The Natural History of Selborne

My weeding-woman swept up on the grass-plot a bushel-basket of blossoms from the white apple-tree: & yet that tree seems still covered with bloom.

The season is so cold, that no species of Hirundines make any advances towards building, & breeding.  Brother Benjamin & Mrs. White, & Mary White, & Miss Mary Barker came.

The white pippin is covered with bloom.  Farmer Spencer’s apple-trees blow well.  Nep. Ben White, & wife left us.

Cut down the greens of the crocus’s; they make good tyings for hops; better than rushes, more pliant, & tough.

Neph. Ben. White, & wife came.

Timothy eats much.

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.

The white apple-tree shows again, as usual, much bloom.

A man brought me a large trout weighing three pounds, which he found in the waste current at the tail of Bins pond, in water so shallow that it could not get back again to the Selborne stream. Made rhubarb tarts, & a rhubarb pudding, which was very good.

Set the second Bantam hen over the saddle cup-board in the stable with eleven dark eggs.