VISITORS TO SELBORNE 175 



is always so ; any new aspect, form, or manifestation of 

 the principle of life, at the moment it comes before the 

 vision and the mind is, to one who is not a specialist, 

 attractive beyond all others. 



But, after all is said and done, I have as a fact 

 spent many of my Hampshire days at a distance from 

 the spots I love best, and my subject in this chapter 

 will be of my sojourn in that eastern corner of the 

 county, in the village and parish which all naturalists 

 love, and which many of them know so well. 



It is told in the books that some seventy or eighty 

 years ago an adventurous naturalist journeyed down 

 from London by rough ways to the remote village of 

 Selborne, to see it with his own eyes and describe its 

 condition to the world. The way is not long nor rough 

 in these times, and on every summer day, almost 

 at every hour of the day, strangers from all parts 

 of the country, with not a few from foreign lands, 

 may be seen in the old village street. Of these 

 visitors that come like shadows, so depart, nine in 

 every ten, or possibly nineteen in every twenty, have 

 no real interest in Gilbert White and his work and 

 the village he lived in, but are members of that 

 innumerable tribe of gadders about the land who 

 religiously visit every spot which they are told should 

 be seen. 



One morning, while staying at the village, in July 

 1901, 1 went at six o'clock for a stroll on the common, 



