The Natural History of Selborne

White thorn blows.  The air is filled with floating willow-down.  Martins begin to build against the end of my brew-house.  Columbines blow.  N. Aurora.  Timothy the tortoise begins to travel about, & be restless.

Hirundines keep out in the rain: when the rain is considerable.  Swifts skim with their wings inclining, to shoot off the wet.

Martins build briskly at the Priory, & in the street.  Oaks show prodigious bloom.

Stellaria holostea greater stichwort, blows: a regular, periodical plant.

Very blowing all day.

The mice have infested my garden much by nestling in my hot-beds, devouring my balsoms, & burroughing under my cucumber-basons: so that I may say with Martial…. “Fines Mus populatoru, & colono /Tanquam Sus Calydonius temetur.”  Epigramm: XIX. lib. XI.

Caught a mouse in the hot-bed: cut several cucumbers, but they are ill-shapen.

Nep Ben & wife left us.  Great tempest at Winchester.

Nep. Ben came.  The beeches on the hanger, now in full leaf, when shone down on by the sun about noon, exhibit the most lovely lights & shades, not to be expressed by the most masterly pencil.  The hops are infested by the Chrysomela oleracea, called by the country people the turnip-fly, or black dolphin, which eats holes in their leaves.  This species is– “saltatoria, femoribus posticis carssissimis”:– “chrysomelae saltatoria plantarum cotyledonibus, & benellis foliis infestae sunt.” Linn:

Cut the first mesh of asparagus.  The bloom of plums is very great.  Peat-carting begins.