The Natural History of Selborne

This hot weather makes the tortoise so alert that he traverses all the garden by six o’clock in the morning.  When the sun grows very powerful he retires under a garden-mat, or the shelter of some cabbage; not loving to be about in vehement heat.  In such weather, he eats greedily.

Hung-out my pendent meat-safe.  The martins over the garden-door have thrown-out two eggs; they had not been sat on.  A pair of partriges haunt Baker’s hill, & dust themselves along the verge of the brick walk.  Many people droop with this feverish cold: not only women & children, but robust labourers.  In general the disorder does not last long, neither does it prove at all mortal in these parts.

Ephemerae, may-flies, appear, playing over the streams: their motions are very peculiar, up & down for many yards, almost in a perpendicular line.

A house-martin drowned in the water-tub:  this accident seems to have been owing to fighting.

Standard honey-suckles, having lost their first shoots by the frosts, will produce little bloom this summer.

When the servants have been gone to bed some time, & the kitchen left dark, the hearth swarms with young crickets about the size of ants: there is an other set among them of larger growth: so that it appears two broods have hatched this spring.

My Bror. Thomas White nailed-up several large ‘scallop shells under the eaves of his house at South Lambeth, to see if the house-martins would build in them.  These conveniences had not been fixed half an hour, before several pairs settled upon them;  &, expressing great complacency, began to build immediately.  The shells were nailed on horizontally with the hollow side upward;  & should, I think, have a hole drilled in their bottoms to letoff moisture from driving rains.

Kidney-beans in a poor way: they have all been in danger of rotting.

Mr. Pink is obliged to leave 26 acres of barley-ground unsown. Feverish colds begin to be very freqent in this neighbourhood, & indeed the country over. Within the bills of mortality this disorder is quite epidemic, so that hardly an individual escapes. This complaint seems to have originated in Russia, & to have extended all over Europe. The great inclemency of the spring may best account for this universal malady.

From Jan. 1, 1782 to May 31 Dof inclusive, the quantity of rain at this place is 24 inch. 7 hund. This is after the rate of about 58 inch. for the whole year. This evening Chafers begin to fly in great abundance. They suit their appearance to the coming-out of the young foliage, which in kindly seasons would have been much earlier.