The Natural History of Selborne

Made cucumber-bed over again; & added many barrows of fresh dung: it was so drenched with snow & rain that it would not heat.  Great hail-storm.

Golden-crested wren, regulus cristatus, sings.  His voice is as minute as his body.

Made the bearing cucumber-bed for four lights with seven loads of dung.  The bed was much wetted in making by the snow.

Oats are sown.  Crows build: rooks build.  Ewes & lambs are turned into the what to eat it down.

Green woodpecker begins to laugh.  Last night I heard that short quick note of birds flying in the dark: if this should be the voice of Oedicnemus, as is supposed: then that bird, which is not seen in the dead of winter, is returned.  Blood-worms appear int he water: they are gnats in one state.

The cock swan at two year’s old.  “Between his white wings, mantling proudly, rows.”

Spring day. Young chickens.  Crocuss makes a gallant shew.

Wheat on the clays looks sadly poor & thin.  Stormy wind by fits.

Sheep rot in a most terrible manner in the low grounds.

Raven sits.