60 GILBERT WHITE OF SELBORNE 1750 



The construction of this arbour may seem a very 

 trivial matter, but it was the beginning of many 

 subsequent embellishments and improvements, which 

 most certainly tended in no small degree to keep 

 their contriver in his native place. 



During the autumn of the year 1750 Gilbert 

 White visited his relation, Francis White, d.d., Eector 

 of Christian Malford, in Wiltshire, and went on to 

 stay at East AUington, near Kingsbridge in Devon- 

 shire, with an Oriel contemporary, the Rev. Nathan 

 Wells, who had married and settled there as Eector. 

 In this neighbourhood the Selborne visitor spent 

 some weeks. The district, known as the South 

 Hams — the garden of Devonshire — lying between 

 the Rivers Tamar and Teign, and bounded by 

 Dartmoor and the Channel, is perhaps the most 

 fertile and charming in the beautiful county of 

 Devon ; a land of shady dells watered by clear 

 streams and traversed by labyrinthine lanes, from 

 which the traveller can ascend to the misty solitudes 

 of Dartmoor. No doubt it was thoroughly enjoyed 

 by the naturalist, than whom, probably, few young 

 men of his age and position enjoyed greater oppor- 

 tunities for travelling about their native country. 



Addressing him "In the Depths of Devon," 

 Mulso writes, on August 30th, 1750: — 



" You live a scrambling, rantipole hfe, and have a great 

 variety of objects to be painted upon paper, (at which Land- 

 scape painting I think you a great and masterly hand) and 

 sent to your sedentary friends. We receive them and think 



