WHITE'S SELBORNE xiii 



of the ways and habits of the feathered hosts, and a historian 

 or custodian of facts and causes relating to the natural world, 

 that White claims attention. To know the poetry and soul 

 of the bird, to comprehend the utterance of the breeze and 

 voice of the wild flower, to catch the whisper of the unfold- 

 ing leaf, and penetrate the message of the blue sky bending 

 over, one must turn to the golden pages of the prose poet of 

 Coate, for no one has succeeded in interpreting them so 

 beautifully, so lovingly, so tenderly, as he. 



Except for his deafness, which incommoded him greatly 

 at times during his later years, the senses of White were 

 marvelously acute, enabling him to detect many things that 

 were imperceptible to the ordinary observer. Thus he could 

 hear the swallow, while engaged in foraging for insects, snap 

 her bill when a fly was taken, a sound resembling the noise 

 at the shutting of a watch-case ; but the motion of the mandi- 

 bles was too quick to be perceived. On the other hand, he 

 could discern the eve-jarr in the twilight, while circling swiftly 

 round an oak that swarmed with fern-chafers, thrust out its 

 short leg occasionally, and, by a bend of the head, convey its 

 prey into its mouth. 1 



He discovered that the swallows, like very many insects, 

 propagate on the wing, as well as eat, drink, bathe, collect 

 materials for their nests, and feed their young while in flight, 

 rising very early and retiring to roost very late, being in rapid 

 action during the height of summer at least sixteen hours. 

 Swallows and martins, he says, that have numerous fami- 

 lies, are continually feeding them every two or three minutes ; 

 whereas the swifts, that have but two young to maintain, are 

 much at their leisure, and do not attend on their nests for 

 hours together. The swifts seldom being seen hawking, like 

 the swallow, near the ground or water, but seeking their food 

 in a more elevated plane than the other species, he concludes 

 that they, together with the larger bats, derive their suste- 

 nance from some sort of high-flying gnats or insects which 

 are short of continuance ; and that the brief sojourn of the 

 swifts, accordingly, is governed by the defect of their food 

 supply. It was noticed by him that birds are largely influ- 



1 Letters LVIL, XLVII. 



