The Natural History of Selborne

Took away the netting on the wall-cherries.

Snow wastes very fast.  Roofs clear of snow.  The ground appears.  About this time my niece Brown was brought to be of her fifth child, a girl, who encreases the number of my living nephews & nieces to 43.

Snow drifted over hedges, & gates! Ring-doves, driven by hunger, come into John Hale’s garden, which is surrounded by houses! Black-birds, & thrushes die. A starving wigeon settled yesterday in the village, & was taken. Mention is made in the newspapers of several people that have perished in the snow. As Mr Ventris came from Faringdon, the drifted snow, being hard-frozen, bore his weight up to the tops of the stiles. The net hung over the cherry-trees is curiously coated over with ice.

The birds are so distressed, that ring-doves resort to my garden to crop the leaves of the bore-cole! blackbirds come down to the scullery door. Snow little abated.

Vast icicles on eaves.

Netted the wall-cherry-trees, to preserve the buds from the finches.

Bull-finches injure the fruit-trees by eating the buds.

The snow is at an average about seven inches deep.  As it fell without any wind, it is lodged much on the trees, so that the prospects are very grotesque, & picturesque.

Snow shoe-deep.  Wrote to Dr Chandler at Nismes.

Sowed a crop of radishes, under the  melon-screen & a crop of onions.