The Natural History of Selborne

A strange swarm of bees came and settled on my Balm of Gilead fir.

The st foin is in a bad way about the neighbourhood.

My garden in nice order, & full of flowers in bloom.  Lilies, roses, fraxinellas, red valerians, Iris’s, &c., now make a gaudy show.

We have planted-out a vast show of annuals, which will want no watering.

The house-martins which build in old nests begin to hatch, as may be seen by their throwing-out the egg-shells.

A pair of swallows hawk for flies ’til within a quarter of nine o’clock; they probably have young hatched.

Tulips are gone.  The heat injures the flowers in bloom.  St foin in full bloom.  Fly-catcher has five eggs.

Grass-walks burn very much.  Ground chops.  Roses begin to blow.  Wheat spindles for ear.

Wheat very gross in some fields.

Killed some hundreds of shell-less snails about the garden.  The boys every day kill some large wasps, that feed on the sycamore-bloom, on the Plestor.  Several small wasps appear as well as large breeders.