The Natural History of Selborne

Birds eat ivy-berries, which now begin to ripen: they are of great service to the winged race at this season, since most other berries ripen in the autumn.  The shell-less snails, called slugs, are in motion all the winter in mild weather, & commit great depredations on garden-plants, & much injure the green wheat, the loss of which is imputed to earth-worms; while the shelled snail, does not come forth at all ’til about April the tenth; and not only lays itself up pretty early in the autumn, in places secure from frost; but also throws-out round the mouth of it’s shell a thick operculum formed from it’s own saliva; so that it is perfectly secured, & corked-up as it were, from all inclemencies.  Why the naked slug should be so much more able to endure cold than it’s housed congener, I cannot pretend to say.

Horse-ants retire under the ground.  Wheat-ears appear.

The creeper, a pretty little nimble bird, runs up the bodies & boughs of trees with all the agility of a mouse.  It runs also on the lower side of the arms of trees with it’s back downward.  Stays with us all the winter.

Planted a raspberry bed.

The apricot-bloom, which came out early , seems to be much cut by the late frosts.  Peaches & Nect. now in fine bloom.

Earthworms travel about in rainy nights, as appears from their sinuous tracks on the soft muddy soil, perhaps in search of food.

Snake appears: toad comes forth.  Frogs spawn.  Horse-ants come forth.

Mrs Snooke’s old tortoise came out of the ground, but in a few days buried himself as deeps as ever.  Earth-worms lie out, & copulate.

Adoxa moschatellina.  The twigs which the rooks drop in building supply the poor with brush-wood to light their fires*.  Some unhappy pairs are not permitted to finish any nest ’til the rest have compleated yir building; as soon as they get a few sticks together a party comes & demolishes the whole.  As soon as rooks have finished their nests, & before they lay, the cocks begin the feed the hens, who receive their bounty with a fondling tremulous voice & fluttering wings, & all the little blandishments that are expressed by the young while in a helpless state.  This gallant deportment of the males is continued thro’ the whole season of incubation.  Theses birds do not copulate on trees, nor in their nests, but on the ground in open fields.

*Thus did the ravens supply the prophet with necessaries in the wilderness.

Nuthatch brings out & cracks her nuts, & strews the garden-walks with shells.  They fix them in a fork of a tree where two boughs meet: on the Orleans plum tree.