Wikiquote

William Henry Hudson

British-Argentinian ornithologist (1841-1924)

William Henry Hudson (Spanish: Guillermo Enrique Hudson, 4 August 1841 – 18 August 1922) was an Anglo-Argentine author, naturalist and ornithologist. He is famous for his 1904 novel Green Mansions.

Quotes

edit
  • ... it is impossible for us not to love whatever is lovely, and of all living things birds were made most beautiful.
  • The golden-crested wren has the distinction of being the smallest British bird; it is also one of the most widely distributed, being found throughout the United Kingdom. Furthermore, it is a resident throughout the year, is nowhere scarce, and in many places is very abundant. Yet it is well known only to those who are close observers of bird life. The gold crest is not a familiar figure, owing to its smallness and restlessness, which exceed that of all the other members of this restless family of birds, and make it difficult for the observer to see it well. Again, it is nearly always concealed from sight by the foliage, and in winter it keeps mostly among the evergreens, and at all times haunts by preference pine, fir, and yew trees. In the pale light of a winter day, more especially in cloudy weather, it is hard to see the greenish, restless little creature in his deep green bush or tree. Standing under, or close to, a wide-spreading old yew, half a dozen gold crests flitting incessantly about among the foliage in the gloomy interior of the trees look less like what they are than the small flitting shadows of birds.
    • British Birds. Longmans, Green, and Company. 1911. p. 73.  (1st edition 1895)
  • … A friend once confessed to me that he was always profoundly unhappy at sea during long voyages, and the reason was that his sustaining belief in a superintending Power and in immortality left him when he was on that waste of waters, which have no human associations. The feeling, so intense in his case, is known to most if not all of us; but we feel it faintly as a disquieting element in nature of which we may be but vaguely conscious.
  • One can only hope … that the countryman will say to the townsman, Go on making your laws and systems of education for your own children, who will live as you do indoors; while I shall devise a different one for mine, one which will give them hard muscles and teach them to raise the mutton and pork and cultivate the potatoes and cabbages on which we all feed.
  • ... The gardener is usually attended by a friendly robin, and when he turns up the soil the bird will come down close to his feet to pick up the small grubs and worms. Is it not probable that the tameness of the tame young robin so frequently met with is, like that of the robin who keeps company with the gardener or woodman, an acquired habit; that the young bird has made the discovery that when a person is moving about among the plants, picking fruit perhaps, lurking insects are disturbed at the roots and small spiders and caterpillars shaken from the leaves? We are to the robin what the cow is to the wagtail and the sheep to the starling—a food finder.
    • "Chapter II. Birds and Man". Birds and Man (2nd ed.). Gerald Duckworth & Company. 1915. pp. 37–57.  (quote from p. 49; In the 1st edition, published by Longmans, Green & Company in 1901, the quotation is somewhat different.)
  • ... the fruit-growers remind us in each recurring spring that it would be an immense advantage to the country if the village children were given one or two holidays each in March and April, and sent out to hunt and destroy queen wasps, every wasp brought in to be paid for by a bun at the public cost. That the wasp, an eater of ripe fruit, is also for six months every year a greedy devourer of caterpillars and flies injurious to plant live, is a fact the fruit-grower ignores.
edit
 
Wikisource
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=William_Henry_Hudson&oldid=3629115"