"in zoology as it is in botany: all Nature is so full that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined. Men that undertake only one district," he adds two years later, "are much more likely to advance natural knowledge than those that grasp at more than they can possibly be acquainted with: every kingdom, every province, should have its own monographer." Strictly speaking, Gilbert White was not a poet or an idyllist, but rather an observer and investigator, with a strong trend toward science in its less arid and technical forms. And yet he possesses an unquestionable charm of his own, apart from that of a mere scientific recorder, if the reader be but sympathetic and responsive to the spell. Constantly he is surrounded by country sights and sounds, a cloud of birds ever fluttering round his head, and crickets chirping at his feet. among them, taking Leisurely he moves notes by the way; never tiring one with long rambles or dissertations; and while quoting the Latin classists frequently, always quoting them pertinently, his frequent epigraph and citation forming a pleasing echo to the text. We have no portrait of Gilbert White, to see the outward man as he existed a century ago; and so one may fancy him with kneebreeches and buckles rambling among flowery footpaths, watching the white owls under the eaves of the church, or reclining sub tegmine fagi on some mossy cushion of the "Hanger." Or one may picture. him looking on with complacent smile at the sports in the Plestor, and hobnobbing. with the rude forefathers of the hamlet when he did not chance to be watching for hedgehogs or pondering intently the allengrossing subject of the migratory birds. Fond of his books, he does not see Nature through them, but takes his views at first hand; his classicism being but a garnish to his observation. Nor, if somewhat scientific at times, can one ever term him tiresome.1 An apt raconteur, he is well up in the folk-lore and antiquities of his parish. He is familiar with the peculiarities and 1 He did not look for microbes everywhere. To many it would do much good to read this work if only with the object of getting rid of some of the spiders' webs that have been so industriously spun over the eyesight of those who would like to think for themselves.-RICHARD JEFFERIES, Preface to the Natural History of Selborne. London, Walter Scott, 1887. composition of its soils, the various productions of the district; and possesses a fund of interesting out-of-the-way information to constantly draw from with relation to his subject. He is always amiable withal, and free from prejudices; his current, is placid, like the flow of a quiet river. Selborne, furthermore, in many editions, is an unusually engaging volume to fondle, with its spirited illustrations of scenes referred to, and representations of much of the avifauna it describes. In the pulpit he must have been pleasing to listen to, judging from the direct ss and lucidness of his essays. Whether it was his wont to draw comparisons from natural objects in his sermons or to embroider his text with Latinity, has not been recorded. Of a surety the old male yew of the ancient churchyard, "which in the Spring sheds clouds of dust, and fills the atmosphere around with its farina," must have furnished him with many an analogy, and figured as a symbol of immortality. Yet although he may not be termed an idyllist, his book deserves to be classed among country idyls, if only for its reflex character in having fostered a closer acquaintanceship with outward Nature, a work that has paved the way to Jesse, Kingsley, Thoreau, Jefferies, Burroughs, and Gibson, and the choir that has hailed the sun upon the upland lawn. It has taught when and how to observe, and made us more responsive to a life that enters into intimate relationship with cur own. It is as such that White deserves asting recognition, apart from his valuable labours as a naturalist during his own generation. Not that he was insensible to certain forms of outward beauty which address themselves to man's finer. feelings, but that he was more intent uponthis work of studying living creatures from the standpoint of a naturalist than considering them from the poet's point of view. Yet poetic passages are by no means unfrequent in his writings. "The Naturalist's Evening Walk," with its delightfully pastoral sentiment, speaks for itself, its lines on the instinct that prompts the arrival and departure of the migrants among the feathered tribes being classic in their grace and beauty: "Amusive birds! say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat; Whence your return by such nice instinct led, When Spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head? Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, One remembers also his account of the felling of the Raven Tree, his appreciation of the shapely figured aspect of chalk-hills, the blackcap paraphrasing a passage from "As You Like It," and his scholastic call to the echo : "Tityre, tu patulæ recubans The scene of this echo, described in one of the most pleasing of the epistles, was in a depressed vale near the sleepy village where echoes abounded, and which gave back most agreeably, from a hop-kiln above the hollow cartway, the chorus of a pack of hounds, the clarion of the hunting-horn, a sonorous chime of bells, and the minstrelsy of birds. Numerous experiments were made by the naturalist with this echo, from which he discovered that moist air deadens and clogs the response, hot sunshine renders it thin and weak, and a ruffling wind quite defeats the whole. On quiet dewy evenings. the air is most elastic, and perhaps the later the hour, the more so. He likewise tells how an echo may be constructed on one's grounds at little or no expense in many |