The Natural History of Selborne

Drones abound round the mouth of the hive that is expected to swarm.  Sheep are shorn.

No one that has not attended to such matters, & taken down remarks, can be aware how much ten days dripping weather will influence the growth of grass or corn after a severe dry season.  This present summer 1776 yields a remarkable instance: for ’til the 30th of May the fields were burnt-up & naked, & the barley not half out of the ground; but now, June 10t there is an agreeable prospect of plenty.  A very intelligent Clergyman assured me, that hearing while he was a young student at the University, of toads being found alive in blocks of stone, & solids bodies of trees; he one long vacation took a toad, & put it in a garden-pot, & laying a tile over the mouth of the pot, buried it five feet deep  in the ground in his father’s garden.  in about 13 months he dug-up the imprisoned reptile, & found it alive & well, & considerably grown.  He buried it again as at first, & on a second visit at about the same period found it circumstanced as before.  He then deposited the pot as formerly a third time, only laying the tile so as not quite to cover the whole of its mouth: but when he came to examine it again next year, the toads was gone.  he each time trod the earth down very hard over the pot.

Forest-fly begins to appear.  Grass & corn grow away.

Elder begins to blow.  Many hundreds of annuals are now planted-out, which have needed no watering.  Wheat begins to shoot into ear.  Hardly any shell-snails are seen;  they were destroyed, & eaten by they thrushes last summer during the long dry season.  This year scarce a thrush, they were killed by the severe winter.

Fly-catcher builds.  Farmers cut clover for their horses.

Boys bring me female-wasps.  Apis longicornis bores it’s nests & copulates.

Soft rain.  Grass & corn improved by the rain already.  The long-horned bees bore their holes in the walks.

Sultry, & heavy clouds. Smell of sulphur in the air. Paid for near 20 wasps: several were breeders; but some were workers, hatched perhaps this year.

Dames violets, double, blow finely:  roses bud:  tulips gone: pinks bud.  Bees begin to swarm.  Tacked the vines the first time.  Began to plant out annuals in the basons in the field.  Ponds & some wells begin to be dry.

Strawberries blow well.  The first effectual rain after a long dry season.