The Natural History of Selborne |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - m.belljackson - LibraryThingWhat a beautiful book with the tiny white birds rendered on a soft sweet cover! THREE Stars for the Good Writing and FIVE Stars for the illustrations by Richard Mabey! It is hard to read how callously ... Read full review
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User Review - AlanWPowers - LibraryThingGilbert White's classic, best in an illustrated edition like Century (1988), can be read like the Bible, a few paragraphs a day to muse on. Or one sentence: "The language of birds is very ancient and ... Read full review
Contents
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Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abound Alauda Andalusia animals appear April autumn bird of passage birds of prey breed brood called chaffinches colour common cuckoo curious DAINES BARRINGTON Selborne DEAR SIR district eggs ESQUIRE Selborne feeding feet female field fieldfares flocks forest frequently frost garden gentleman Gibraltar Gilbert White Gross-beak ground Hanger haunt hedges hirundines hirundo HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON hoopoes house-martins hundred inches insects late le ham legs LETTER Linnĉus male manner martins mentioned migration morning Motacilla natural history naturalist neighbouring nest never night observed owls parish perhaps ponds procured quadrupeds RAII rain redwings remarkable remiges retire ring-dove ring-ousels says season seems seen sing snow soft soon species spring stone curlew strange suppose Sussex swallow swift tail THOMAS PENNANT titmouse trees vast village weather White white-throat wild willow-wren wings winter Wolmer Wolmer-forest wonder Woodlark woods young
Popular passages
Page ii - WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES TO BE COMPRISED UNDER THE FOLLOWING TWELVE HEADINGS...
Page 252 - Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured ; as when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.
Page 175 - ... afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this accident, to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus: — Into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations long since forgotten.
Page 170 - ... and seldom failing to strip them with the nicest regularity. When these junci are thus far prepared, they must lie out on the grass to be bleached, and take the dew for some nights, and afterwards be dried in the sun. Some address is required in dipping these rushes in the scalding fat or grease ; but this knack also is to be attained by practice.
Page 175 - ... it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb.
Page 252 - The country people began to look with a superstitious awe at the red lowering aspect of the sun ; and indeed there was reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive, for, all the while, Calabria and part of the Isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes, and about that juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway.
Page 185 - For, to say nothing of half the .birds, >and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them, by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and the fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks of leaves and twigs into it, and, most of all, by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth called worm- casts, which, being their excrement, is a fine...
Page 184 - ... from the procuring her teats to be drawn, which were too much distended with milk, till, from habit, she became as much delighted with this foundling as if it had been her real offspring.
Page 122 - MILTOK. but scout and hurry along in little detached parties of six or seven in a company ; and sweeping low, just over the surface of the land and water, direct their course to the opposite continent at the narrowest passage they can find.
Page 216 - As one should suppose, from the burning atmosphere which they inhabit, they are a thirsty race, and show a great propensity for liquids, being found frequently drowned in pans of water, milk, broth, or the like. Whatever is moist they affect; and, therefore, often gnaw holes in wet woollen stockings and aprons that are hung to the fire : they are the housewife's barometer, foretelling her when it will rain ; and are prognostic sometimes, she thinks, of ill or good luck ; of the death of a near relation,...
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Natural History of Selborne Issue 48 of Everyman's library Everyman's library, ed. by Ernest Rhys. Science. [no. 48] Issue 48 of Everyman's library: Science |
| Author | Gilbert White |
| Publisher | J.M. Dent, 1906 |
| Original from | Harvard University |
| Digitized | May 7, 2008 |
| Length | 255 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |