Sunday, August 9, 2009

Some excerpts from the index

Snail love darts, Cary Grant, green beans, very large wrenches. Yes, it is an eclectic blog. Today, I have some of the Reverend Gilbert White’s index to share. White’s The Natural History of Selborne published in 1789 and still in print, was a landmark of natural history, ecology, & conservation. I found a nice illustrated copy in NYPL, and have so far taken a look only at the intro and the index, which is rich:

Beech, loveliest of forest trees
Black-cap, an elegant songster
Boy, an idiot, his strange propensity
eats bees, &c.

Fishes, gold and silver, why very amusing in glass bowl
Fly, bacon, injurious to the housewife

Jar-bird, what

Scotland, in what its maps are defective
Slugs, very injurious to wheat just come out of the ground, by eating off the blade; and by
their infinite numbers occasioning incredible havock
Sweden produces two hundred and twenty-one birds

Water-eft, has no gills
Worms, earth, no inconsiderable link in the chain of nature, some account of

1 comment:

ScottieinaCanoe said...

I think you are in for some rather interesting reading....