The Natural History of Selborne

• 1793: April 30, 1793 – Saw two swallows at Gracious street.
• 1792: April 30, 1792 – Men tye their hops. Dressing some of the borders. Heavy thunderous clouds. Tulips blow. On this beautiful evening came all at once seven Swifts, which began to dash & play round the church. Chur-worm jars down at Dorton in swampy ground. Mrs Ben White, & her son Tom came from London.
• 1789: April 30, 1789 – Brother Thomas White, & daughter, & little Tom came.
• 1788: April 30, 1788 – Began to mow the orchard for the horses.  Timothy wighs 6 ae 13 oz. 10d.  Mole-cricket churs.
• 1787: April 30, 1787 – April 30 was cold & sharp at Rolle; when a number of martins formed two thick clusters on a ledge projecting in front of an house in one of the streets of that town.  They descended gently as they arrived one on another.
• 1784: April 30, 1784 – Goose-berry bushes leaf: quicksets still naked.  Pile-wort in full bloom.  Tulips shoot, & are strong.  Sowed a pint of scarlet kidney-beans.
• 1783: April 30, 1783 – Gardens want rain.  We water every day.  Cucumbers come.
• 1781: April 30, 1781 – Men pole their hops.  Dragon-fly & musca meridiana.  Ponds begin to be dry.
• 1780: April 30, 1780 – A sprig of Antrrhinum cymbalaria, the ivy-leaved Toadsflax, which was planted last year on a shady water-table of the wall of my house, grew at a vast rate, & extended itself a full nine feet; & it was in perpetual bloom ’til the hard frost came.  In the severity of the winter it seemd to die: but it now revives again with vigor, & shows the rudiments of flowers.  When in perfection it is a lovely plant. Lathraea squammaria blows in the coppice below the church-litten near the foot-bridge over the stream.
• 1779: April 30, 1779 – Two swifts seen at Puttenham in Surrey.  Bank-martins on the heaths all the way to London.
• 1776: April 30, 1776 – Birds silent for want of showers.  Acer majus in bloom.  The sycamore, when in bloom, affords great pabulum for the bees, & sends forth an honey-like smell.  All the maples have sccharine juices.
• 1775: April 30, 1775 – Gardens much injured by the heat.  White throat appears, & whistles, using odd gesticulations in the air when it mounts above the hedges.
• 1774: April 30, 1774 – Vine-shoots have been pinched by the frost.  Two house-martins up at Mr Yalden’s.  If bees, who are much the best setters of cucumbers, do not happen to take kindly to the frames, the best way is to tempt them by a little honey put on the male & female bloom.  When they are once induced to haunt the frames, they set all the fruit, & will hover with impatience round the lights in a morning, ’til the glasses are opened.
• 1772: April 30, 1772 – White-throat returns & whistles.  Golden-crested wren whistles: his note is as minute as his person.
• 1770: April 30, 1770 – Titlark sings: frogs migrate.
• 1769: April 30, 1769 – Fresh ling.  Hollibut.  Inyx.
• 1768: April 30, 1768 – The grass-hopper lark chirps concealed at the bottom of hedges.

• 1793: April 29, 1793 – I have seen no hirundo yet myself.  Sowed Columbines, two sorts; Scabius; Scarlet lychnis; Nigella; 10 weeks stocks; Mountain Lychnis.
• 1790: April 29, 1790 – Dr. Chandler, & lady came to the parsonage house.
• 1789: April 29, 1789 – Scarce a hirundo has been seen about this village.
• 1786: April 29, 1786 – Red-breasts have young.
• 1784: April 29, 1784 – The hoar-frost was so great that Thomas could hardly mow.  Bats out for the first time, I think, this spring: they hunt, & take the phalanae along by the sides of the hedges.  There had been this spring a pretty good flight of woodcocks about Liss.  If we have any of those birds of late years, it has been in the spring, in their return from the West, I suppose, to the Eastern coast.
• 1777: April 29, 1777 – The bark of oak now runs; & I am felling some trees.  Wwen trees are sawn-off, & thrown, a rushing sound is heard from the but, often attended with a little frothing & bubbling-out of the sap.  This rushing or hissing is occasioned by the motion of the air escaping thro’ the vessels of the wood.
• 1772: April 29, 1772 – Grass crisp, with a white frost.  Cut first cucumber, a large fruit.  Harsh wind.  Sowed annuals.
• 1771: April 29, 1771 – White throat.  Grass begins to grow.
• 1770: April 29, 1770 – Two swifts.
• 1768: April 29, 1768 – Grass-hopper lark chirps at eight o’ the Clock in the evening.

Black-winged stilt.

• 1793: April 28, 1793 – Wall-flowers full of bloom, & very fine.  Nightingales in my fields.
• 1792: April 28, 1792 – Planted in the mead-garden eleven rows of potatoes;  four of which were potatoes from Liverpool, sent to Dr Chandler by Mr Clarke.  Planted in the mead four rows of beans.
• 1790: April 28, 1790 – Full moon. Total eclipse.
• 1789: April 28, 1789 – Timothy the tortoise beings to eat dandelion.
• 1787: April 28, 1787 – Set Gunnory, the Bantam hen, on nine of her own eggs.
• 1784: April 28, 1784 – Grass-hopper lark whispers.
• 1779: April 28, 1779 – Five long-legged plovers, charadrius himantopus, were shot at Frinsham-pond.  There were three brace in all.  These are the most rare of all British birds.  Their legs are marvellously long for the bulk of their bodies.  To be in proportion of weight for inches the legs of Flamingo should be more than 10 feet in length.
• 1775: April 28, 1775 – Sun, sultry, fierce heat!  Midsummer evening.  The sun scorched øtil within an hour of setting.  Swfit appears at Manchester & Fyfield.  Apus, one single swift.  They usually arrive in pairs.  Parhelia, or odd halo round the sun.  Described since in Gent. mag.
• 1774: April 28, 1774 – Began to cut a little orchard grass for the horses.  Some few beeches are in leaf.
• 1772: April 28, 1772 – Drying & cold.  Black-caps abound.
• 1769: April 28, 1769 – Some mackrels.

Notes:
The long-legged plovers were black-winged stilts, still extraordinarly rare bird in England, being native to the Mediterranean. White writes up this incident at great length in NHoS letter XLIX:

“Our writers record it to have been found only twice in Great Britain. From all these relations it plainly appears that these long-legged plovers are birds of South Europe, and rarely visit our island; and when they do are wanderers and stragglers, and impelled to make so distant and northern an excursion from motives or accidents for which we are not able to account. “

Sammy the Titchwell Stilt frequented Norfolk from one of these unknowable motives.

The parheila, or sundog, is described several times over the few hundred years of the Gentleman’s Magazine, which often gave accounts of papers given to the various scientific societies. Here’s a mention in 1844.

Mr. Lever’s museum, click for larger.

• 1793: April 27, 1793 – Men begin to pole their hops.  Mountain snow-drop blows.
• 1792: April 27, 1792 – The middle Bantam hen sits in the barn.  Planted four rows of potatoes in the home garden.
• 1789: April 27, 1789 – Showers, windy.  One beech in the hanger shows some foliage.
• 1786: April 27, 1786 – Farmer Knight brought me 1/2 a ton of good meadow-hay.
• 1785: April 27, 1785 – Quick-set hedges look green.  Roads are choaked with dust.  Swallows frequent houses: some sit & dress themselves on trees, as if wet, & dirty.
• 1783: April 27, 1783 – Many swallows.  Strong Aurora!!!
• 1782: April 27, 1782 – Hyacinths in full bloom.  My sort is very fine.
• 1778: April 27, 1778 – INSERT: A day or two before any house-martins had been observed, Thomas Hoar distinctly heard pretty late one evening the twittering notes of those birds from under the eaves of my brewhouse, between the ceiling & the thatch. Now the quere is, whether those birds had harboured there the winter thro’, and were just awakening from their slumbers, or whether they had only just taken possession of that place unnoticed, & were lately arrived from some distant district. If the former was the case, they went not far to seek for a Hybernaculum, since they nestle every year along the eaves of that building. Mr Derham wrote word to the R. Society “that some time before any Swifts had been seen, (I think before the month of March was out), he head them squeaking behind the weather-tiles on the front of his parsonage-house.” It is a pity that so curious a Naturalist did not proceed to the taking-down some of the tiles, that he might have satisfyed his eyes as well as his hearing. As a notion had prevailed that Hirundines at first coming were lean & emaciated, I procured an H. martin to be shot as soon as it appeared: but the bird, when it come to be opened, was fat & fleshy. It’s stomach was full of the legs & wings of small coleoptera. There can be no doubt that the Horn shown to me at Mr Lever’s museum, vast as it was, belonged to the Genus of Bos: for it was concavum, antrorum verum lunatum laeve: whereas had it related to the Genus of Capra, it would have been concavum, sursum versum, erectum, scabrum. Neither can it by any means belong to the genus of Cervus, for then it would have been concavum, retorsum versum, intortum, rugosum. It must therefore of course have belonged to the Genus of Bos.
• 1777: April 27, 1777 – Notwithstanding the dry winter & spring, the pond on the common is brim full.
• 1775: April 27, 1775 – Early tulips blow.  A pair of house-martins appear, & frequent the nest at the end of the house; a single one also wants to go in.  THese must be of the family bred there last year.  The nest was built last summer. The martins throw the rubbish out of their nest.  Bank-martins abound on short-heath: they come full as soon as the house-swallow.  Two swans inhabit Oakhanger-ponds: they came of themselves in the winter with three more.  Pulled won many old House-martin’s nests; they were full of rubbish, & the exuviae of the Hippobosca hirundinis in the pupa state.  These insects obtain so much sometimes in yir nests, as to render the place insupportable to the young, & to oblige them to throw themselves to the ground.  The case is the same sometimes with young swifts.
• 1774: April 27, 1774 – Oaks are felled: the bark runs freely.  Many swallows.  Two swifts round the church.
• 1772: April 27, 1772 – Ground dries, & binds up very hard.
• 1769: April 27, 1769 – Dutch plaice abound. Turbots.

Mr Lever’s museum, the Holophusikon, was a huge collection of interesting stuff connected with natural history in Leicester House– one of the largest and latest Cabinets of Curiosities, housing much of the specimens brought back by Captain Cook from around the globe. The ox horn White is discussing though seems to have been an ancient British one.

• 1792: April 26, 1792 – Two nightingales within hearing: cuckoos come round the village.
• 1791: April 26, 1791 – Some of the oaks, planted on the commons between Odiham & Reading about the time that I first knew that road, begin to be felled.  Swallows.  Goslings.  Cherries, apples, & pears in beautiful bloom along the road: grass forward, & corn looks well.
• 1789: April 26, 1789 – This morning I saw a certificate from the town of Wymburn Mistner in the country of Dorset to the parish of Selborne, acknowledging William Dewye to be parishioner of the said town.  This paper is dated Apr. 20, 1729: so that Will: Dewye, & wife, both still living, have been certificate people here exactly 60 years.
• 1788: April 26, 1788 – Harsh, windy unpleasing weather for many days.
• 1786: April 26, 1786 – My hay is out.  Many cock-pheasants are heard to crow on Wick-hill farm. We have a large stock of partridges left to breed-round the parish.
• 1785: April 26, 1785 – My brother Thom. made his melon-bed.  Red-start sings.
• 1784: April 26, 1784 – Sowed a crop of onions, & several sorts of cabbage: pronged the asparagus beds.  Radishes grow.
• 1783: April 26, 1783 – Several swallows on the road.  Fine clover in Oxfordshire, & Berks.  Barley-fields work finely.  Vivid Aurora.
• 1781: April 26, 1781 – A pair of Nightingales haunt my fields: the cock sings nightly in the Portugal-laurel, & balm of Gilead fir.
• 1779: April 26, 1779 – Opened the leaves of the Apricot-trees, & killed many hundreds of caterpillars which infest their foliage.  These insects would lay the tree bare.  They roll the leaves up in a kind of web.  N.B. By care & attention the leaves were saved this year.
• 1776: April 26, 1776 – Pheasants crow.  Ring-doves coe.  Nect: & peaches swell.  Hops are poling.  The latest summer birds of passage generally retire the first: this is the case with the hirundo apis, the caprimulgus, & the stoparola.  Birds are never joyous in dry springs: showery seasons are their delight for obvious reasons.
• 1774: April 26, 1774 – No house-martins seen yet, save one by chance.  Apricots, peaches, & nectarines swell: sprinkled the trees with water, & watered the roots.
• 1773: April 26, 1773 – Went to London with Bro: & sister J. W.
• 1772: April 26, 1772 – Barley-fields like to be very wet, & lumpy.
• 1771: April 26, 1771 – Wheat begins to mead.  Redstart whistles.  Cuckow sings this year long before ye leaf appears.
• 1769: April 26, 1769 – Herrings abound, & are the usual forerunners of mackerels.
• 1768: April 26, 1768 – I saw a small Ichneumon-fly laying it’s eggs on, ir in the aurelia of a papilio.

Notes:
The certificate in the 1789 entry has its history in the Poor Relief Act of 1662. Anyone leaving the parish in which they were born was required to obtain a Settlement Certificate, which obligated their home parish to pay for their return and upkeep if age or illness required them to resort to the primitive welfare system. It was repealed in 1836.

• 1791: April 25, 1791 – Mowed some coarse grass in the orchard for the horses.
• 1788: April 25, 1788 – Wall-cherries loaded with bloom. The wild meris, cherry, blossoms.
• 1787: April 25, 1787 – Set 9 Bantham’s eggs to be put under a sitting-hen at Newton.
• 1785: April 25, 1785 – Radishes dry, & hot.
• 1778: April 25, 1778 – The Lathraea squammaria, a rare plant, is just discovered in bloom in the Litton-coppice at Selborne, just below the church, near the foot-bridge.
• 1777: April 25, 1777 – The titlark rises, & sings sweetly in its descent.  The Ring-dove hangs on its wings, & toys in the air.
• 1776: April 25, 1776 – The wolf-fly appears in windows, & pierces other flies with his rostrum: is of a yellow hue: an asilus of Linn.
• 1775: April 25, 1775 – Ivy-berries fall off dead-ripe.
• 1774: April 25, 1774 – Redstart returns.  Wryneck returns, & pipes.
• 1772: April 25, 1772 – Conops calcitrans.  Grass very forward in the fields.  The ring dove cooes, & hangs about on the wing in a toying manner.

Stages of the field cricket, from Insects, Their Ways and Means of Living (1930), R.E. Snodgrass.

• 1793: April 24, 1793 – When Thomas got up to brew at four o’ the clock, he heard some stone-curlews pass by over the house in their way to the uplands.  In the evening they flie over the village downwards, towards the brook, & meadows, where they seem to spend the night.
• 1790: April 24, 1790 – Planted potatoes & beans in the meadow-garden.  Much thunder & hail at Alton.
• 1788: April 24, 1788 – Grass-hopper lark whispers.  Cowslips blow.
• 1787: April 24, 1787 – Nep. Ben White left us.
• 1784: April 24, 1784 – Planted ten rows of potatoes against the Wid: Dewye’s garden.  Planted one in the best garden. John Carpenter buys now & then of Mr Powlett of Rotherfield a chest-nut tree or two of the edible kind: they are large, & tall, & contain 60 or 70 feet of timber each.  The wood & bark of these trees resemble the oak; but the wood is softer & the grain more open.  The use that the buyer turns them to is cooperage; because he says the wood is light for buckets, jets &c. & will not shrink.  The grand objection to these trees is their disposition to be shaky; & what is much worse, cup-shaky: viz: the substance of these trees parts like the scales of an onion, & comes out in round plugs from the heart.  This, I know, was also the case with those fine chest-nut-trees that were lately cut at Bramshot-place against Portsmouth road.  Now as the soil at Rotherfield is chalk, & at Bramshot, sand; it seems as if this disposition to be shaky was not owing to soil alone, but the nature of that tree.  There are two groves of chest-nuts in Rotherfield-park, which are tall, & old, & have rather over-stood their prime.  J: Carpenter gives only 8d a foot for this timber, on account of the defect above-mentioned.
• 1779: April 24, 1779 – Hail, stormy, strong wind. The wind broke-off the great elm in the churchyard short in two: the head of which injured the yew-tree. The garden is much damaged by the wind. Many tulips & other flowers are injured by the hail. The lighting on friday morning shivered the masts of the Terrible man of war in Portsmouth harbour. The field-crickets in the short Lithe have cast their skins, are much encreased in bulk, show their wings, being now arrived in *maturity*. ‘Til this alteration they are in their pupa-state, but are alert, & eat; yet cannot chirp, nor propagate their kind.
• 1777: April 24, 1777 – The cock green-finch begins to toy, & hang about on the wing in a very peculiar manner.  These gestures proceed from amorous propensities.
• 1776: April 24, 1776 – Hot-beds never do so well in long dry fits of weather:  they do not ferment enough.  The hot dry weather hurries the flowers out of bloom.
• 1774: April 24, 1774 – No house-martins appear: they are very backward in coming.  One swift seen.
• 1772: April 24, 1772 – Martins appear but do not frequent houses.  Black cap whistles.  Showers about.  Swift returns.  Planted potatoes, four rows. Sowed box of polyanth-seed from London.  Sowed annuals.
• 1771: April 24, 1771 – Stone-curlew returns & clamours.

Notes:
The word ‘maturity’ in the 1779 entry was written in Greek. ‘Thomas’ is Thomas Hoar, White’s manservant, who often kept the weather records when he was away.

• 1793: April 23, 1793 – Mowed the terrace.  Cut the first cucumber.  Pulled the first radishes.  A swallow over my meadow.
• 1792: April 23, 1792 – A nest of young blackbirds destroyed by a cat in my garden.
• 1789: April 23, 1789 – Swallows & martins do not yet frequent houses.  Women hoe wheat.
• 1788: April 23, 1788 – Gave away 24 eggs of my Bantham kind among my neighbours.
• 1787: April 23, 1787 – Cuckow sings on the hill.  Nightingale sings in my outlet.
• 1786: April 23, 1786 – Grass lamb.  Timothy, if you offer him some poppy leaves, will eat a little; but does not seek for food.
• 1784: April 23, 1784 – Timothy the tortoise comes forth from his winter-retreat.
• 1783: April 23, 1783 – No hirudines.
• 1779: April 23, 1779 – The caterpillars of some phalaenae attack the foliage of the apricots again.
• 1775: April 23, 1775 – Swallows abound; but no house-martin, or black-cap.  No swift.

• 1791: April 22, 1791 – The merise, or wild cherries in vast bloom.  Grass grows, & clover looks very fine.  Mr & Mrs B. White, & Hannah left us & went to Newton.
• 1789: April 22, 1789 – Young broods of goslings.  Wood-sorrel, & anemony blow.  The cuckoo cries along the hanger.  Wheat thrives.
• 1784: April 22, 1784 – The spring backward to an unusual degree! Some swallows are come, but I see no insects except bees, & some phalanae in the evenings.  Daffodils begin to blow.
• 1783: April 22, 1783 – Young goslings abound.  No hirundines.
• 1780: April 22, 1780 – Tortoise comes-forth & walks round his coop: will not eat lettuce yet: goes to sleep at four o’clock p:m:  In the hot weather last summer a flight of house-crickets were dispersed about the village: one got from the garden into my kitchen-chimney, & continued there all winter.  There is now a considerable encrease & many young appear in the evening running about, & hunting for crumbs.  From this circumstance it should seem that the impregnated females migrate.  This is the case with ants.
• 1776: April 22, 1776 – Codlings blow.  Hot-beds want rain to make them ferment.
• 1775: April 22, 1775 – Several beeches in the hanger begin to leaf.  Black snails abound.  Womrs, when sick, seem to come out of the Ground to die: under the same circumstances some amphibiae quit the water.  * Thomas kept a journal of incidents during my absence.
• 1774: April 22, 1774 – Cuckoo cries.
• 1773: April 22, 1773 – Grasshopper-lark chirps.  Alauda minima locustae voce stridet.
• 1772: April 22, 1772 – The bloom of the fruit-trees on the wall does not seem to be destroyed.  Sowed all sorts of garden seeds as carrots, parsneps, &c.  Cucumbers swell.
• 1771: April 22, 1771 – Nightingale.  No more swallows appear.  Great showers about.
• 1770: April 22, 1770 – Snowy, stormy.
• 1768: April 22, 1768 – Cut a brace of large cucumbers.

• 1792: April 21, 1791 – Planted 4 rows of my own potatoes in the garden.  Mowed the terrace walk.
• 1788: April 21, 1788 – Timothy begins to eat: he crops the daisies, & walks down to the fruit-wall to browse on the lettuces.  Mr Ventris observed a little whirl-wind, which originated in the road before his house, taking up the dust & straws that came in it’s way.  After mounting up thro’ one of the elms before the Yard, & carrying away two of the rooks nests in which were young squabs; it then went off, leaving the court-yard strewed with dust & straws, & scraps of twigs, & the little naked rooks sprawling on the ground.  A pair of rooks belonging to one of these nests built again & had a late brood.
• 1787: April 21, 1787 – Mowed the grass-walks in part: they were crisp with hoar frost.  Cut some grass in the orchard for the horses.  Swallow on the chimney.
• 1786: April 21, 1786 – The voice of the cuckow is heard in the hanger.
• 1785: April 21, 1785 – My brother Tho: planted his potatoes.  He sowed purple broccoli.  My brother cut four cucumbers.  His plants, & Benjamin’s, are strong, & in good order.
• 1781: April 21, 1781 – White-throat on the road.
• 1780: April 21, 1780 – The tortoise heaves up the eart, & puts out its head.
• 1779: April 21, 1779 – Lathraea squammaria, in the Church-litten coppice near the bridge among the hasel-stems, is out of bloom.
• 1778: April 21, 1778 – Frost, snow-storm.
• 1774: April 21, 1774 – Asparagus begins to sprout.
• 1773: April 21, 1773 – Field-crickets have opened their holes: they are full-grown, but have only the rudiments of wings, & are probably in their larva state; yet they certainly eat, as appears by their dung.  It seems likely that they die every winter, leaving eggs behind them.  About Septemr all the mouths of their holes are obliterated.  They do not cry ’til about the middle of May.  Their noise is shrill & loud.  This is by no means a common insect.  They probably cast another coat before their wings are perfect, & they capable of shrilling.
• 1772: April 21, 1772 – The turtle-dove returns.  Swallows again.
• 1770: April 21, 1770 – Vast storm that did much damage.  * In my absence the ring-ouzels made their regular spring visit en passant, but the seemed to be few that passed this way.
• 1769: April 21, 1769 – Hirundo apus!!!  Blackcap has a most sweet and mellow note.  The redstarts frequent orchards & gardens: the white throats are scattered all over the fields far from neighbourhoods.  Their notes are mean & much a like; short & without much variety.  The whitethroat is a most common bird.  Young thrushes.  The large species of bats appears.  Nightingales abound.