The Natural History of Selborne

Blackcaps eat the berries of the honey-suckles. Mrs J. White, after long & severe campaign carried on against the Blattae molendinariae, which have of late invaded my house, & of which she has destroyed many thousands, finds that at intervals a fresh detachment of old ones arrives; & particularly during the hot season: for the windows being left open in the evenings, the males come flying in at the casements from the neighbouring houses, which swarm with them. How the females, that seem to have no perfect wings that they can use, can contrive to get form house to house, does not so readily appear. These, like many insects, when they find their present abodes over-stocked, have powers of migrating to fresh quarters. Since the Blattae have been so much kept under, the Crickets have greatly encreased in number.

Housed two loads of peat.

Goose-berries wither on the trees.

The thermometer for three or four days past has stood in the shade at Newton at 79, & 80.

My lower wall nut-tree casts it’s leaves in a very unusual manner.  No wall-nuts; the crop dropped off early in the summer.

Several of my neighbours went up the Hill (this being the day of the great review at Bagshot heath) whence they heard distinctly the discharges from the ordnance, & small arms, & saw the clouds of smoke from the guns.  The wind being N.E. they smelled, or seemed to smell, the scent of the gunpowder.  Wickham bushes, the scene of action, is more than 20 miles from hence.  The crouds of people assembled upon this occasion were great beyond anything seen at such meetings!

The guns at the camp on Bagshot Heath were heard distinctly this evening.

Floods out in several parts of the kingdom, & much hay & corn destroyed. Young buzzards follow their dams with a piping, wailing noise.