The Natural History of Selborne

Wells now rise considerably.  Bees come out of their hives.  Gnats play about.

Mezereon blows.  Viola tricolor, red lamium, & grounsel blow.  Hazel catkins open.

Winter aconites blow.

Sun, bright, & pleasant.  A gardener in this village has lately cut several large cauliflowers, growing without any glasses.  The boys are playing in their shirts.  On this day Admiral Kempenfelt fell in with a large convoy from Brest, & took a number of French transports.

Furze is in bloom.  Several young lambs at the Priory.  Shortest day.

Heard’s well is now dry: it is of a vast depth.

Some of my friends have sported lately in the forst they beat the moors & morasses, & found some jack & whole snipes, most of which they killed, with a teal, a pheasant, & some partridges.  The flight of snipes is but small yet.  There is now, I hear, a flight of woodcocks in the upland coverts.

Larby now digs & double trenches a weedy spot in the great meadow.  The ground is black, & mellow, & fit for carrots, for which it is intended.

Trenched some ground in the meadow for carrots.

George Tanner’s bullfinch, a cock bird of this year, began from it’s first moulting to look dingy; & is now quite black on the back, rump, & all; & very dusky on the breast.  This bird has lived chiefly on hemp-seed.  But T. Dewey’s, & __ Horley’s two bull-finches, both of the same age with the former, & also of the same sex, retain their natural colours, which are glossy & vivid, tho’ they both have been supported by hemp-seed.  Hence the notion that hemp seed blackens bull-finches does not hold good in all instances; or at least not in the first year.