Introduction xx x i 



acute European naturalists. Zoology and botany formed just at that 

 date, indeed, what one may venture to call the growing-point of science, 

 as astronomy had formed it in the age of Copernicus, and as geology 

 formed it in the age of Lyell. The publication of Linnaeus 's great 

 work on " The System of Nature " gave an impulse to the study of 

 biology, the effect of which can scarcely be overrated. It was during 

 the forty years roughly covered by White's observations that the science 

 of life began to assume philosophical form and to be prosecuted with 

 some attempt at scientific accuracy. 



Gilbert White, Fellow of Oriel, was a man of highly competent 

 education, a good classical scholar, capable of reading with ease the 

 Latin works and memoirs in which the scientific writing of the time 

 was almost all contained. His " Antiquities of Selborne " show him to 

 have been also a man of great general erudition, with a knowledge of 

 and interest in medieval civilisation very rare in his day. But he 

 was also by nature and habit a keen observer of the wild life around 

 him. When he settled down at Selborne, to a placid bachelor existence, 

 he occupied a house in the main street of the village, still standing, 

 though much enlarged, known as The Wakes-, and, being a celibate 

 Fellow, with few cares to worry him, he gave himself up almost 

 entirely to his favourite fad of watching the beasts and birds of his 

 native country. At the present day, unless one devotes oneself to the 

 minuter forms of life, one has little chance of discovering anything 

 new in Britain. But in White' s day things were different. The 

 zoology and botany of the British Isles were as yet very imperfectly 

 understood; the habits and ways of plants and animals were an almost 

 unknown study. Moreover, the current books on natural history were 

 still crammed with medieval fables, marvellous survivals of folk- 

 tales, extraordinary accounts of how swallows hibernate under water, 

 and how decoctions of toads are a certain cure for the ravages of 

 cancer. It was the business of White's generation to substitute careful 

 and accurate first-hand observation for the vague descriptions, the false 

 surmises, and the wild traditional tales of earlier authors. 



This it is in great part that gives their perennial charm to these 

 natural, personal, and delightful Letters. We are present, as it were, 

 at the birth of zoology ; we are admitted to see science in the making. 



