xxxviii Introduction 



final development of rational biology. As to his prescient observations 

 on the 'part played by earthworms in the economy of nature, I have 

 already called attention, in my little book on " Charles Darwin" to the 

 extraordinary way in which they anticipate our great biologist's theories 

 and experiments in that direction. Indeed, throughout, White was one 

 of the few early naturalists who recognised the importance of the 

 cumulative effect of infinitesimal factors a truth on which almost the 

 whole of modern biology and geology are built up. As zoologist, as 

 botanist, as meteorologist, as sociologist, he is possessed in anticipation by 

 the modern spirit in every direction. In this respect, it is true, he 

 cannot be named beside his far abler contemporary, Erasmus Darwin ; 

 yet while Erasmus Darwin has left behind him great speculations, 

 immensely interesting to the historian of science and philosophy, but not 

 to the general reader, Gilbert White has produced a book which will 

 continue to be read for years, both as a model of observation, and as the 

 picture of a man, a place, and an epoch. 



For White is essentially lovable. We know him as a crony. We 

 can chat with him still, on the slopes of the Hanger, up which he cut 

 the walk still known as the Bostal, about the number of British species 

 of willow-wren, the reason for the separation between the sexes of the 

 chaffinch in winter, and the way to worm out field-crickets from their 

 holes by the gentle persuasion of a bent of grass-flowers. It is the 

 almost colloquial form of the Letters that gives us this sense of nearness 

 and familiarity. Hardly anywhere else are we transported so frankly 

 into the inner atmosphere of the eighteenth century ; even BosweWs 

 "Johnson" fails in some respects to come up to the level of this 

 unconscious self -rev elation of the gentle, inquisitive, garrulous country 

 parson. We see him traversing on his cob " that chain of majestic 

 mountains" the Sussex Downs ; we hear him speak with bated breath 

 of the awful heights of Snowdon and Plinlimmon ; we smile at his 

 naive allusions to Spain as a distant and almost unknown kingdom ; we 

 are amused at the curious restrictions of space which are implied in 

 almost all his references to countries other than European, or even to the 

 remoter parts of Europe, let the charm of the picture never once 

 diminishes. Indeed, it is just these quaint touches of vanished thought 

 that make the book most readable. " / return you thanks for your 



