carduus nutans, the musk thistle; carduus crispus, the thistle on the thistle; carduus palustris, the marsh-thistle, The seeds of these thistles may have lain probably under the thick shade of the beeched for many Years; but could not vegetate till the sun & air were admitted.

Began to cut my hay, a vast burden, but over-ripe.

When old beech-trees are cleared away, the naked ground in a year or two becomes covered with straw-berry plants, the seed of which must have lain in the ground for an age at lest.  One of the slidders or trenches down the middle of the hanger, close covered over with lofty beeches near a century old, is still called strawberry slidder, though no strawberries have grown there in the memory of man.  That sort of fruit, no doubt, did once abound there, & will again when the obstruction is removed.

Wall-cherries are excellent.  Lime-trees blossom, & smell very sweet.  Mr & Mrs Sam Barker, & Miss Elizabeth Barker, came from the county of Rutland.

We have planted-out vast quantities of annuals, but none of them thrive.  Grapes do not blow, nor make any progress.  The wet season has continued just a month this day.  Dismal weather!