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The Natural History of Selborne

Chapter 45: Letter XXXV
By Gilbert White
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About This Book

The collection presents a series of dated letters and naturalistic notes from a local observer detailing the plants, birds, insects, weather, and seasonal cycles of a rural parish. Entries combine close field observations, phenological records, anecdotal reports of animal behavior, descriptions of landscapes and agricultural life, and occasional short poems. Observations are organized around months, species, and phenomena, often noting variation across years and linking weather patterns to biological events. The narrative emphasizes careful, patient observation and the relationship between human activity and the surrounding natural world.

Letter XXXV

To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, 1771.

Dear Sir,

Happening to make a visit to my neighbour’s peacocks, I could not help observing that the trains of those magnificent birds appear by no means to be their tails; those long feathers growing not from their uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and top-heavy, when set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck, but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey-cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run backwards towards the females.

I should tell you that I have got an uncommon calculus aegogropila, taken out of the stomach of a fat ox; it is perfectly round, and about the size of a large Seville orange; such are, I think, usually flat.