The Natural History of Selborne

A double scarlet Pomegranade buds for bloom.  A bunting appears about the walks: this is a very rare bird at Selborne.  The solstitial chafers swarm by thousands in my Brother’s grounds.  They begin to flie about sun-set, but withdraw soon after nine, & probably settle on the trees, to feed & to engender.  My chamber at S. Lambeth is much annoyed with gnats.

The scarbaei solstitiales begin to swarm in my Brother’s outlet. My Bror this spring turned one of his grass-fields into a kitchen-garden, & sowed it with crops: but the ground so abounded with the maggots of these chafers, that few things escaped their ravages. The lettuces, beans & cabbages were mostly devoured: & yet in trenching this enclosure his people had destroyed multitudes of these noxious grubs. The stalks & ribs of the leaves of the Lombardy polare are embossed with large tumours of an oblong shape, which by incurious observers have been taken for the fruit of the tree. These Galls are full of small insects, some of which are winged, and some not. The parent insect is of the Genus of Cynips. Some poplars of the garden are quite loaded with these excrescencies.

The bloom of the vines fills the chambers with an agreeable scent somewhat like that mignonette.

My Brother’s gardener cut his first melon, a Romagna.

Some good oats about S. Lambeth.

Mazagon beans come in.

The black-cluster vines from Selborne are in bloom, & smell delicately!

Bro. Ben ricked ye hay of eleven acres of ground in delicate order.

Scarlet strawberries at 2s. per pottle.  Red-backed butcher-bird, or Flusher, in Bro. Ben’s outlet.

Dingy. Saw some red-backed butcher birds about Farnham.