Jason's Reviews > The Natural History of Selbourne

I live just up the road from Gilbert White’s house and recently visited it for the first time (one of those “why’d it take so long to see something so close” moments) I had read snippets of his work in other books and combining that with what was at the house I decided it was about time I gave this classic nature book a go…of course I had to get the best looking copy which was the one Little Toller published.

My first thoughts after reading was how amazingly enthusiastic was White, from birds to crickets and even watching his thermometer, his excitement is contagious and I wondered if those he wrote to fully appreciated his letters or did they roll their eyes at another lengthy post from that White chap. It is easy to see just how important this book is, White writes about a culture/place that is far different from today and the data he records shows rainfalls, temperatures, bird counts, both common and rare and an account of the people and how they worked the land.

There are shocking moments too, modern day me can’t help but be shocked when he talks about a rare bird visiting Selborne and BANG! it gets shot dead so he can have a closer look, or when he takes baby birds out of a nest and puts them on the ground to see what they do. But then if White was here today he would have a lot more shocks, how we happily chop down a forest for a mass of horrible looking houses or how the government refuses to pass a super simple law like nest boxes to save swifts. One thing did make me laugh, he would find a dead bird, box it up and post it to a friend, imagine doing that today…wouldn’t be much left after it had spent two weeks at the post office sorting branch at Swindon.

The book itself was very interesting, sometimes it could get bogged down with data and quotes but it was his theories that I found fascinating, working through all the info he has to try and figure out where House martins go when it gets cold. My favourite bit was when he says that he has spent 40 years in this small area learning everything he can about Nature and he still gets surprised by what it can do. Brilliant.

Hugely interesting book, probably best to find out more about the chap before you dive into this book.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2025...