The Natural History of Selborne

‘Til now the whole month of Aug. has been dry and pleasant.  The evenings begin to feel chilly.

Finished tiling the new parlor in good dry condition just before the rain came.  The wall & timbers will be in much better order for this circumstance.  * The pair of martins brought-out all their young August 26: they still roost in the nest.  The nest was begun June 21.  Woolmer-forest produces young teals, & young large snipes; but never, that we can find, any young jack-snipes.

The large winged female ants, after they have wandered from their nests lose their wings & settle new colonies: are in their flying state food for birds, particulary hirundines.  No wasps: & if there were, there is no fruit for them.

A spotted water-hen shot in the forest.

White butter-flies settle on wet mud in crowds.  *No swift seen after August 14: so punctual are they in their migrations, or retreat!  The latest swift I ever saw was only once on Aug. 21, but they often withdraw by the 10.

Male & female ants come forth & migrate in vast troops: every ant-hill is in strange commotion & hurry.  The pair of martins which began to build on June 21 brought-out their brood this day in part:  (the rest remain in the nest, Aug 17)

Flocks of lap-wings migrate to the downs & uplands.

Finished the chimney of my parlor: it measures 30 feet from the hearth to the top.

After ewes & lambs are shorn there is great confusion & bleating, neither the dams nor the young being able to distinguish one another as before.  This embarrassment seems not so much to arise from the loss of fleece, which may occasion an alteration in their appearance, as from the defect of that notus odor, discriminating each individual personally: which also is confounded by the strong scent of the pitch & tar wherewith they are newly marked; for the brute creation recognize each other more from the smell that the sight; & in matters of Identity & Diversity appeal much more to their noses than to their eyes.

Reared the roof of my new building.

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On July 29 such vast rains fell about Iping, Bramshot, Haslemere, &c. that they tore vast holes in the turnpike-roads, covered several meadows with sand, & silt, blowed-up the heads of several ponds, carryed away part of the country-bridge at Iping, & the garden walls of the paper mill, & endangered the mill & house.  A paper-mill near Haselmere was ruined, & many 100 ae damaage sustained.  Much hay was sewpt away down the rivers, & some lives were lost.  A post-boy was drowned near Haselmere, & an other as he was passing from Farnham to Alton: the Gent: in the chaise saved himself by swimming.  These torrents were local; for at Lewes, which lies about the middle of the country of Sussex, they had a very wet time, but experienced none of these devastations.