The Natural History of Selborne

London

Many martins in Lincolns inn fields.

London

Rasps come in.  Many Martins in the green park.  In a fruit-shop near St. James were set out to sale black cluster-grapes, pine apples, peaches, nectarines, & Orleans plums.

My brother’s cow, when there is no extraordinary call for cream, produces three pounds of butter each week.  The footman churns the butter overnight, & puts it in water; in the morning one of my nieces beats it, & makes it up, & prints it.  Mr M. black cluster-grapes in his pine-house seem to be well-ripened.

Large American straw-berries are hawked about which the sellers call pine-strawberries.  But these are oblong, & of a pale red; where as the true pine or Drayton straw-berries are flat, & green: yet the flavour is very quick, & truly delicate.  The American new sorts of strawberries prevail so much, that the old scarlet, & hautboys are laid aside, & out of use.

The Passion-flower buds for bloom: double-flowering pomegranade has had bloom.

 S. Lambeth
Some swallows in this district, & only two pairs of swifts, & no martins.  No wonder then that they are overrun with flies, which swarm in the summer months, & destroy their grapes.

When the Baromr is at 30 in S. Lambeth, it is 29-7 at Selborne, and 29-4 at Newton. My brother cut a good Romagna melon.

Timothy Turner cuts my grass for himself, a small crop.  Scarabaeus solstitialis first appears in my brother’s outlet: they are very punctual in their coming-out every year.  They are a small species, about half the size of the May chafer, & are known in some parts by the name fern-chafer.

Fifteen Whites dines this day at my Bro. B. White’s table; as did also a Mr Wells, a great, great, great grandson of the Revd John Longworth, in old times vicar of Selborne, who dyed about the year 1678.  Dr & Mrs Chandler returned to Selborne.

My brother’s straw-berries well-flavoured.  The vines here in bloom, & smell very sweet.