The Natural History of Selborne

Tremendous thunder, & vast hail yesterday at Bramshot, & Hedley with prodigious floods.  Vast damage done.  The hail lay knee-deep.  The shell-snail has hardly appeared at all this season on account of the long dry time.  Snails copulate about Midsumr; & soon after deposit their eggs in the mould by running their heads & bodies under ground.  Hence the way to be rid of them is to kill as many as possible before they begin to breed.  In six weeks after wheat is in ear, harvest usually begins; unless delayed by cold, wet, black weather.

We just had the skirts of a vast thunder-storm.

Red kidney beans begin to climb their sticks.  Mulberry-tree in full leaf.  Snails copulate.

The autumn-sown brown lettuces, which stood the winter, still continue good.  The dry season last friday morning had lasted just 3 months:  the 9, 10, & 11 of March were very wet.

Shower in the night.  Planted-out vast quantities of annuals both in the borders, & basons; both in the fields, & gardens.

Watered the wall-trees well this evening with the engine: the leaves are not blotched & bloated this year, but many shoots are shrivelled, & covered with aphides.  Plums & pears abound; moderate crop of apples with me.  Vine-shoots very forward.

Swifts abound: near 15 pairs: they seem to come from other villages.  H: martins now abound, & build briskly.

Roses begin to blow:  pinks bud; fraxinella blows.  Garden burnt to powder.

Hot sun, & brisk gale, sweet even.  Dusty beyond comparison.  Watered away five hogsheads of water.  Stoparola has five eggs.  Rooks live hard:  there are no chafers.  Barley & oats do not come up;  the fields look naked.  Some pairs of swifts always build in this village under the low thatched roofs of some of the meanest cottages:  & as there fails to be nests in those particular houses, it looks as if some of the same family still returned to the same place.

Martin begins to build at the end of the brewhouse.