The Natural History of Selborne

Nuthatch brings out & cracks her nuts, & strews the garden-walks with shells.  They fix them in a fork of a tree where two boughs meet: on the Orleans plum tree.

Wild geese appear in a flock, flying to the Southward.

Made a new hand-glass bed for celeri in the garden.  The crocus’s still look very gay when the sun shines.

White sharp frost: thick ice: icicles.  Apricots blow: peaches & nectarines begin to open their buds.  Some thing again eats the young celeri.

Snow does not lie, ice, frost, & icicles all day.

Snow, rain, harsh.  A sad wintry day!

This evening Admiral Gardner’s fleet sailed from St Helens with a fair wind.

Parted the bunches of Hepatica’s, that were got weak, & planted them again round the borders.

Planted 30 cauliflowers brought from Mareland; & a row of red cabbages.  The ground is so glutted with rain that men can neither plow, nor sow, nor dig.

Papilio rhamni, the brimstone butterfly, appears in the Holt.  Trouts rise, & catch at insects.   A dob-chick comes down the Wey in sight of the banks.  Timothy the tortoise comes forth, & weighs 6 ae 5 1/2 z.  Took a walk in the Holt up to the lodge: no bushes, & of course no young oaks: some Hollies, & here & there a few aged yews: no oaks of any great size.  The soil wet & boggy.