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Edmund Selous

The books are ordered by publication date with the most recent at the top.

The list is incomplete.

Evolution of Habit in Birds

Edmund Selous

Constable & Co. Ltd

1933

From the front cover:

"This is one of Mr. Selous' most important contributions to scientific natural history. It should appeal especially to those who are even more interested into enquiries into the meaning of the present habits of birds, than in the habits themselves. These last are often very puzzling and, in the abundant absence of this kind of research, remain in different degrees deceptive or unintelligible. The evidence here presented is not merely cogent but demonstrative. Mr. Selous believes indeed that through intensive observation the "evolution of habit in birds" may not only be inferred, but in some cases actually seen. How, is the book's secret, which may be found out by reading it."

Thought-Transference (Or What?) In Birds

Edmund Selous

1931

From the front cover:

"In the following pages the author endeavours to show, by the publication of his careful records of bird-watching, that thought-transference exists in nature, independently of man. The evidence is the more valuable because it is presented in a resume of facts observed and noted down on the spot, when possible, and when not, whilst still fresh in the memory. The author's arguments upon the evidence are also given as they arose in his mind at the time, or were afterwards elaborated. The gist of the matter is that if birds, when together, act in the same way simultaneously, they must do so either in response to some extraneous event which affects them through their senses, as known to us, at one and the same time, or because influenced in some other way than this, known or unknown, or by coincidence merely."

Realities Of Bird Life: Being Extracts From The Diaries Of A Life-Loving Naturalist

Edmund Selous

Constable & Co. Ltd

1927

Tommy Smith Again At The Zoo

Edmund Selous

1925

Tommy Smith's Birds

Edmund Selous

1922

Jack's Other Insects

Edmund Selous

1920

Tommy Smith At The Zoo

Edmund Selous

1917

Uncertain about publication date.

The Wonders of Animal Life

Edmund Selous

1916?

Uncertain about publication date.

The Wonders of The Insect World

Edmund Selous

1914?

Uncertain about publication date.

The Zoo Conversation Book

Edmund Selous

1911

Jack's Insects

Edmund Selous

1910

The British Bird Book: A Complete Work On The Birds, Nests And Eggs Of Great Britain

Editor: F.B. Kirkman

Illustrations: Winifred Austen, G. E. Collins, G. E. Lodge, H. Grönvold, A. W. Seaby

Photographs: F. E. Daniel, W. Farren, Riley Fortune, C. J. King, Seton P. Gordon, Charles Reid, E. L. Turner, the Editor and other

T.C. & E.C. Jack

1910

Published in four volumes, each of which was divided into three sections. Includes 200 colour plates and many black and white photographs.

From the preface:

One result of the growing interest taken during recent years in the study of ornithology is a considerable addition to our knowledge of the habits of British Birds. As no important comprehensive British work on the subject has appeared since the well-known Histories of Yarrell (revised and partly rewritten by Newton and Saunders, 1871-85) and Seebohm (1883-85), this knowledge remains inaccessible to those of us who are not prepared to search through a large and scattered literature, periodical and other. The sources of information available, moreover, before the above Histories appeared, have yet to be exhausted. Superior to both of them, in its account of a number of our species, is the monumental German work of the Naumanns, father and son, a new edition of which, revised by several prominent European ornithologists under the editorship of Dr. Carl Hennicke, was issued in 1897-1905 under the title of the Naturgeschichte der Vogel Mitteleuropas. But this edition, while giving very complete treatment to the description and distribution of most of the species, still leaves unrecorded many of the observations on their habits that have been made in our own and other countries. There is, therefore, place for a work that will bring together from every source, foreign and native, all the available information of any importance concerning the habits of British Birds. To do this, and to do it in a form interesting alike to the student of animal life and the general reader, is the chief object of the present undertaking.

The Romance of Insect Life

Edmund Selous

1907

Tommy Smith's Other Animals

Edmund Selous

1906

The Romance of The Animal World

Edmund Selous

1905

The Birdwatcher in the Shetlands With Some Notes On Seals ... and Digressions

Edmund Selous

J.M. Dent

1905

Opening lines of preface:

"In the spring of 1900 I paid my first visit to the Shetlands, and most of what I then saw is embodied in my work Bird Watching. Two years afterwards I went there again, arriving somewhat later, and it is the notes made by me during this second stay which fill the greater number of these pages. They are my journal, written from day to day, amidst the birds with whom I lived without another companion, nor did I look upon them as more than the rough material out of which I might, some day, make a book. When it came to making one, however, it struck me more and more forcibly that I was taking elaborate pains to stereotype and artificialise what was, at any rate, as it stood, an unforced utterance and natural growth. I found, in fact, that I could make it worse, but not better, so I resolved not to make it worse. Except for a few peckings, therefore, and minor interpolations - mostly having to do with the working out of ideas jotted down in the rough - I send it to press with this very negative sort of recommendation, and with only the hope added that what interested me so much will interest others also, even through the veil of my writing."

Bird Life Glimpses

Edmund Selous

George Allen

1905

From the preface: "In the autumn of 1899 I came to live at Icklingham in Suffolk, and remained there, with occasional intervals of absence, for the next three years. During the greater part of that period I kept a day-to-day journal of field observation and reflection, and the following pages represent, for the most part, a portion of this. They are the work of one who professes nothing except to have used his eyes and ears to the best of his ability, and to give only, both in regard to fact and theory, the result of this method combined, of course, in the latter case, with such illustrations and fortifications as his reading may have allowed him to make use of, and without taking into account some passing reference or allusion. That my notes relate almost entirely to birds, is not because I am less interested in other animals, but because, with the exception of rabbits, there are, practically, no wild quadrupeds in England. I am quite aware that a list can be made out, but let any one sit for a morning or afternoon in a wood, field, marsh, swamp, or pond, and he will then understand what I mean. In fact, to be a field naturalist in England, is to be a field ornithologist, and more often than not I speak from experience a waster of one's time altogether. Unless you are prepared to be always unnaturally interested in the commonest matters, and not ashamed to pass as a genius by a never-ending barren allusion to them, be assured that you will often feel immensely dissatisfied with the way in which you have spent your day. Many a weary wandering, many an hour's waiting and waiting to see, and seeing nothing, will be yours if you aim at more than this and to read a book is fatal. But there is the per contra, and what that is I know very well. Of a few such per contras they were to me, and I can only hope that some may be so to the reader these Bird Life Glimpses are made up."

Beautiful Birds

Edmund Selous

J.M. Dent

1901

Opening lines of chapter two:

"First I win tell you about the Birds of Paradise. You have heard of them perhaps, and how beautiful they are, but you may have thought that birds with a name like that did not live here at all. For the Emperor of China lives in China, and if the Emperor of China lives in China, the Birds of Paradise ought, one would think, to live in Paradise. But that is not the case — not now at any rate. They live a very long way off, it is true, right over at the other side of the world, but it is not quite so far off as Paradise is. No, it cannot be there that they live, because if you were to leave England in a ship and sail always in the right direction, you would come at last to the very place, instead of coming right round to England again, which is what you would do if you were to sail for Paradise — for you know, of course, that the earth is round. But why, then, are they called Birds of Paradise if they live here on the earth? Well, there are two ways of explaining it, I will tell you first one and then the other, and you can choose the way you like best. The first way is this."

Bird Watching

Edmund Selous

J.M. Dent

1901

Opening lines of chapter one:

"If life is, as some hold it to be, a vast melancholy ocean over which ships more or less sorrow-laden continually pass and ply, yet there lie here and there upon it isles of consolation on to which we may step out and for a time forget the winds and waves. One of these we may call Bird-isle - the island of watching and being entertained by the habits and humours of birds - and upon this one, for with the others I have here nothing to do, I will straightway land, inviting such as may care to, to follow me. I will speak of birds only, or almost only, as I have seen them, and I must hope that this plan, which is the only one I have found myself able to follow, will be accepted as an apology for the absence of much which, not having seen but only read of, I therefore say nothing about. Also, if I sometimes here record what has long been known and noted as though I were making a discovery, I trust that this, too, will be forgiven me, for, in fact, whenever I have watched a bird and seen it do anything at all - anything, that is, at all salient - that is just how I have felt. Perhaps, indeed, the best way to make discoveries of this sort is to have the idea that one is doing so. One looks with the soul in the eyes then, and so may sometimes pick up some trifle or other that has not been noted before."

Tommy Smith's Animals

Edmund Selous

1899

Opening lines:

"There was once a little boy, named A Tommy Smith, who was very cruel to animals, because nobody had taught him that it was wrong to be so. He would throw stones at the birds as they sat in the trees or hedges; and if he did not hit them, that was only because they were too quick for him, and flew away as soon as they saw the stone coming. But he always meant to hit them yes, and to kill them too, which made it every bit as bad as if he really had killed them."

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