The Natural History of Selborne

Spring-keepers come up in the well-bucket.  How they get down there does not appear: they are called by Mr Derham– squillae aquaticae.

My well is very low, & the water foul.

Gracious street stream is dry from James Kinght’s ponds, where it rises, to the foot bridge at the bottom of the church litton closes.  Near that bridge, in the corner, the spring is perennial, & runs to Dorton, where it joins the Well-head stream.

Red wings return, & are seen on Selborne down. There are no haws this year for the redwings, & field fares.

Gathered in the royal russets, & the nonpareils, a few of each.  Gathered the berberries.

Gathered in more dearlings: the fruit is small, but the crop on that single tree amounts to nine bushels, & upwards.

Gathered in a bushel more of dearlings.  Mrs Chandler returns home from the Harteley inoculation.

Gathered in near 4 bushels of dearling apples from the meadow tree: the crop is great, but the fruit is small.

Gathered the Cardillac pears, a bushel; the knobbed russets 2 bushels; the kitchen, ruddy apple at the end of the fruit-wall, near a bushel.

“there the snake throws her enamel’d skin”

About the middle of this month we found in a field near a hedge the slough of a large snake, which seemed to have  been newly cast.  From circumstances it appeared as if turned wrong side outward, & drawn off backward, like a stocking, or a woman’s glove.  Not only the whole skin, but the scales from the very eyes are peeled off, & appear in the head of the slough like a pair of spectacles.  The reptile, at the time of changing his coat, had intangled himself intricately in the grass & weeds, so that the friction of the stlaks & blades might promote this curious shifting of his exuviae.  “lubrica serpens/Exuit in spinis vestem.”   It would be a most entertaining sight could a person be an eye-witness to such a feat, & see the snake in the act of changing his garment.  As the convexity of the scales of the eyes in the slough are now inward, that circumstance alone is a proof that the skin has been  turned: not to mention that now the present inside is much darker, than the outer.  If you look through the scales of the snake’s eyes from the concave side, viz: as the reptile used them, they lessen objects much.  Thus it appears from what has been said that snakes crawl out of the mouth of their own sloughs, & quit the tail part last; just as eels are skinned by a cook maid.  While the scales of the eyes are growing loose, & a new skin is forming, the creature, in appearance, must be blind, & feel itself in an awkward uneasy situation.