The Natural History of Selborne

Swallows abound; but no house-martin, or black-cap.  No swift.

Several beeches in the hanger begin to leaf.  Black snails abound.  Womrs, when sick, seem to come out of the Ground to die: under the same circumstances some amphibiae quit the water.  * Thomas kept a journal of incidents during my absence.

Luscinia.  Cuculus.  Inyx.

Mrs Snooke’s tortoise came out of the ground the second time, for the summer.

The barley-season goes on briskly.  Hops are poling.  Curlews clamour.  *The Saxon word hlithe, whith the h aspirate before it, signifies clivus: hence no doubt two abrupt steep pasture-fields near this village are called the short, & long lithe.  Much such another steep pasture at about a mile distance is also called the lithe.  Steethe in Saxon sigifies ripa, a perpendicular bank: hence steethe swalwe, riparia hirundo.

Two swallows.  Black snail.  Some few apricots, which escaped the frost, seem to be set.  Some peach & nect. bloom not destoryed.  The trees were struck full of ivy-boughs, which seem to have been of service against the severe cold.

Bees resort to the hot-beds tempted by some honey spread on the leaves, & blossoms of the cucumbers.  When bees do not frequent the frames, the early fruit never sets well: therefore this expident is very proper for early melons, & cucumbers.

White frost, sun, dark clouds.

Birds eat ivy-berries, which now begin to ripen: they are of great service to the winged race at this season, since most other berries ripen in the autumn.  The shell-less snails, called slugs, are in motion all the winter in mild weather, & commit great depredations on garden-plants, & much injure the green wheat, the loss of which is imputed to earth-worms; while the shelled snail, does not come forth at all ’til about April the tenth; and not only lays itself up pretty early in the autumn, in places secure from frost; but also throws-out round the mouth of it’s shell a thick operculum formed from it’s own saliva; so that it is perfectly secured, & corked-up as it were, from all inclemencies.  Why the naked slug should be so much more able to endure cold than it’s housed congener, I cannot pretend to say.

Horse-ants retire under the ground.  Wheat-ears appear.