Gilbert White

“The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds.”

“It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany: all nature is so full, that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined.”

“I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take flies out of a person's hand.”

“Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish.”

“The parish of Selborne, by taking in so much of the forest, is a vast district.”

“Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as they play over pools and streams.”

“We have had a very severe frost and deep snow this month. My thermometer was one day fourteen degrees and a half below the freezing point, within doors.”