INTRODUCTION. 



i 



Sections I. -III. of this Introduction are by L. C. MIALL ; Section IV. by 

 W. WARDE FOWLER. 



I. GILBERT WHITE. 1 



THE events of Gilbert White's life are not striking. He was 

 born at Selborne, in 1720, being the son of a banister and 

 country gentleman, John White, and Anne Holt, daughter 

 of Thomas Holt, rector of Streatham. His grandfather, 

 Gilbert White (1650-1728), had been vicar of Selborne. 

 "This Gilbert White was apparently a well-to-do man, for 

 he left considerable bequests to the village, and doubtless 

 inherited wealth from his father, who had been an eminent 

 citizen of Oxford in the time of Cromwell. Sampson White, 

 whom we may call the founder of the family, was a draper in 

 the High Street ; he had migrated to the city from Coggs, 

 near Witney, where his family had been settled for many 

 generations. He was mayor in 1660, served as ' butler of 

 the beer-cellar' at the coronation of Charles II., and was 

 knighted among many others at that gay time." 2 About a 

 year after the naturalist's birth his parents removed to Comp- 

 ton, near Guildford, returning to Selborne, however, some ten 

 years later. John White died there in 1758, his wife in 

 1739. The Wakes, 3 the house in which the naturalist was 



1 Bell's memoir, and other parts of his edition of White's Selborne (2 vols. 8vo, 

 1877), contain a pretty full account of the life of Gilbert White, which has been 

 freely drawn upon for this sketch. Some interesting facts and suggestions have 

 been taken from Mr. Warde Fowler's "Gilbert White of Selborne" (Macmillan's 

 Magazine for July, 1893, reprinted in Summer Studies of Birds and Books). A 

 full and very careful Life by Prof. Alfred Newton has lately appeared in the Dic- 

 tionary of National Biography. 



2 Warde Fowler, Summer Studies of Birds and Books, p. 207. 



3 Named after one Wake, a former owner of the land. 



