SELBORNE
(1896)
First impressions of faces are very much to us; vivid and persistent,
even long after they have been judged false they will from time to time
return to console or mock us. It is much the same with places, for
these, too, an ineradicable instinct will have it, are persons. Few in
number are the towns and villages which are dear to us, whose memory is
always sweet, like that of one we love. Those that wake no emotion, that
are remembered much as we remember the faces of a crowd of shop
assistants in some emporium we are accustomed to visit, are many. Still
more numerous, perhaps, are the places that actually leave a
disagreeable impression on the mind. Probably the reason of this is
because most places are approached by railroad. The station, which is
seen first, and cannot thereafter be dissociated from the town, is
invariably the centre of a chaotic collection of ugly objects and
discordant noises, all the more hateful because so familiar. For in
coming to a new place we look instinctively for that which is new, and
the old, and in themselves unpleasant sights and sounds, at such a
moment produce a disheartening, deadening effect on the stranger:--the
same clanging, puffing, grinding, gravel-crushing, banging, shrieking
noises; the same big unlovely brick and metal structure, the long
platform, the confusion of objects and people, the waiting vehicles, and
the glittering steel rails stretching away into infinitude, like
unburied petrified webs of some gigantic spider of a remote past--webs
in which mastodons were caught like flies. Approaching a town from some
other direction--riding, driving, or walking--we see it with a clearer
truer vision, and take away a better and more lasting image.
Selborne is one of the noted places where pilgrims go that is happily
without a station. From whichever side you approach it the place itself,
features and expression, is clearly discerned: in other words you see
Selborne, and not a brick and metal outwork or mask; not an excrescence,
a goitre, which can make even a beautiful countenance appear repulsive.
There is a station within a few miles of the village. I approached by a
different route, and saw it at the end of a fifteen miles' walk. Rain
had begun to fall on the previous evening; and when in the morning I
looked from my bedroom window in the wayside inn, where I had passed the
night, it was raining still, and everywhere, as far as I could see,
broad pools of water were gleaming on the level earth. All day the rain
fell steadily from a leaden sky, so low that where there were trees it
seemed almost to touch their tops, while the hills, away on my left,
appeared like vague masses of cloud that rest on the earth. The road
stretched across a level moorland country; it was straight and narrow,
but I was compelled to keep to it, since to step aside was to put my
feet into water. Mile after mile I trudged on without meeting a soul,
where not a house was visible--a still, wet, desolate country with trees
and bushes standing in water, unstirred by a breath of wind. Only at
long intervals a yellow hammer was heard uttering his thin note; for
just as this bird sings in the sultriest weather which silences other
voices, so he will utter his monotonous chant on the gloomiest day.
It may be because he sung
The yellow hammer in the rain
that I have long placed Faber among my best-loved minor poets of the
past century. He alone among our poets has properly appreciated that the
singer who never stops, but, "pleased with his own monotony," shakes off
the rain and sings on in a mood of cheerfulness dashed with melancholy:
And there he is within the rain,
And beats and beats his tune again,
Quite happy in himself.
Within the heart of this great shower
He sits, as in a secret bower,
With curtains drawn about him:
And, part in duty, part in mirth,
He beats, as if upon the earth
Rain could not fall without him.
I remember that W. E. Henley once took me severely to task on account of
some jeering remarks made about our poet's way of treating the birds and
their neglect of so many of our charming singers. In the course of our
correspondence he questioned me about the cirl bunting, that lively
singer and pretty first cousin of the yellow hammer; and after I had
supplied him with full information, he informed me that it was his
intention to write a poem on that bird, and that he would be the first
English poet to sing the cirl bunting.
He never wrote that lyric, "part in duty, part in mirth"; he was
then near his end.
To return to my walk. At last the aspect of the country changed: in
place of brown heath, with gloomy fir and furze, there was cheerful
verdure of grass and deciduous trees, and the straight road grew deep
and winding, running now between hills, now beside woods, and
hop-fields, and pasture lands. And at length, wet and tired, I reached
Selborne--the remote Hampshire village that has so great a fame.
To very many readers a description of the place would seem superfluous.
They know it so well, even without having seen it; the little, old-world
village at the foot of the long, steep, bank-like hill, or Hanger,
clothed to its summit with beech-wood as with a green cloud; the
straggling street, the Plestor, or village green, an old tree in the
centre, with a bench surrounding its trunk for the elders to rest on of
a summer evening. And, close by, the grey immemorial church, with its
churchyard, its grand old yew-tree, and, overhead, the bunch of swifts,
rushing with jubilant screams round the square tower.
I had not got the book in my knapsack, nor did I need it. Seeing the
Selborne swifts, I thought how a century and a quarter ago Gilbert White
wrote that the number of birds inhabiting and nesting in the village,
summer after summer, was nearly always the same, consisting of about
eight pairs. The birds now rushing about over the church were twelve,
and I saw no others.
If Gilbert White had never lived, or had never corresponded with Pennant
and Daines Barrington, Selborne would have impressed me as a very
pleasant village set amidst diversified and beautiful scenery, and I
should have long remembered it as one of the most charming spots which I
had found in my rambles in southern England. But I thought of White
continually. The village itself, every feature in the surrounding
landscape, and every object, living or inanimate, and every sound,
became associated in my mind with the thought of the obscure country
curate, who was without ambition, and was "a still, quiet man, with no
harm in him--no, not a bit," as was once said by one of his
parishioners. There, at Selborne--to give an altered meaning to a verse
of quaint old Nicholas Culpepper--
His image stamped is on every grass.
With a new intense interest I watched the swifts careering through the
air, and listened to their shrill screams. It was the same with all the
birds, even the commonest--the robin, blue tit, martin, and sparrow. In
the evening I stood motionless a long time intently watching a small
flock of greenfinches settling to roost in a hazel-hedge. From time to
time they became disturbed at my presence, and fluttering up to the
topmost twigs, where their forms looked almost black against the pale
amber sky, they uttered their long-drawn canary-like note of alarm. At
all times a delicate, tender note, now it had something more in
it--something from the far past--the thought of one whose memory was
interwoven with living forms and sounds.
The strength and persistence of this feeling had a curious effect. It
began to seem to me that he who had ceased to five over a century ago,
whose Letters had been the favourite book of several generations of
naturalists, was, albeit dead and gone, in some mysterious way still
living. I spent a long time groping about in the long rank grass of the
churchyard in search of a memorial; and this, when found, turned out to
be a modest-sized headstone, and I had to go down on my knees, and put
aside the rank grass that half covered it, just as when we look into a
child's face we push back the unkempt hair from its forehead; and on the
stone were graved the name, and beneath, "1793," the year of his death.
Happy the nature-lover who, in spite of fame, is allowed to rest, as
White rests, pressed upon by no ponderous stone; the sweet influences of
sun and rain are not kept from him; even the sound of the wild bird's
cry may penetrate to his narrow apartment to gladden his dust!
Perhaps there is some truth in the notion that when a man dies he does
not wholly die; that is to say, the earthly yet intelligent part of him,
which, being of the earth, cannot ascend; that a residuum of life
remains, like a perfume left by some long-vanished, fragrant object; or
it may be an emanation from the body at death, which exists thereafter
diffused and mixed with the elements, perhaps unconscious and yet
responsive, or capable of being vivified into consciousness and emotions
of pleasure by a keenly sympathetic presence. At Selborne this did not
seem mere fantasy. Strolling about the village, loitering in the
park-like garden of the Wakes, or exploring the Hanger; or when I sat on
the bench under the churchyard yew, or went softly through the grass to
look again at those two letters graved on the headstone, there was a
continual sense of an unseen presence near me. It was like the sensation
a man sometimes has when lying still with closed eyes of some one moving
softly to his side. I began to think that if that feeling and sensation
lasted long enough without diminishing its strength, it would in the end
produce something like conviction. And the conviction would imply
communion. Furthermore, between the thought that we may come to believe
in a thing and belief itself there is practically no difference. I began
to speculate as to the subjects about to be discussed by us. The chief
one would doubtless relate to the bird life of the district. There are
fresh things to be related of the cuckoo; how "wonder has been added to
wonder" by observers of that bird since the end of the eighteenth
century. And here is a delicate subject to follow--to wit, the
hibernation of swallows--yet one by no possibility to be avoided. It
would be something of a disappointment to him to hear it stated, as an
established fact, that none of our hirundines do winter, fast asleep
like dormice, in these islands. But there would be comfort in the
succeeding declaration that the old controversy is not quite dead
yet--that at least two popular writers on British birds have boldly
expressed the belief that some of our supposed migrants do actually "lay
up" in the dead season. The deep interest manifested in the subject
would be a temptation to dwell on it. I should touch on the discovery
made recently by a young English naturalist abroad, that a small species
of swallow in a temperate country in the Southern Hemisphere shelters
itself under the thick matted grass, and remains torpid during spells of
cold weather. We have now a magnificent monograph of the swallows, and
it is there stated of the purple martin, an American species, that in
some years bitter cold weather succeeds its arrival in early spring in
Canada; that at such times the birds take refuge in their nesting holes
and lie huddled together in a semi-torpid state, sometimes for a week or
ten days, until the return of genial weather, when they revive and
appear as full of life and vigour as before. It is said that these and
other swallows are possessed of habits and powers of which we have as
yet but slight knowledge. Candour would compel me to add that the author
of the monograph in question, who is one of the first living
ornithologists, is inclined to believe that some swallows in some
circumstances do hibernate.
At this I should experience a curious and almost startling sensation, as
if the airy hands of my invisible companion had been clapped together,
and the clap had been followed by an exclamation--a triumphant "Ah!"
Then there would be much to say concerning the changes in the bird
population of Selborne parish, and of the southern counties generally. A
few small species--hawfinch, pretty chaps, and gold-crest--were much
more common now than in his day; but a very different and sadder story
had to be told of most large birds. Not only had the honey buzzard never
returned to nest on the beeches of the Hanger since 1780, but it had
continued to decrease everywhere in England and was now extinct. The
raven, too, was lost to England as an inland breeder. It could not now
be said that "there are bustards on the wide downs near
Brighthelmstone," nor indeed anywhere in the kingdom. The South Downs
were unchanged, and there were still pretty rides and prospects round
Lewes; but he might now make his autumn journey to Ringmer without
seeing kites and buzzards, since these had both vanished; nor would he
find the chough breeding at Beachy Head, and all along the Sussex coast.
It would also be necessary to mention the disappearance of the quail,
and the growing scarcity of other once abundant species, such as the
stone plover and curlew, and even of the white owl, which no longer
inhabited its ancient breeding-place beneath the caves of Selborne
Church.
Finally, after discussing these and various other matters which once
engaged his attention, also the little book he gave to the world so long
ago, there would still remain another subject to be mentioned about
which I should feel somewhat shy--namely, the marked difference in
manner, perhaps in feeling, between the old and new writers on animal
life and nature. The subject would be strange to him. On going into
particulars, he would be surprised at the disposition, almost amounting
to a passion, of the modern mind to view life and nature in their
aesthetic aspects. This new spirit would strike him as something odd and
exotic, as if the writers had been first artists or landscape-gardeners,
who had, as naturalists, retained the habit of looking for the
picturesque. He would further note that we moderns are more emotional
than the writers of the past, or, at all events, less reticent. There is
no doubt, he would say, that our researches into the kingdom of nature
produce in us a wonderful pleasure, unlike in character and perhaps
superior to most others; but this feeling, which was indefinable and not
to be traced to its source, was probably given to us for a secret
gratification. If we are curious to know its significance, might we not
regard it as something ancillary to our spiritual natures, as a kind of
subsidiary conscience, a private assurance that in all our researches
into the wonderful works of creation we are acting in obedience to a
tacit command, or, at all events in harmony with the Divine Will?
Ingenious! would be my comment, and possibly to the eighteenth century
mind it would have proved satisfactory. There was something to be said
in defence of what appeared to him as new and strange in our books and
methods. Not easily said, unfortunately; since it was not only the
expression that was new, but the outlook, and something in the heart. We
are bound as much as ever to facts; we seek for them more and more
diligently, knowing that to break from them is to be carried away by
vain imaginations. All the same, facts in themselves are nothing to us:
they are important only in their relations to other facts and things--to
all things, and the essence of things, material and spiritual. We are
not like children gathering painted shells and pebbles on a beach; but,
whether we know it or not, are seeking after something beyond and above
knowledge. The wilderness in which we are sojourners is not our home; it
is enough that its herbs and roots and wild fruits nourish and give us
strength to go onward. Intellectual curiosity, with the gratification of
the individual for only purpose, has no place in this scheme of things
as we conceive it. Heart and soul are with the brain in all
investigation--a truth which some know in rare, beautiful intervals, and
others never; but we are all meanwhile busy with our work, like myriads
of social insects engaged in raising a structure that was never planned.
Perhaps we are not so wholly unconscious of our destinies as were the
patient gatherers of facts of a hundred years ago. Even in one brief
century the dawn has come nearer--perhaps a faint whiteness in the east
has exhilarated us like wine. Undoubtedly we are more conscious of many
things, both within and without--of the length and breadth and depth of
nature; of a unity which was hardly dreamed of by the naturalists of
past ages, a commensalism on earth from which the meanest organism is
not excluded. For we are no longer isolated, standing like starry
visitors on a mountain-top, surveying life from the outside; but are on
a level with and part and parcel of it; and if the mystery of life daily
deepens, it is because we view it more closely and with clearer vision.
A poet of our age has said that in the meanest floweret we may find
"thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." The poet and prophet is
not alone in this; he expresses a feeling common to all of those who,
with our wider knowledge, have the passion for nature in their hearts,
who go to nature, whether for knowledge or inspiration. That there
should appear in recent literature something of a new spirit, a
sympathetic feeling which could not possibly have flourished in a former
age, is not to be wondered at, considering all that has happened in the
present century to change the current of men's thoughts. For not only
has the new knowledge wrought in our minds, but has entered, or is at
last entering, into our souls.
Having got so far in my apology, a feeling of despair would all at once
overcome me at the thought of the vastness of the subject I had entered
upon. Looking back it seems but a little while since the introduction of
that new element into thought, that "fiery leaven" which in the end
would "leaven all the hearts of men for ever." But the time was not
really so short; the gift had been rejected with scorn and bitterness by
the mass of mankind at first; it had taken them years--the years of a
generation--to overcome repugnance and resentment, and to accept it.
Even so it had wrought a mighty change, only this had been in the mind;
the change in the heart would follow, and it was perhaps early to boast
of it. How was I to disclose all this to him? All that I had spoken was
but a brief exordium--a prelude and note of preparation for what should
follow--a story immeasurably longer and infinitely more wonderful than
that which the Ancient Mariner told to the Wedding Guest. It was an
impossible task.
At length, after an interval of silence, to me full of trouble, the
expected note of dissent would come.
I had told him, he would say, either too much or not enough. No doubt
there had been a very considerable increase of knowledge since his day;
nevertheless, judging from something I had said on the hibernation, or
torpid condition, of swallows, there was still something to learn with
regard to the life and conversation of animals. The change in the
character of modern books about nature, of which I had told him, quoting
passages--a change in the direction of a more poetic and emotional
treatment of the subject--he, looking from a distance, was inclined to
regard as merely a literary fashion of the time. That anything so
unforeseen had come to pass,--so important as to change the current of
thought, to give to men new ideas about the unity of nature and the
relation in which we stood towards the inferior creatures,--he could not
understand. It should be remembered that the human race had existed some
fifty or sixty centuries on the earth, and that since the invention of
letters men had recorded their observations. The increase in the body of
facts had thus been, on the whole, gradual and continuous. Take the case
of the cuckoo. Aristotle, some two thousand years ago, had given a
fairly accurate account of its habits; and yet in very recent years, as
I had informed him, new facts relating to the procreant instincts of
that singular fowl had come to light.
After a short interval of silence I would become conscious of a change
in him, as if a cloud had lifted--of a quiet smile on his, to my earthly
eyes, invisible countenance, and he would add: "No, no; you have
yourself supplied me with a reason for questioning your views; your
statement of them--pardon me for saying it--struck me as somewhat
rhapsodical. I refer to your commendations of my humble history of the
Parish of Selborne. It is gratifying to me to hear that this poor little
book is still in such good repute, and I have been even more pleased at
that idea of modern naturalists, so flattering to my memory, of a
pilgrimage to Selborne; but, if so great a change has come over men's
minds as you appear to believe, and if they have put some new
interpretation on nature, it is certainly curious that I should still
have readers."
It would be my turn to smile now--a smile for a smile--and silence would
follow. And so, with the dispersal of this little cloud, there would be
an end of the colloquy, and each would go his way: one to be re-absorbed
into the grey stones and long grass, the ancient yew-tree, the wooded
Hanger; the other to pursue his walk to the neighbouring parish of Liss,
almost ready to believe as he went that the interview had actually taken
place.
It only remains to say that the smile (my smile) would have been at the
expense of some modern editors of the famous Letters, rather than at
that of my interlocutor. They are astonished at Gilbert White's
vitality, and cannot find a reason for it. Why does this "little
cockle-shell of a book," as one of them has lately called it, come gaily
down to us over a sea full of waves, where so many brave barks have
foundered? The style is sweet and clear, but a book cannot live merely
because it is well written. It is chock-full of facts; but the facts
have been tested and sifted, and all that were worth keeping are to be
found incorporated in scores of standard works on natural history. I
would humbly suggest that there is no mystery at all about it; that the
personality of the author is the principal charm of the Letters, for in
spite of his modesty and extreme reticence his spirit shines in every
page; that the world will not willingly let this small book die, not
only because it is small, and well written, and full of interesting
matter, but chiefly because it is a very delightful human document.
INDEX
A
Adventures among Birds, 216
"Age of Fools," story of the, 8
Agriculture, decay of, in Gloucestershire, 174
Amazon, double-fronted, 256
Arnold, Matthew, on birds, 161
Arthur, King, legend of, 165
Asses, wild, their braying, 78
Axe, daws in the valley of Somerset, 59, 61, 187
B
Baring-Gould's Broom Squire, 225
Bath, 66;
bird life in, 68
Bee, stingless, in La Plata, its mode of attack, 43
Beech leaves, 84
Birds, stuffed, effect of, 1-7;
at their best, 13-18;
mental reproduction of voices of, 18-26;
durability of images of, 28-32;
their relations with man, 37, 48-50;
human suggestions in voices of, 121-132;
rare, their gradual extirpation, 236-248
Birds of Berkshire, 225
Birds of Wiltshire, 169
"Bishops Jacks," at Wells, 61
Blackbird, 124
Blackcap, its song, 112-114
Blue, in flowers, 136, 154
Booth collection, the, at Brighton, 3
Brean Down, singular appearance of, 188;
shildrakes binding at, 194
Brissot and the Merrimac River, 35
"British Bird of Paradise," 100
British Ornithologists's Union, 24
Broadway, raven superstitions at, 114
Burns, "Address to a Wood-lark," 127
Burroughs, John, on the willow wren, 101;
search for the nightingale, 222
C
Carew, Thomas, lines quoted, 144
Cathedral Daws at Wells, 61
Cattle, tended by birds, 39
Chaffinch, song of, 114
Children, imitative calls of, 177
Chrysotis guildingi, 250
Chrysotis lavalaniti, 256
Collections of birds, small educational value of, 6
Collectors, destruction of Dartford warblers by, 224-231;
as law-breakers, 234-237
Cowper, the poet, on the daw's voice, 74;
as naturalist, 76
D
Dartford warbler, 3;
dead and alive, 4;
search for the, 223;
cause of decrease of, 224;
gradual extirpation by collectors, 229;
at its best, 31, 231-234
Daws, cows and, 39;
at Savernake, 58, 90-93;
choice of a breeding site, 58;
stick-carrying and dropping by, 62-64;
originally builders in trees, 63;
at Bath, 66, 71-78;
their voices, 72-75;
alarm cry, 92
Deer and jackdaw, 41
Destruction of British birds and pressing need for remedy, 224-248
E
"Ebor Jacks," 61
Ebor rocks, former presence of ravens at the, 171
Exmoor, extirpation of birds by keepers in the Forest of, 170
Expression in natural objects due to human associations, 133;
in flowers, 135-137
F
Faber, Father, lines on the yellow hammer, 285
Feathers, falling, birds' fear of, 252
Ferne, Sir John, on azure in blazoning, 157
Flowers, expression in, 133, 153;
human colours in, 135-137;
vernacular names of, 137-140, 145;
yellow and white, lack of human associations in, 146-149;
personal preferences, 153;
charm due to human associations, 154
Fowler, Mr Warde, on wagtails, 159;
on the willow wren's song, 121
Frensham Pond, swallows and swifts at, 51;
gold-crests at, 53
Furze wren, see Dartford Warbler
G
Gardens, 151
Geese, on a common, 78;
at Lyndhurst, 199;
their lofty demeanour, 200, 206, 216-221;
degraded by culinary associations, 201;
as watch-dogs, 203;
Egyptian representations of, 203;
voice of, 210;
migratory instinct in domestic, 213
Geese, Magellanic, 204;
voices of, 205;
courtly demeanour of, 206;
a migrating pair of, 214
Gerarde, 150
Gold-crests alarmed, 53, 57
Gould, on abundance of the Dartford warbler, 224
Gray, Robert, on the gray-lag goose, 210
Gresset, the story of Vert Vert by, 264
Grey, Sir Edward, on the study of birds, 33
Grove, Sir George, blackbird's singing described by, 124
Guarani, legend of a parrot, 264
H
Hastings, daws at, 62
Henley, W. E. on bird poems, 286
Herodotus, on flying feathers and snow, 254
Honey buzzard, destruction of the, 228, 236
Humming-bird, defending its nest, 42
I
Impressions, emotion a condition of their permanence, 6, 15;
sound, 18;
durability of, 26
J
Jackdaws, see Daws
Jays, spring assemblies, 94-100;
mimicry, 95;
variability of song, 97;
their call, 99;
mode of flight, 99;
British bird of Paradise, 100
Jefferies, Richard, on yellow flowers, 148
K
Kearton, Mr Richard, suggestion for the protection of rare birds
by, 240
Kennedy, Clark, on the furze wren in Berkshire, 225
King Arthur, legend of, 165
Kingfishers, alive and dead, 12
L
Land's End, the, 155
La Plata and Patagonia, images of birds of, 26
Lapwing, the spur-winged, and sheep, 44
Leslie's Riverside Letters, 124
Letters of Rusticus, 226
Linnets, a concert of, 188
Livett, Dr, a raven story told by, 171
Long-tailed tit at its best, 16
Lynton, wood wren at, 97
M
Macgillivray, on the redbreast, 48
Magellanic geese. See Geese
Magpie, manner of flight of, 284
Mammals, relations of birds with, 38
Man, from the birds' point of view, 37;
the robin's pleasure in his company, 48
Maxwell, Sir Herbert, on the "cursed collector," 161
Medum, representation of geese at, 203
Memory of things seen, 18;
of things heard, 18
Montagu's Dictionary of Birds, account of the jay in, 95
Mivart, St George, on dead birds, 270
N
Naturalist, the old and new, 294
Nature, modern sense of the unity of, 294
Newman on the Dartford warbler, 226
Nightingale, quality of its voice, 128
Nothura maculosa, the "partridge" of Argentina, 252
O
Ossian's address to the sun, 148
Owl, wood, hooting of the, 178;
superstitions regarding the, 181;
a pet, 184
Owls, in a village, 173
P
Parrot, caged and free, 249;
the St Vincent, 250, 254;
history of a double-fronted amazon, 256;
a lost language talked by a, 258;
longevity of the, 261;
tales and legends of the, 264-268
Partridges and rabbits, 45
Patti, Carlota, bird-like voice of, 128
Peregrine falcon, fight with raven, 167
Peterborough, the great Lord, and a canary, 263
Pheasant and chicks, 52
Pigeon family, the, original notes of, 88
Pigs in the New Forest, 81
Q
Quixote, Don, as to tradition of King Arthur, 165
R
Rabbits, how regarded by partridges, 45
Ravens, in Somerset, 160;
aereal feat of, 161;
decrease and disappearance of, 169-170;
superstitious fear of killing, 165;
last, 170;
tapping at lighted windows, 170
Raven tree, a, 169
Red, in flowers, human associations of, 141-145
Redbreast, tameness of the, 48
Reed warbler, the, in Somerset, 190-191
Ruskin, "word painting," 72;
on cathedral daws, 73;
on the distinction of beauty, 238
S
Saintbury, village of, 176;
owl superstitions at, 180
St Vincent parrot, 250;
anecdote of, 254
Savernake Forest, early spring in, 76;
daws in, 90;
jays in, 94
Sea-birds, protection of, 240, 242
Seebohm, on the wood wren, 105;
on the willow wren, 117;
on jay assemblies, 95
Selborne, a first sight of, 284;
changes in its bird population, 293
Sheep, tended by birds, 39;
quarrel of a spur-winged lapwing with, 44
Sheldrake in Somerset, 191;
tame and wild, 193;
appearance when flying, 193;
singular breeding habits, 194-195
Sigerson, Miss Dora (Mrs Shorter) in "Flight of the Wild Geese,"
213
Skylark, song, 116
Somerset, daws in, 59;
ravens in, 160;
red warbler in, 190
Sound-images, their durability, 18, 21
Spencer, Herbert, on social animals, 47;
on the origin of music, 131
Starlings, their services to cattle, 39;
abundance at Bath of, 71
Summer Studies of Birds and Books, 159
Sunlight, effects on plumage of birds, 3, 12
Swallows, how man is regarded by, 49-53, 55;
alarmed by a grey hat, 57;
quality of the voice of, 125;
Gilbert White on hybernation of, 291
Swifts, unconcern of in man's presence, 51;
at Selborne, 287
T
Tennyson, on the speedwell, 149
Throstle, loudness of its song, 118
Tits, blue, at Bath, 71;
long-tailed, seen at their best, 16
Tree-pipit, quality of voice of, 126
U
Upland geese. See Geese.
V
Visitants, rare annual slaughter of, 237
W
Wagtail, pied, attending cows in the pasture ... quality of voice
of, 125
Wallace, Alfred Russel, Bird of Paradise assemblies described by,
100
Wells, daws at the cathedral, 60;
a wood wren at, 102
White, Gilbert, wood wren's song, described by, 106;
willow wren's song described by, 122;
associations with, at Selborne, 288;
an imaginary conversation with, 291
Whiteness, in flowers, 146;
magnifying effect of, 193
Willersey, owls at, 173;
a pet wood owl at, 184
Willow wren, Burroughs on the song of the, 101;
Gilbert White's description of its song, 122;
Warde Fowler's description of its song, 121, 122;
abundance and wide distribution of, 117
Willoughby, Father of British Ornithology, willow wren described
by, 118
Wood lark, Burns' address to, 127
Wood owl. See Owls.
Wood pigeon, song of, 85;
human quality in voice of, 87-90
Wood wren, at Wells, 102;
difficulty in seeing, 103;
inquisitiveness, 104;
secret of its charm, 114
Wookey Hole, source of the Somerset Axe, 59
Wordsworth, bird voices preferred by, 107
Y
Year with the Birds, A, 122
Yellow, in flowers, 146
Yellow-hammer, singing in the rain, 285
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TURNBULL AND SPEARS,
EDINBURGH
Transcriber's Notes
Beyond the list of corrections detailed below, a number of minor
corrections may have been applied where commas, or periods were either
missing or existed where other similar usage (for example, index
listings) does not have it.
Typographical Corrections
Page Correction
8 Barragan => Barragan
14 procesess => processes
19 has becomes => has become
34 scare => score
48 een => even
49 comany => company
89 accompnay => accompany
112 shubbery => shrubbery
150 beauitful => beautiful
151 adnire => admire
152 destested => detested
161 pasages => passages
175 intervvals => intervals
203 if => of
214 yon => you
226 vey => very
232 torquoise => turquoise
233 curosity => curiosity
246 offender's => offenders
252 tinamu => tinamou (twice on this page)
253 tinamu => tinamou
256 dosing => dozing
267 familes => families
303 ascociations => associations