xxxiv MEMOIR 



Oxford and Selborne, but we also find occasional allusions 

 in his letters, which show that he continued to follow the 

 sport, although not to an advanced age ; and it is ex- 

 tremely probable that he occasionally made it subservient 

 to his pursuit of the ornithology of the district. 



Nothing could be more fallacious and undeserved than 

 an impression, if any such ever existed, that, because 

 Gilbert White repeatedly declined college livings which 

 came within his option, and that in the only one to 

 which he was ever licensed he never resided, perhaps, 

 also, presuming that his devotion to the pursuit of 

 natural history and other intellectual occupations were 

 incompatible with the due performance of the functions 

 of his position as an ordained minister of the Church 

 his predilections were therefore secular rather than eccle- 

 siastical. His life, on the contrary, may be truly 

 said to have been passed in the constant and dili- 

 gent fulfilment of the duties of his holy office con- 

 tinuously from the time of his taking deacon's orders 

 till his death. 



After the brief period of a year and a half, during 

 which he held first the curacy of Swarraton and after- 

 wards that of Selborne, as has been already stated, he 

 quitted his residence at Oxford in the spring of 1753 ; 

 and on the 9th of September in the same year he en- 

 tered on the curacy of the little parish of Durley, near 

 Bishop's Waltham, in Hampshire, in which he ministered 

 constantly until the 9th of March, 1755, " one year and 

 an half," for which he received as his stipend at the rate 

 of 24 per annum, which, with the addition of surplice- 

 fees and marriages, amounted to 36 18s. 4d. for the 

 whole period. Such was the remuneration for regularly 

 performing divine service in a parish so many miles from 



