BIRDS. 



iLLUSTRflTED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY. 



VOL. III. 



FEBRUARY, 1898. 



No. 2. 



GILBERT WHITE AND "SELBORNE." 



SUPPOSE that a habit of minute 

 observation of nature is one of 

 the most difficult things to 



acquire, as it is one which is 



less generally pursued than any 

 other study. In almost all departments 

 of learning and investigation there have 

 been numberless works published to il- 

 lustrate them, and textbooks would fill 

 the shelves of a large library. Thoreau 

 in his Walden has shown an extremely 

 fine and close observation of the scenes 

 in which his all too short life was 

 passed, but his object does not seem at 

 any time to have been the study of 

 nature from an essential love of it, or 

 to add to his own or the world's knowl- 

 edge. On the contrary, nature was the 

 one resource which enabled him to 

 exemplify his notions of independence, 

 which were of such a sturdy and un- 

 compromising character that Mr. 

 Emerson, who had suffered some in- 

 convenience from his experience of 

 Thoreau as an inmate of his household, 

 thought him fitter to meet occasionally 

 in the open air than as a guest at 

 table and fireside. There is a delicious 

 harmony with nature in all that he has 

 written, but his descriptions of out-of- 

 door life invite us rather to indolent 

 musing than to investigation or study. 

 Who after reading Izaak Walton ever 

 went a-fishing with the vigor and enter- 

 prise of Piscator? Washington Irv- 

 ing allowed his cork to drift with the 

 current and lay down in the shadow of 



a spreading oak to dream with the be- 

 loved old author. 



In White's "Natural History of 

 Selborne" we have a unique book 

 indeed, but of a far more general 

 interest than its title would indicate. 

 Pliny, the elder, was the father of 

 natural history but to many of us Gil- 

 bert White is entitled to that honor. To 

 an early edition of the book, without 

 engravings, and much abridged, as 

 compared with Bohn's, published in 

 1851, many owe their first interest in 

 the subject. 



Mr. Ireland in his charming little 

 u Book Lever's Enchiridion," tells us 

 that when a boy he was so delighted 

 with it, that in order to possess a copy 

 of his own (books were not so cheap 

 as now) he actually copied out the 

 whole work. In a list of one hundred 

 books, Sir John Lubbock mentions 

 it as "an inestimable blessing." 

 Edward Jesse, author of "Gleanings 

 in Natural History" attributes his own 

 pursuits as an out-door naturalist 

 entirely to White's example. Much 

 of the charm of the book consists in 

 the amiable character of the author, 

 who 



" lived in solitude, midst trees and flowers, 



Life's sunshine mingling with its passing 



showers ; 



No storms to startle, and few clouds to shade 

 The even path his Christian virtues made." 



Very little is known of him beyond 

 what he has chosen to mention in his 



