INTRODUCTION 



SOME time about the year 1755, as far as one can judge, there 

 went to settle down at Selborne in Hampshire a certain quiet 

 and unobtrusive parson, the Reverend Gilbert White, Fellow 

 of Oriel College, Oxford, who has made his out-of-the-way 

 village into a place of pilgrimage for all lovers of nature 

 on both sides of the Atlantic. He was not, as is commonly though 

 erroneously stated, the vicar of the parish ; he retained his Fellowship 

 at Oriel, and seems to have resided in Selborne for the most part 

 merely in his character as a private gentleman, though he also incident- 

 ally acted as curate there and elsewhere. But that was not Gilbert 

 White 's first appearance in the Hampshire parish. He merely settled 

 down to spend his days obscurely but calmly in his native village. 

 So modest was he, indeed, and so careless of fame that no portrait now 

 exists of him, and only a few particulars can with difficulty be gleaned 

 from very brief notices about the man whose Letters have probably 

 been reprinted in a greater number of editions than those of any other 

 English worthy. 



'The Whites had a hereditary connection of two generations with 

 Selborne. Gilbert White the elder, grandfather of the naturalist, was 

 a Fellow of Magdalen, presented by his college in 1681 to their 

 vicarage of Selborne, then, it would appear, of very small value. 

 The tombstone of this elder Gilbert, still remaining in the parish 

 church, is partly answerable for the persistent blunder which describes 

 the naturalist as " the idyllic vicar of Selborne "; and the error is 

 intensified by the memorial slab to the grandson himself, on which occur 

 the words, ''formerly Vicar of this Parish" applied to the elder not 

 to the younger Gilbert. The vicar died in 1727, when his famous 

 grandson was just seven years old ; he left one son, John, " B arris ter- 

 at-law," who was the father of the more famous Gilbert White of 

 these charming letters. 



Gilbert the younger was born at Selborne vicarage on 'July 18, 



