BRITISH ZOOLOGISTS. ITT 



sort of fitness, a congruity with the quality of the shy, 

 modest spirit and the tranquil, contented life of the man. 

 Those who would know White, must read White's 

 'Selborne,' and when they have done that, and learned 

 to love it, they will love the writer of the book, and will 

 know more about him than any biographical enumeration 

 of facts could have told them. 



Such facts as are known can be stated in very brief 

 compass. Gilbert White was born in Selborne, a little 

 village in the extreme eastern corner of Hampshire, on 

 the 1 8th of July 1720. His father, John White, who did 

 not at the time of Gilbert's birth reside in Selborne, was 

 the only son of Gilbert White, the vicar of Selborne, and 

 was a barrister in the Middle Temple. When Gilbert 

 was eleven years of age, his father came to reside per- 

 manently at Selborne. Little is known of him, but it 

 would seem that Gilbert derived from his father his strong 

 love of nature. He died in 1759, an d left instructions 

 in his will that no monument should be erected to him, 

 'not desiring to have his name recorded, save in the 

 book of life.' Gilbert White was educated at Basingstoke, 

 under the Rev. Thomas Warton, the vicar of Basingstoke. 

 In 1739 he entered Oxford as a student of Oriel College,, 

 and he graduated as bachelor of arts in 1743. He 

 must have distinguished himself as a student, since he 

 was elected to a Fellowship of Oriel in 1744, not taking 

 his master's degree till 1746. He seems to have had 

 many opportunities of preferment in the church ; but he 

 elected to live peacefully at his old home in his native 

 village, where he died in the seventy-third year of his age, 

 on the 26th of June 1793. Of 'events,' in the ordinary 



