The Natural History of Selborne

Snow scene, Thomas Bewick

• 1792: December 9, 1792 – Damage by the wind in some places.
• 1790: December 9, 1790 – Mr Richardson left us.  Water-cresses come in.
• 1789: December 9, 1789 – The Emshot hounds kill a leash of hares on the hill.
• 1788: December 9, 1788 – J. Hale clears out the ponds at Little comb.
• 1785: December 9, 1785 – Swans egg pears continue good.
• 1784: December 9, 1784 – Much snow in the night.  Vast snow.  Snow 16 inches deep on my grass-plot about 12 inches at an average.  Farmer Hoar had 41 sheep buried in snow.  No such snow since Jan. 1776.  In some places much drifted.
• 1782: December 9, 1782 – Rime on the hill.
• 1781: December 9, 1781 – George Tanner’s bullfinch, a cock bird of this year, began from it’s first moulting to look dingy; & is now quite black on the back, rump, & all; & very dusky on the breast.  This bird has lived chiefly on hemp-seed.  But T. Dewey’s, & __ Horley’s two bull-finches, both of the same age with the former, & also of the same sex, retain their natural colours, which are glossy & vivid, tho’ they both have been supported by hemp-seed.  Hence the notion that hemp seed blackens bull-finches does not hold good in all instances; or at least not in the first year.
• 1778: December 9, 1778 – Warm fog, small rain.  Vast condensation: the trees on the down, & hanger run in streams down their bodies.  Walls sweat.  The dew this morning was on the outsides of the windows a token that the air was colder within than without.
• 1777: December 9, 1777 – Grey, sunny, & soft.
• 1774: December 9, 1774 – Almost continual frost from Nov. 20: & some snow frequently falling.  Mergus serratus, the Dun-diver, a very rare bird in these parts, was shot in James Knight’s ponds just as it was emerging from the waters with a considerable tench in it’s Mouth.  It’s head, & part of the neck, was of a deep rust-colour.  On the back part of the head was a considerable crest of the same hue.  The sexes in this species, Ray observes, differ so widely, that writers have made two species of them.  It appears from Ray’s description that my specimen with the rust-coloured head was a female, called in some parts the sparlin-fowl; & is, he supposes, the female Goosander.
• 1773: December 9, 1773 – Rooks attend their nest-trees in frost only morning & evening.
• 1770: December 9, 1770 – Hail in the night.  Frost almost constantly succeeds hail.
• 1768: December 9, 1768 – Wells run over at the bottom of the village.

• 1792: December 8, 1792 – Dr Chandler brought a vast pear from the garden of his niece at Hampton, which weighed 20 ounces, & 3/4, & measured in length 6 inches, & 3/4, & in girth 11 inches. It is the sort known by the name of Dr Uvedale’s great Saint Germain.
• 1791: December 8, 1791 – Timothy las laid himself up under the hedge against Benham’s yard in a very comfortable, snug manner: a thick tuft of grass shelters his back, & he will have the warmth of the winter sun.
• 1789: December 8, 1789 – The Bramshot hounds kill a leash of hares on the hill.
• 1788: December 8, 1788 – Great want of water upon the downs about Andover.  The ponds, wells, & brooks fail.
• 1785: December 8, 1785 – Some few flights of wild fowl come to Wolmer-pond; but do not stay.
• 1775: December 8, 1775 – Fog on the hills.  Spring-like, more like Feb: than Decr.  Ravens in their common mode of flying have a peculiarity attending them not unworthy of notice; they turn-over in the air quite on their backs, & that not now & then, bur frequently; often every two or 300 yards.  When this odd attitude betides them they fall down several fathoms, uttering a loud crow, & then right themselves again.  This strange vacillation seems to be owing to their scratching when bitten by vermin– the thrusting-0ut of their leg destroys their equipoise, & throws their wings out of the true center of gravity. Ravens spend their leisure-time over some hanging wood in a sort of mock fight, dashing & diving at each other continually while their loud croakings make the woody steeps re-echo again.
• 1772: December 8, 1772 – Brother & sister John arrived.
• 1770: December 8, 1770 – Wild fowl abounds in the ponds on Woolmere forest: they lie in the great waters by day & feed in the streams & plashes by night.

• 1792: December 7, 1792 – Took down the urns, & shut up the alcove.
• 1791: December 7, 1791 – Ground very wet.  Farmer Tull plants Butts-close with hops.
• 1788: December 7, 1788 – The wind & frost cut down the wheat, which seems to want a mantle of snow.
• 1781: December 7, 1781 – The weather was dark, still, & foggy all the time that I was absent, & the wind mostly N.E. & E.
• 1772: December 7, 1772 – Earthed asparagus beds.  No ice yet.
• 1768: December 7, 1768 – Lavants rise very fast at Farindon. and Chawton.

• 1790: December 6, 1790 – Mr. Richardson came.
• 1789: December 6, 1789 – A bushel of American wheat, which Bro. Tho. sent last year to one of his tenants in the hundreds of Essex from Nore hill, produced this harvest 40 bushels of seed: — and is much admired in that district, because from the stiffness of it’s straw it does not lodge.  Wheat is so apt to lodge in these parts, that they are often obliged to mow it down in the blade about May, lest it should fall flat to the ground.  This process they call swonging.
• 1788: December 6, 1788 – The millers around complain that their streams fail, & they have no water for grinding.
• 1787: December 6, 1787 – Five or six bats were flying round my chimnies at the dawn of the day.  Bats come forth at all times of the year when ye Thermr is at 50, because at such a temperament of the air Phalaenae are stirring, on which they feed.
• 1784: December 6, 1784 – Dismally dark: no wind with this very sinking glass.
• 1780: December 6, 1780 – Planted out Sweet-Williams, vine, & goose-berry cuttings, honey-suckle cuttings; & several crab stocks grafted from a curious & valuable green apple growing at South Lambeth in Surrey.
• 1776: December 6, 1776 – Few worms lie-out on the common.
• 1773: December 6, 1773 – White wag-tail.
• 1772: December 6, 1772 – A dead young rook, about half-grown was found in a nest on one of Mr Pink’s trees near his house.

• 1792: December 5, 1792 – Timothy appears, & flies come-out.
• 1791: December 5, 1791 – Cut down & covered the artichokes: covered the rhubarb plants; & the lettuces under the fruit-wall, & the spinage very lightly with straw.
• 1789: December 5, 1789 – Mrs Ben White brought to bed of a Son, who makes my nephews & nieces 55 in number.
• 1785: December 5, 1785 – Some sportsmen beat the bogs of Wolmer-forest carefully: saw but three brace of snipes.
• 1783: December 5, 1783 – Fetched some mulleins, foxgloves, & dwarf-laurels from the high-wood & hanger; & planted them in the garden.
• 1773: December 5, 1773 – Rooks spend most of their time in mild weather on their nest-trees; some stares & jack-daws attend them.

• 1792: December 4, 1792 – Timothy is gone under a tuft of long grass, but is not yet buried in the ground.
• 1788: December 4, 1788 – The plows have been stopped by the frost some days.  Men cart earth & dung for their hop-grounds.  Covered the lettuces, artichokes, spinage, & celeri with straw.  Took in the urns.
• 1783: December 4, 1783 – Mowed some of the grass-walks!  Farmer Lassam cuts some of his lambs: they are near a month old.
• 1782: December 4, 1782 – Farmer Lassam’s lambs begins to fall.
• 1776: December 4, 1776 – Vat condensations on walls & wainscot, which run in streams; these things are colder than the warm wet air.
• 1775: December 4, 1775 – Furze blows.  Colds & feverish complaints obtain in this neighbourhood.  in London, Portsmouth, & other places colds, & coughs have been general: in Dublin also.
• 1773: December 4, 1773 – The county of Sussex abounds in turneps.
• 1772: December 4, 1772 – Dark and spitting. Nasturtiums blow yet. Indian flowers in Decr! Song thrush sings.
• 1770: December 4, 1770 – Most owls seem to hoot exactly in B flat according to several pitch-pipes used in tuning of harpsichords, & sold as strictly at concert pitch.
• 1769: December 4, 1769 – White water-wagtail appears.

• 1791: December 3, 1791 – Snow covers the ground, snow shoe deep.
• 1789: December 3, 1789 – Beautiful picturesque, partial fogs along the vales, representing rivers, islands, & arms of the sea!  These fogs in London & other parts were so deep that much mischief was occasioned by men falling into rivers, & being over-turned into ditches, etc.
• 1788: December 3, 1788 – The grey chalk carried-out upon Hasteds falls to pieces.  Good mackarel brought to the door.
• 1787: December 3, 1787 – The yellow Bantham-pullet begins to lay.
• 1778: December 3, 1778 – My well is risen very much.
• 1776: December 3, 1776 – Worms lie-out very thick on the walks, & grass-plot; many in copulation.  They are very venereous, & seem to engender all the year.
• 1773: December 3, 1773 – The tortoise in Mrs Snooke’s garden went under ground Novr 21: came-out on the 30th for one day, & retired to the same hole lies in a wet border in mud & mire!  with it’s back bare.  In the late floods the water at Houghton ran over the clappers, & at Bramber into men’s ovens.

Meadowsweet.

• 1792: December 2, 1792 – This dry fit has proved of vast advantage to the kingdom; & by drying & draining the fallows, will occasion the growing of wheat on many hundred of acres of wet, & flooded land, that were deemed to be in a desperate state, & incapable of being seeded this season.
• 1786: December 2, 1786 – Several white gulls, as usual, wading about in the stream beyond Alresford.
• 1785: December 2, 1785 – Mem: to send Thomas on this day to Mr Collins collector of the excise.  Bror Thomas White, & Tho: Holt White left us.  Mrs & Miss Etty came home.
• 1784: December 2, 1784 – Timothy is buried we know not where in the the laurel hedge.
• 1780: December 2, 1780 – The well is risen two rounds.  Planted about a doz. of the roots of the Spiraea filipendula sent me from Lyndon.  Sr George Baker directed Mrs Barker to take these roots powdered for the gravel.  This plant does not grow with us, but is common at Salisbury plain, & the downs about Winton, & Andover, appearing among the bushes, & flowering about midsummer.
• 1779: December 2, 1779 – Vast condensations in the great parlor: the grate, the marble-jams, the tables, the chairs, the walls are covered with dew. This inconvenience may be prevented by keeping the window shutters, & door close shut in such moist seasons.
• 1777: December 2, 1777 – There is now in this district a considerable fight of woodcocks.  Large flocks of wood-pigeons now appear: they are the latest winter-birds of passage that come to us.
• 1776: December 2, 1776 – When the thermr is at 50 flies & phalaenae come-out, & bats are often stirring.  Beetles flie.
• 1773: December 2, 1773 – Not one wheat-ear to be seen on the downs.  The grubs of the scarabaeus solstitialis abound on the downs: the rooks dig them out.  On what do they feed when they come forth?  for there are no trees on the South downs.
• 1772: December 2, 1772 – Trimmed the vines.  Their shools were by no means good, nor well-ripened, notwithstanding the hot summer.
• 1771: December 2, 1771 – Cole-mouse roosts in the eaves of a thatched house.
• 1770: December 2, 1770 – The earth in a sad wet condition.  Wells strangely risen: one well runs over: our wells are about ten fathoms deep.
• 1768: December 2, 1768 – Thunder and hail.  Incredible quantities of rain have fallen this week.

Spiraea filipendula, now classified Filipendula ulmaria, or meadowsweet, contains a chemical similar to the anti-inflammatory salicylic acid in willow bark. The word “aspirin” was coined from ‘Spiraea’

• 1789: November 30, 1789 – After the servants are gone to bed the kitchen-hearth swarms with minute crickets not so large as fleas, which must have been lately hatched.  So that these domestic insects, cherished by the influence of a constant large fire, regard not the season of the year; but produce their young at a time when their congeners are either dead, or laid up for the winter, to pass away the uncomfortable months in the profoundest slumbers, & a state of torpidity.
• 1788: November 30, 1788 – Many wild fowls haunt Wolmer pond: in the evenings they come forth and feed in the barley-stubbles.
• 1787: November 30, 1787 – Frost comes within door: ice in the pantry, & chambers.
• 1785: November 30, 1785 – Grapes are at an end.
• 1780: November 30, 1780 – Hares eat all the pinks.
• 1773: November 30, 1773 – Bright, sunny, soft.
• 1768: November 30, 1768 – Crysanthemums stilli in bloom.  Crocuss, Jonquils, winter aconite, snow-drops peep out of Ground.

• 1792: November 29, 1792 – This dry weather enables men to bring in loads of turf, not much damaged: while scores of loads of peat lie rotting in the Forest.
• 1791: November 29, 1791 – Put a large cross on the hermitage.  A trufle-hunter tryed my tall hedges, & found some bulbs of those peculiar plants, which have neither roots, nor branches, nor stems.
• 1789: November 29, 1789 – Housed 8 cords of beech billet, which had taken all the rains of the late wet summer, & autumn, & is therefore of course in but indifferent order.
• 1788: November 29, 1788 – A vast flock of hen chaffinches are to be seen in the fields along by the sides of Newton-lane, interspersed, I think, with a few bramblings, which being rare birds in these parts, probably attended the finches on their emigration.  They feed in the stubbles on the seeds of knot-grass, the great support of small, hard-billed birds in the winter.
• 1785: November 29, 1785 – There was about this time, as the newspapers say, a vast flight of wood-cocks in Cornwall.
• 1780: November 29, 1780 – Rear Adm. Sr Samuel Hood sailed with 8 ships of the line.
• 1779: November 29, 1779 – Snow was halfshoe-deep on the hill.  Distant lightening.
• 1775: November 29, 1775 – The grey crow, a bird of winter passage, appears.  It is as rare at Selborne, as the carrion crow is in Sweden.  This is only the third bird that I have seen in this district.  They are common on the downs at Andover, & Winton.  The air is unusually damp, with copious condensations on the walls, wainscot, looking-glasses, &c, of houses, in many places running in streams.