GILBERT WHITE 15 



people were beyond question very badly ofT: a few of 

 tlie labourers, it appears from the "letters," kept pigs, 

 and in years when beech-mast was abundant did fairly 

 well ; but, generally speaking, great poverty prevailed. 

 They tried, many of them, to make a few shillings by 

 keeping bees. "This day," notes Gilbert White, "has 

 been at Selborne the honey-market : for a person from 

 Chert came over with a cart, to whom all the villagers 

 round brought their hives, and sold their contents. 

 Combs were sold last year at about 3fd. per pound ; 

 this year 3|d.-4d." In addition to the general poverty 

 there was little enough to break tlie monotony of daily 

 life. Once, indeed, we read of a cricket-match, in 

 which " Mr. Woods had his knee-pan dislocated by 

 the stroke of a ball ; and at the same time Mr. Webb 

 was knocked down and his face and leg much wounded 

 by the stroke of a ball." Or a mad dog from " Newton 

 great farm " causes intense alarm by biting half the 

 dogs in the street and many about the neighbourhood. 

 In consequence of this " 17 persons from Newton farm 

 went in a waggon to be dipped in the sea, and also an 

 horse." Or a strange wedding sets all the village for 

 two days in an uproar, when " a young, mad-headed 

 farmer out of Berks came to marry farmer Bridger's 

 daughter, and brought with him four drunken com- 

 panions." But " the common people all agree that the 

 bridegroom was the most of a gentleman of any man they 

 ever saw." Whether the labourers were accustomed 

 to attend their parish church in those days we cannot 

 discover from White's letters, but they were not in the 

 habit of going to chapel. " For more than a century 

 past," writes our parson-naturalist in the year 1788, 

 " there does not appear to have been one Papist in 

 Selborne, or any Protestant dissenter of any denomina- 



