White had another advantage over secular modern people. Much about animals was still unknown. Science had not yet defined or answered all the questions – leaving those interested in animals with the freedom to follow up their own curiosity, to ask “What interests me?” rather than “What must one know?”. Reading White evokes the excitement that all subjects take on when we feel ourselves moving from the rank of pupils to that of explorers. White was struck by a host of questions. Why do cats like eating fish so much? When do the sparrows’ eggs hatch? Can bees hear anything?

Because no one knew, White was free to carry out some touchingly homespun investigations: “It does not appear from experiment that bees are in any way capable of being affected by sounds: for I have often tried my own with a large ­speaking-­trumpet held close to their hives, and with such an exertion of voice as would have hailed a ship at the distance of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various employments undisturbed, and without showing the least sensibility or resentment.” White was similarly curious about the key that owls sing in and found that it was B flat. It may be a good thing for science that many facts are now known, but it’s a sadder thing for the curiosity of most mortals.

White constantly encourages his readers to focus on the number of animals that live alongside us – but that we typically ignore, seeing them only out of the corner of our eye, having no appreciation of what they are up to and want. White prompted his readers to abandon their usual perspective to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes. One autumn, he reported: “Swallows and martins .?.?. have forsaken us sooner this year than usual; for on September the ­twenty-­second, they rendezvoused in a neighbour’s ­walnut-tree, where it seemed probable they had taken up their lodging for the night. At the dawn of the day, which was foggy, they arose all together in infinite numbers, occasioning such a rushing from the strokes of their wings against the hazy air, as might be heard to a considerable distance: since that no flock has appeared, only a few stragglers.”

It would have been easy to overlook that they had ever been in Selborne. Just the odd sound and sight, invisible to the unfocused villager more concerned with news from London or with the harvest or church gossip. And yet the swallows had been in Selborne since the end of February, the martins since the early weeks of April. They had spent the spring building their nests in chimneys, in forked boughs of trees or beneath eaves – gathering mud in their bills and applying it with trembling movements of their chins. They had searched for insects for their young, swooping low over hedges and ponds (while humans were baking bread and having arguments and darning socks). The swallows had sung in a soft, low-­twittering song – feet-feet feet-a-feetit – and the martins in a slightly lower chrrp chrrp, with the occasional treep at a moment of alarm. And now they were leaving Selborne on their immense journey back to the equatorial regions of Africa in which they ­wintered.