The Natural History of Selborne

Farmer Spencer’s orchard in fine bloom.

The large white pippin-tree full of bloom.  No house-martin seen yet!

Timothy, the tortoise, who has just begun to eat, weighs 6 ae, 12 1/2 oz.  Agues are much about at Hawkley, & Emshot, & Newton; & in Selborne street.

Sowed ten weeks stocks, & radishes, & lettuces.

Sowed a plot of red beet.

The foliage of the peach, & nectarine-trees scorched by the winds: the leaves are shrivelled, & blotched.

Young brown owls.

April 30 was cold & sharp at Rolle; when a number of martins formed two thick clusters on a ledge projecting in front of an house in one of the streets of that town.  They descended gently as they arrived one on another.

Set Gunnory, the Bantam hen, on nine of her own eggs.

Set 9 Bantham’s eggs to be put under a sitting-hen at Newton.