Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as they play over pools and streams.

Hedge-hogs abound in my gardens and fields.

I want to be better informed with regard to ichthyology.

I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take flies out of a person's hand.

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.

Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish.

The French, I think, in general, are strangely prolix in their natural history.

The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds.

The parish of Selborne, by taking in so much of the forest, is a vast district.

You may depend on it that the bunting, emberiza miliaria, does not leave this country in the winter.

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.

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.

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.

I've always loved the word blunderbuss. I've always thought that it was a beautiful word and that it could mean several different things.

My mother was 45 when she had me, so when I was in high school my parents were the same age as my friends' grandparents.

My mother's the youngest of 10 children too, so we have sort of a special bond in that we know what that feels like. It's a strange spot to be in.

The fact that we elected Obama was a sign that the black struggle inherent in the blues and so much of the music I have loved can triumph.

The way I like to start a new project is to take a cover song and make a stab at it, ideally one that has nothing to do with the people in the room.

An auctioneer is such a uniquely American thing. I keep thinking in my head, perhaps it's not as American as I think, but it feels so Southern. It feels so American. Like, hundreds of years of American tradition is involved in it.

I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm.