Gilbert White (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) was a "parson-naturalist", a pioneering English naturalist, ecologist, and ornithologist. He is best known for his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. (wikipedia)
Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish.
You may depend on it that the bunting, emberiza miliaria, does not leave this country in the winter.
The French, I think, in general, are strangely prolix in their natural history.
I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology.
Though large herds of deer do much harm to the neighbourhood, yet the injury to the morals of the people is of more moment than the loss of their crops.
The parish of Selborne, by taking in so much of the forest, is a vast district.
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.
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.
General Howe turned out some German wild boars and sows in his forests, to the great terror of the neighbourhood; and, at one time, a wild bull or buffalo: but the country rose upon them and destroyed them.
I make no doubt but there are three species of the willow-wrens: two I know perfectly; but have not been able yet to procure the third.
