The Natural History of Selborne

Covered the spinage-bed with straw: the celeri & winter-lettuces are also covered.

Sowed 36 bushels of peat-ashes on part of my farthest field, which has never been ashed since it was laid-down to grass.  Qu: if it be right to sow ashes amidst so much rain & snow?  So much moisture must probably dilute the ashes too much, & render them of no effect.  Much snow on the ground.  These ashes did no manner of good.

Mr Churton left us.

The fierce drifting of wednesday proved very injurious to houses, forcing the snow in to roofs, & flooding the ceilings.  The roads also are so blocked with drifting snow that the coaches cannot pass.  The Winton coach was overturned yesterday near Alresford.

One of the most severe days that I ever remember with a S. wind.  The snow on wednesday [today] proved fatal to two or three people who were frozen to death on the open downs about Salisbury.  Much damage happened at sea about that time.  In particular the Halsewell outer-bound India-man was wercked, & lost on the shore of Purbeck.

Fierce frost.  On this day at 8 o’the clock in the evening Captain Lindsey’s hands were frozen, as he & Mr Powlett were returning from Captain Dumeresque’s to Rotherfield.  The Gent. suffered great pain all night, & found his nails turned black in the morning.  When he got to Rotherfield, he bathed his hands in cold water.  Snow on the ground six inches deep at an average.

Snow covers the ground.

Tapped my new rick of hay this day, which, tho’ made without rain, is vapid, & without much scent ,& consists more of weeds than grass.  The summer was so dry, that little good grass grew, ’till after the first crop was cut.  The rick is also very small.

Many wild-fowls, ducks & widgeons, at Wolmer-pond ’till the hard weather came: since which they have all disappeared.

Mr. Churton came from Oxford.