CHAPTEE VIII 



GILBERT WHITE OF SELBORNE 



GILBERT WHITE died a hundred years ago, 26th 

 June 1793 ; the Natural History and Antiquities 

 of Selborne was first published four years earlier. 

 Since then many a book of the same type has 

 appeared and disappeared, but White still keeps 

 his hold upon the English mind. Though many 

 may talk of his book without having read it through, 

 and still more may have read it through without 

 discerning its quality, the fact remains that the 

 demand for it is steadily on the increase, and that 

 it is finding its way into the village library and the 

 home of the working man. The name of Gilbert 

 White is a household word with every one who 

 loves his own incomparable country, with its 

 thousands of villages as homely and as sheltered 

 as Selborne. 



It is strange at first sight that this should be 

 so at a time when we seem passing from a period 

 of poetry and romance into one of stern reality, 



