The Natural History of Selborne

Beehive by T. Bewick

• 1792: July 8, 1792 – The Poet of Nature lets few rural incidents escape him. In his Summer he mentions the whetting of a scythe as a pleasing circumstance, not from the real sound, which is harsh, grating, & unmusical; but from the train of summer ideas which it raises in the imagination. No one who loves his garden & lawn but rejoices to hear the sound of the mower on an early, dewy morning.–
  “Echo no more returns the chearful soundOf sharpening scythe.”
  Milton also, as a pleasing summer-morning occurrence, says,
  …”the mower whets his scythe.”
  — L’Allegro
• 1791: July 8, 1791 – Cut chardon-heads for boiling: artichokes dry, & not well-flavoured.  Roses in high beauty.  My nieces make Rasp jam.  Goose-berries not finely flavoured.
• 1788: July 8, 1788 – The black-cluster vines from Selborne are in bloom, & smell delicately!
• 1786: July 8, 1786 – The rick sweats, & fumes, & is in fine order.  The pond at Faringdon is dry; my well is very low, having been much exhausted by long waterings.  Received five gallons, & a pint of brandy from Mr Edmd Woods.
• 1785: July 8, 1785 – Ricked my hay, which makes but a very small cob.  All the produce of the great mead was carried at two loads; & all that grew on the slip was brought up by the woman & boy on their backs.  My quantity this year seems to be about one third of a good crop.  In a plentiful year I gat about seven good Jobbs.  Thatched the rick.
• 1784: July 8, 1784 – Gloomy & heavy.  Much hay housed.  Cool gale.  Pitch-darkness.
• 1782: July 8, 1782 – Bramshot
  Rode to Fir-grove in the parish of Bramshot, & saw the house & garden.  The south wall of the kitchen-garden is covered with a range of vines of the sort called the millers-grape.  Each vine was trained within a very narrow space, & their boughs upright: yet they had fine wood, & promised for much fruit, & were almost in full bloom.  Mr Richardson’s vines, my sort, did not blow then: but Fir-grove is much more sheltered than Bramshot-place.  The soils are the same, a warm sandy loam.  When we came to Evely-corner a hen-partridge came out of a ditch, & ran along shivering with her wings, & crying out as if wounded, & unable to get from us.  While the dam acted this distress, the boy who attended me, saw her brood, that was small & unable to fly, run for shelter into an old fox-earth under the bank.  So wonderful a power is instinct.
• 1780: July 8, 1780 – The excrement of the tortoise is hard & solid: but when that creature urines, as it often does plentifully, it voids after the water a soft white matter, much like the dung of birds of prey, which dries away into a sort of chalk-like substance.
• 1777: July 8, 1777 – Rain, rain, rain.  Bees cluster round the mouth of one hive; but cannot swarm.  Bees must be starved soon, having no weather fit for gathering honey no sun, nor dry days.  A swarm of bees, which had waited many days for an opportunity, came-out in a short gleam of sunshine just before an heavy shower, between 3 & 4 in the afternoon, & settled on the balm of Gilead-fir.  When an hive was fixed over them they went into it of themselves.  The young swallows that come out are shivering, & ready to starve.
• 1776: July 8, 1776 – Second swarm of bees on the same bough of the balm of Gilead fir.  Turned the hay-cocks which are in a bad state.  Cherries delicate, Mr Grimm, my artist, came from London to take some of our finest views.
• 1774: July 8, 1774 – Bees gather much from the bloom of the buck-thorn, rhanmus catharticus & somewhat from the new shoots of the laurel.
• 1772: July 8, 1772 – Planted out African & french marigolds.
• 1771: July 8, 1771 – Ricked the two jobs of hay, and finish’d my rick in delicate order.

The ‘poet of nature’ is James Thomson

• 1792: July 7, 1792 – Farmer Hoare’s son shot a hen Wood-chat (Lanius s. senator) or small Butcher-bird as it was washing at Well-head, attended by the cock.  It is a rare bird in these parts.  In it’s craw were insects.
• 1791: July 7, 1791 – S. Lambeth
  Fine, showers, clouds.
• 1790: July 7, 1790 – Grasshopper-lark whispers in my outlet.  Turned the cocks of hay.
• 1788: July 7, 1788 – Mrs White made much Rsp, & curran jams.
• 1787: July 7, 1787 – Preserved some Duke cherries, very fine fruit.  The pupils of the eyes of animals are diversifyed: in all the birds & fishes I have seen they are round, as in men: but those of horses, & cows, & sheep & goats & I think deer & camels, are oblong from corner to corner of the eye.  The pupils of the domestic cat differ from those of all other quadrupeds; for they are long & narrow, yet capable of great dilation, & standing near at right angles with the opening of the eye-lids.  The eys of wasps are said to be lunated in the shape of a crescent.
• 1786: July 7, 1786 – Alton 
  Many swifts near Kingston.  Vast rain at Bagshot.  Hops are healthy round Alton, & Selborne.
• 1784: July 7, 1784 – Vast damage done in various parts of the kingdom by thunder-storms & floods, from Yorkshire all across to Plymouth.
• 1783: July 7, 1783 – The young cuckow sits upon the nest, which will no longer contain.
• 1781: July 7, 1781 – Timothy the tortoise, who weighed April 2: after fasting all the winter on six pounds 8 oun. & 3/4: weighs now seven pounds, & one ounce: weighed last august six pounds, & fifteen ounces. From the encreased number of the Swifts, it seems as if they had brought out many of their young. About eight in the evening, Swifts get together in a large party, & course round the environs of the church, as if teaching their broods the art of flying. As yet they do not retire ’til three quarters after 8 o’ the clock; & before they withdraw, the bats come forth: so that day & night animals take each others places in a curious succession! All the swifts that play around the church do not seem to roost under it’s eaves. Some pairs, I know, reside under some of the cottage roofs. Three or four pairs of lapwings hatched their broods this summer on the common: the young, which run long before they can flie, sculk among the fern. The usually affect low, moist situations.
• 1779: July 7, 1779 – Vipers are big with young.
• 1777: July 7, 1777 – Winter-like: we are obliged to keep fires.
• 1774: July 7, 1774 – Bees swarm & sheep are shorn.  My firs did not blow this year.
• 1773: July 7, 1773 – Cut great part of my great mead.
• 1772: July 7, 1772 – Watered the ground for planting of annuals.  Watered the garden plentifully.  Planted out a double row of China-asters.
• 1771: July 7, 1771 – Myriads of frogs, a second brood, migrate from J. Knight’s ponds.
• 1770: July 7, 1770 – Polygala vulg. in flower.  Mole-cricket churs.

• 1792: July 6, 1792 – Mr Eveleigh says, that the churring of a fern-owl is like the noise of a razor-grinder’s wheel.
• 1791: July 6, 1791 – London
  Many martins in Lincolns inn fields.
• 1788: July 6, 1788 – The late burning season has proved fatal to many deer in elevated situations, where the turf being quite scorched up, the stock in part perished for want.  This is said in particular to have been the case at Up-park in Sussex.  A want of water might probably have been one occasion of this mortality. Some fallow deer have dyed in the Holt.
• 1785: July 6, 1785 – Some young Swifts seem to be out: they settle on, & cling to the walls of houses, & seem to be at a loss where to go; are perhaps looking for their nest.
• 1783: July 6, 1783 – Some young martins came out of the nest over the garden-door.  This nest was built in 1777, & has been used ever since. As the summer has been dry, & we have drawn much water for the garden, I caused my well to be plumbed, & found we have yet 13 feet of water.  When we were measuring I was desirious of trying the depth of Bentham’s well, which becomes dry every summer; & was surprized to find it 25 feet shallower than my own: the former being only 38 feet deep, & the latter 63.
• 1782: July 6, 1782 – Several titlarks nests were mowed-out in the St foin.
• 1781: July 6, 1781 – Brisk gale.  The wheat, in large fields, undulates before the gale in a most amusing manner.
• 1778: July 6, 1778 – The thunder-clouds sunk all away in the night; & we have had no rain.  My well sinks very fast.  Watered the garden, which is much scorched.
• 1777: July 6, 1777 – My st foin lies in a rotting state. Birds are very voracious in their squab state, as appears from the consequences of eating which they eject from their nests in marvelous quantities: as they arrive so rapidly at their full maturity, much nutrition must necessarily be wanted.
• 1776: July 6, 1776 – The bees that have not swarmed lie clustering round the mouths of the hives.  Took off the frames from the cucumrs: those under the hand-glasses begin to show fruit.  Hay lies in a bad state.
• 1775: July 6, 1775 – Wasps begin to come.  Growing weather.
• 1774: July 6, 1774 – Farmer Canning plows with two teams of asses, one in the morning, & one in the afternoon: at night these asses are folded on the fallows; & in the winter they are kept in a straw-yard where they make dung.
• 1773: July 6, 1773 – All vegetation in gardens seems to stand still.
• 1772: July 6, 1772 – Young partridges are fliers.  Vines continue to blow.  Monotropa hypopithys emerges and blows.
• 1771: July 6, 1771 – Young swallows appear.  Cocked the hay in large cocks.  No kindly, regular dews all the summer; so that the walks and grass-plots were seldom well-mowed.
• 1770: July 6, 1770 – Phallus impudicus olet.  Young daws come forth.  Cut my St. foin: a vast crop.  Vast showers about.
• 1769: July 6, 1769 – Finished my hay-rick consisting of about seven tons without a drop of rain.
• 1768: July 6, 1768 – No sun for several days.  Bad time for corn.  No cucumbers under hand-glasses will set.

• 1792: July 5, 1792 – The Provost of Oriel, & lady came.
• 1791: July 5, 1791 – London
  Rasps come in.  Many Martins in the green park.  In a fruit-shop near St. James were set out to sale black cluster-grapes, pine apples, peaches, nectarines, & Orleans plums.
• 1789: July 5, 1789 – My scarlet straw-berries are good: what we eat at S. Lambeth were stale, & bad.  A peat-cutter brought me lately from Cranmoor a couple of snipe’s eggs which are beautifully marbled.  They are rather large, & long for the size of the bird, & not bigger at one end than the other.  The parent birds had not sat on them.
  * These eggs, I find since, were the eggs of a Churn-owl: the eggs of Snpies, differ much from the former in size, shape, & colour.  The peat-cutter was led into the mistake by finding his eggs in a bog, or moor.
• 1788: July 5, 1788 – The fly-catchers build again in the vines with a view to a second brood.  Timothy grazes on the grass-plot.  Some dishes of wood-strawberries are brought to the door.
• 1787: July 5, 1787 – Flowers hurried, & injured by the heat.  Curious pinks.
• 1785: July 5, 1785 – Young cocci abound again on the vines.  Began to cut the meadow-grass: it is very scanty, not half a crop.  Men sow turnips; but the seeds lie on the ground without vegetating.  Those that sprout are soon eaten by the fly.
• 1784: July 5, 1784 – Timothy Turner cuts Baker’s hill, the crop of which he has bought.  It is St foin run to seed, the 17th crop.
• 1783: July 5, 1783 – Tim: Turner bought, & carryed-off my St foin, the 16th crop.  It was over-ripe, & not so large a burden as the last.  The St foin was all run to seed.  The garden wants rain.
• 1780: July 5, 1780 – Began to cut the tall hedges.  Put a bed of moss round the white cucumbers.  Young partridges run.
• 1778: July 5, 1778 – We have had no thunder-shower all this summer, tho’ many have fallen in sight of us.  Much mischief by this thunder in distant parts.
• 1776: July 5, 1776 – Field-crickets are pretty near silent; they begin their shilling cry about the middle of May.
• 1774: July 5, 1774 – Swallows feed their young in the air.  Martins, & swallows, that have numerous families, are continually feeding them: while swifts that have but two young to maintain, seem much at their leisure, & do not attend on their nests for hours together, nor appear at all in blowing wet days.  Swifts retire to their nests in very heavy showers.
• 1773: July 5, 1773 – Cold starving weather: nothing grows.
• 1772: July 5, 1772 – Frogs migrate with the showers of yesterday.  Dust flies.  No appearance of rain left.
• 1771: July 5, 1771 – Cut the slip and part of the mead.  Elder in full bloom.
• 1770: July 5, 1770 – Sultry.  Showers at a distance.  The thermr 73 abroad in the shade.

• 1790: July 4, 1790 – The woman, who brought me two fern-owl eggs last year on July 14, on this day produced me two more one of which had been laid this morning, as appears plainly, because there was only one in the nest the evening before. They were found, as last July, on the verge of the down above the hermitage, under a beechen shrub on the naked ground. Last year those eggs were full of young, & just ready to be hatched. The circumstances point out the exact time when these curious nucturnal, migratory birds lay their eggs and hatch their young. Fern-owls, like snipes, stone-curlews, & some other birds, make no nest. Birds that build on the ground do not make much of nests.
• 1789: July 4, 1789 – A cock red-backed butcher-bird, or flusher, was shot in Hartley-gardens, where it had built a nest.  My garden is in high beauty, abounding with solstitial flowers, such as roses, corn-flags, late orange-lillies, pinks, scarlet lychnises, &c. &c.  The early honey-suckles were in their day full of blossoms, & so fragrant, that they perfumed the street with their odour: the late yellow honey-suckle is still in high perfection, & is a most lovely shrub; the only objection is that having a limber stem, & branches, it does not make a good standard.
• 1788: July 4, 1788 – Gathered cherries for preserving.  Cut a doz. of artichokes.  Braod beans come in.  Sowed endive.
• 1787: July 4, 1787 – Timothy Turner cuts Baker’s hill, the 20th crop: over ripe.
• 1785: July 4, 1785 – Gathered several pounds of cherries to preserve: they are very fine.
• 1784: July 4, 1784 – On this day my Godson, Littleton Etty discovered a young Cuckow in one of the yew hedges of the vicarage garden, sitting in a small nest that would scarce contain the bird, tho’ not half grown. By watching in a morning we found that the owners of the nest were hedge-sparrows, who were much busied in feeding their great booby. The nest is in so secret a place that it is to be wondered how the parent Cuckow could discover it. Tho’ the bird is very young it is very fierce, gaping, & striking at peoples fingers, & heaving up by way of menace, & striving to intimidate those that approach it. This is now only the fourth young cuckow that I have ever seen in a nest: three of those h. sparrows, & one in that of a tit-lark. As I rose up the N. field-hill lane I saw young partridges, that were about two or three days old, skulking in the cart-ruts; while the dams ran hovering & crying up the horse-track, as if wounded, to draw off my attention.
• 1782: July 4, 1782 – My flower-bank is now in high beauty.
• 1781: July 4, 1781 – The bloom of the lime hangs in beautiful golden tassels.
• 1780: July 4, 1780 – Female ants, big with egg, come-out from under the stairs.
• 1777: July 4, 1777 – New moon.  The vines begin to blow.  They blowed in 1774 June 26: in 1775 June 7: & in 1776 June 25.
• 1775: July 4, 1775 – Whortle-berries ripe.
• 1774: July 4, 1774 – Fern-owls breed but two young at a time: but breed, I think, twice in a summer.
• 1773: July 4, 1773 – Hops do not cover their poles well, checked perhaps by the cold, black weather: they are pretty much infested by aphides, that begin to abound.
• 1772: July 4, 1772 – Shattering, soft showers all day.  Dry weather has lasted just a month.  Ground not wetted-in, half an inch.
• 1771: July 4, 1771 – Ricked 6 jobbs of meadow hay in curious order, and added the St foin to it.
• 1770: July 4, 1770 – Sultry.  Thunder-like clouds rising on all sides.  Heavy rain.  Roses blow but poorly.  Large titmouse makes his spring note.
• 1769: July 4, 1769 – Ricked my St foin in curious order: there were five small loads without a drop of rain.
• 1768: July 4, 1768 – First young swallows.  Cut the first succade-melon.  Grasshopper-lark sings day and night.

• 1791: July 3, 1791 – My brother’s cow, when there is no extraordinary call for cream, produces three pounds of butter each week.  The footman churns the butter overnight, & puts it in water; in the morning one of my nieces beats it, & makes it up, & prints it.  Mr M. black cluster-grapes in his pine-house seem to be well-ripened.
• 1790: July 3, 1790 – My hay made into small cocks.  Young swallows come out, & are fed on the wing.  Wood straw-berries ripen.
• 1789: July 3, 1789 – Alton
  Young swallows on the top of a chimney.  The western sun almost roasted us between Guilford & Farnham, shining directly into our chaise.
• 1788: July 3, 1788 – Red-backed butcher-bird, or flusher at Little comb.  Gathered a good mess of Rasps for jam.
• 1786: July 3, 1786 – The fruit of Dr Wesdale’s great St. Germain pear swells, & grows large.  Dwarf kidney-beans begin to pod.  A cloud of swifts over Clapham: they probably have brought out their young.  On this day Thomas got up all my hay in good order, & finished my rick, which contains eight good jobbs or loads; at least six tuns. Thatched & secured my hay-rick.  Two jobbs of the hay were from Baker’s hill, the other six from the meadow, & slip.  Baker’s hill cut the 19th year: the Saint foin is got very thin, but other grasses prevail.
• 1783: July 3, 1783 – Mr Richardson’s garden abounds with fruit, which ripens a fortnight before mine.  His kitchen-crops are good, tho’ the soil is so light & sandy.  Sandy soil much better for garden-crops than chalky.
• 1780: July 3, 1780 – The tortoise weighs six pounds & three quarters averdupoise; six pds. 12 oun:
• 1779: July 3, 1779 – Hops are remarkably bad, covered with aphides, & honey-dews.
• 1778: July 3, 1778 – Thatched the hay-ricks: delicate hay.
• 1776: July 3, 1776 – Black-caps are great thieves among the cherries.  The flycatcher is a very harmless & honest bird, medling with nothing but insects.
• 1773: July 3, 1773 – Ricked my St foin, five jobbs, into a large cock.  It has suffered less than could be expected.  Has lost it’s smell.  Is got full of coarse grass.
• 1772: July 3, 1772 – Field-pease suffer.  Watered the garden well.
• 1770: July 3, 1770 – Red pinks begin to blow.  Blackcap sings sweetly.  Titlark sings, & black bird.

• 1790: July 2, 1790 – Two heavy showers at Guildford with thunder.
• 1789: July 2, 1789 – S. Lambeth
  Cherries sold in the streets, but very bad.  Young fly-catchers come out at Selborne.
• 1785: July 2, 1785 – The heat at noon yeasterday was so great that it scorched the white cucumbers under the hand-glasses, & injured them much.  Annuals die with the heat.  Took away the moss from the white cucumbers, because it seemed to scald them.
• 1784: July 2, 1784 – Began to cut my meadow-grass; a good crop.  Mr & Mrs Richardson left us.  Low creeping mists.  Yellow even.
• 1783: July 2, 1783 – The foliage on most trees this year is bad.  Vast damage this day by lightening in many counties!! Great thunder-shower at Lymington, & in the New forest, & in Wilts, & Dorest, & at Birmingham, & Edinburg.
• 1782: July 2, 1782 – Cut my St foin, & sold it to John Carpenter.  This is the 15th crop.  It continues as good as it has been for some years.
• 1781: July 2, 1781 – Made my rick of meadow-hay, which contains six jobbs, without one drop of rain.  Some part of it would have been better, I think, had there been some sun on the day of making.
• 1776: July 2, 1776 – The early brood of swallows are active & adroit, & able to procure their subsistence on the wing.  Fresh broods come forth daily.

• 1792: July 1, 1792 – There is a natural occurance to be met with upon the highest part of our down on hot summer days, which always amuses me much, without giving me any satisfaction with respect to the cause of it; & that is a loud audible humming of bees in the air, tho’ not one insect is to be seen. This sound is to be heard distinctly the whole common through, from the Money-dells, to Mr White’s avenue-gate. Any person would suppose that a large swarm of bees was in motion, & playing about over his head. This noise was heard last week on June 28th.
  “Resounds the lving surface of the ground,Nor undelightful is the ceasless humTo him who muses… at noon.”“Thick in yon stream of light a thousand was,Upward, and downward, thwarting, & convolv’d,The quivering nations sport.”
  Thomson’s Seasons
• 1791: July 1, 1791 – Large American straw-berries are hawked about which the sellers call pine-strawberries.  But these are oblong, & of a pale red; where as the true pine or Drayton straw-berries are flat, & green: yet the flavour is very quick, & truly delicate.  The American new sorts of strawberries prevail so much, that the old scarlet, & hautboys are laid aside, & out of use.
• 1789: July 1, 1789 – London 
  The price of wheat rises on account of the cold, wet, ungenial season.  The wet & wind injures the bloom of the wheat.
• 1785: July 1, 1785 – Timothy Turner cuts the St foin on Baker’s hill: this is the 18th crop; & not a bad one, the severity of the drought considered.  My balsams are fine tall plants, & well-variegated, except a few, which blow white.
• 1783: July 1, 1783 – Thatched the hay-rick. Mr & Mrs Brown & Niece Anne Barker left me. Tremendous thunder-storms in Oxford-shire & Cambridge-shire!
• 1782: July 1, 1782 – The crop of carrots in the great meadow will be good.
• 1781: July 1, 1781 – Wheel round the sun.
• 1781: July 1, 1781 – The red valerians, roses, iris’s, corn-flags, honey-suckles, &c., make a gallant shew.  Most of the pinks were destroyed in the winter by the hares.  We put Timothy into a tub of water, & found that he sunk gradually, & walked on the bottom of the tub: he seemed quite out of his element, & was much dismayed.  This species seems not at all amphibious.  Timothy seems to be the Testudo Graeca of Linnaeus.  Dr Chandler who saw the operation, says there is a species of tortoise in the Levant that at times frequents ponds & lakes: and my Bro: Jonh White, affirms the same of a sort in Andalusia.
• 1778: July 1, 1778 – The meadow-rick sinks fast.
• 1777: July 1, 1777 – Some laboureres digging for stone found in an hole in the rock a red-breast’s nest containing one young cuckow half-fledged.  The wonder was how the old cuckow could discover a nest in so secret, & sequestered a place.
• 1776: July 1, 1776 – Full moon.  Cherries begin to ripen, but are devoured by sparrows.  Began to cut my meadow-hay, a good crop, one 3rd more than last year.
• 1775: July 1, 1775 – On the 28 of June a large quantity of trufles were found near Andover, near two months sooner than the common season.  So these roots are in season nine months at least.
  * House-snails seem to be so checked by the drought, & destroyed by the thrushes, that hardly one annual is eaten or injured.  When earth-worms like-out a nights on the turf, though they extend their bodies a great way, they do not quite leave their holes, but keep the ends of their tails fixed therein; so that on the least alarm they can retire with precipitation under the earth.  Whatever food falls within their reach when thus extended they seem to be content with, such as blades of grass, straws, fallen leaves, the ends of which they often draw into their holes.  Even in copulation their hinder parts never quit their holes ; so that no two, except they lie within reach of each others bodies, can have any commerce of that kind; but as every individual is an hermaphrodite, there is no difficulty in meeting with a mate; such as would be the case were they of different sexes.
• 1774: July 1, 1774 – Swifts, I have just discovered, lay but two eggs.  They have now naked squab young, & some near half-fledged: so that their broods cannot be out ’til toward the middle or end of July, & therefor can never breed again before the 20th of August.  In laying but two eggs, & breeding but once they differ from all our other hirundines.  Scarabaeus solstitialis.  The appearance of this insect commences with this month, & ceases at the end of it.  These scarabs are the constant food of caprimulgi the month thro’.
  * When Oaks are quite stripped of their leaves by cahfers, they are cloathed again soon after mid-summer with a beatiful foliage: but beeches, horse-chest-nuts, & maples, once defaced by those insects, never recover their beauty again for the whole season.
• 1773: July 1, 1773 – Portugal-laurel blows in a most beautiful manner.
• 1772: July 1, 1772 – Watered the pease.  Some nectarines and peaches, two or three apricots, few apples and pears.  Small walnuts fall off by thousands.  Few nuts.  Chilly.
• 1771: July 1, 1771 – Cut part of the mead: a good crop.  Young goldfinches.
• 1770: July 1, 1770 – Cuckow sings.  Quail calls.  Wheat begins to blow.
• 1769: July 1, 1769 – Fine haymaking: hay-cargin.  Young hedge-hogs are frequently found,  four or five in a litter.  At five or six days old their spines, (which  are then white) grow stiff enough to wound any body’s hands.  They, I see, are born blind, like puppies; have small external ears; & can in part draw their skins down over their faces: but are not able to contract thenselves into a ball, as they do for defence when well-grown.
• 1768: July 1, 1768 – Great storm of thunder and lightening.  Tiled the succades.