2 1 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



found in his book, that the study of nature may and 

 should be made to be of direct practical value to 

 mankind. " A full history of noxious insects hurtful 

 in the field, suggesting all the known and likely 

 means of destroying them, would be a most useful 

 and important work. A knowledge of the properties, 

 economy, propagation, and in short of the life 

 and conversation of these animals, is a necessary 

 step to lead us to some method of preventing their 

 depredations." 



Though his records are confined to his own 

 district, White's conception of the work of the 

 naturalist was as broad and rational as that of 

 Aristotle. He took mankind into his view, and 

 nothing escaped him that was worth recording of the 

 economy, the superstitions, the language, of the 

 people who lived around him. One of his best 

 letters is devoted entirely to the subject of rush 

 candles and their manufacture; and we have in 

 another some acute reflections on the disappearance 

 of leprosy in England. And it is most important to 

 remember, if we would judge his book as he would 

 himself have wished it to be judged, that by natural 

 history he understood not only the study of animals 

 and plants, but the study of all natural productions 

 and occurrences, of every natural phenomenon, 

 that is, which was brought to his notice in his 

 neighbourhood. In the advertisement to the first 



