The Natural History of Selborne, with Its Antiquities: Naturalist's Calendar, Etc

Front Cover
W.S. Orr and Company, 1850 - 418 pages

From inside the book

Contents

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 337 - Some trust in chariots, and some in horses : but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. . 8 They are brought down and fallen : but we are risen, and stand upright.
Page 4 - In the midst of this spot stood, in old times, a vast oak, with a short squat body, and huge horizontal arms extending almost to the extremity of the area. This venerable tree, surrounded with stone steps, and seats above them, was the delight of old and young, and a place of much resort in summer evenings, where the former sat in grave debate, while the latter frolicked and danced before them.
Page 79 - Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, And all the fading landscape sinks in night; To hear the drowsy dorr come brushing by With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricket cry...
Page 157 - Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upwards of thirty years, yet I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year ; and think I see new beauties every time I traverse it.
Page 140 - Part loosely wing the region, part more wise In common, ranged in figure wedge their way, Intelligent of seasons, and set forth Their airy caravan high over seas Flying, and over lands with mutual wing Easing their flight...
Page 147 - Nothing can be more assiduous than this creature night and day in scooping the earth, and forcing its great body into the cavity; but as the noons of that season proved unusually warm and sunny, it was continually interrupted, and called forth by the heat in the middle of the day; and though I continued there till the thirteenth of November, yet the work remained unfinished.
Page 186 - He was a very merops apiaster, or bee-bird, and very injurious to men that kept bees ; for he would slide into their beegardens, and, sitting down before the stools, would rap with his finger on the hives, and so take the bees as they came out.
Page 186 - ... and at once disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would fill his bosom between his shirt and his skin with a number of those captives; and sometimes would confine them in bottles.
Page 228 - The rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it, that when I turned it out on a border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my garden: however, in the evening, the weather being cold, it buried itself in the loose mould, and continues still concealed.
Page 271 - ... the other as on the land ; yet no one, as far as I am aware, has remarked that diving fowls, while under water, impel and row themselves forward by a motion of their wings, as well as by the impulse of their feet...

Bibliographic information