THE NATURE-WRITER 119 



stead of on a shelf in a bottle of alcohol. Still, let 

 us admit, and let the college professors, who do 

 research work upon everything except their stu- 

 dents, admit, that walking twice to the bottom 

 of a garden is not a very important discovery. 

 But how profoundly interesting it was to Gilbert 

 White ! And how like a passage from the Pen- 

 tateuch his record of it! Ten years he woos this 

 tortoise (it was fourteen that Jacob did for Ra- 

 chel) and wins it — with a serene and solemn 

 joy. He digs it out of its winter dormitory (a 

 hole in the ground), packs it carefully in a box, 

 carries it hurriedly, anxiously, by post-chaises for 

 eighty miles, rousing it perfectly by the end of 

 the journey, when, liberating it in the rectory 

 yard, he stands back to see what it will do ; and, 

 lo ! it walks twice to the bottom of the garden ! 



By a thoroughly good naturalist Kingsley may 

 have meant a thoroughly good nature-writer, for 

 I think he had in mind Gilbert White, who cer- 

 tainly was a thoroughly good naturalist, and who 

 certainly knew his own parish thoroughly. In 

 the letters from which I have quoted the gentle 

 rector was writing the natural history of Selborne, 

 his parish. But how could he write the natural 



