The Natural History of Selborne

Children gather strawberries every morning from the hanger where the tall beeches were felled in winter 1788.

Honey-dews, which make the planters in pain for their hops.  Hops are infested with aphides; look badly.

Lime trees are fragrant: the golden tassels are beautiful. Dr Chandler tells us that in the south of France, an infusion of the blossoms of the lime-tree, tilia, is in much esteem as a remedy for coughs, hoarseness, fevers, &c., & that at Nismes he saw an avenue of limes that was quite ravaged & torn to pieces by people greedily gathering the bloom, which they dryed & kept for their purposes. Upon the strength of this information we made some tea of lime-blossoms, & found it a very soft, well-flavoured, pleasant, saccharine julep, in taste much resembling the juice of liquorice.

Trenched four rows of celeri, good streight plants.  Lime trees in full bloom. Large honey-dews on my great oak, that attract the bees, which swarm upon it.  Some wheat is much lodged by the wind & rain.  There is reason to fear from the coldness & wetness of the season that the crop will not be good.  Windy, wet, cold solstices are never favourable to wheat, because they interrupt the bloom, & shake it off before it has perfomred it’s function.

A man brought me a cuckoo, found in the nest of a water-wagtail among the rocks of the hollow lane leading to Rood.  This bird was almost fledge.

Mrs Clement & daughters came.

Mr Churton came.  A nightingale continues to sing; but his notes are short and interrupted, & attended with a chur. A fly-catcher has a nest in my vines.  Young swallows settle on the grass-plots to catch insects.

Continual gales all thro’ this month, which interrupt the cutting my tall hedges.

Tempest, & much thunder to the N.W.  Neither cucumbers, nor kidney beans, nor annuals thrive on account of the cold blowing season. Timothy the tortoise is very dull, & spends most of his time under the shade of the vast, expanded leaves of the monk’s rhubarb.

Now the meadow is cleared, the brood-swallows sweep the face of the ground all day long; & from over that smooth surface collect a variety of insects for the support of their young.