xviii INTRODUCTION 



simple grass-grown grave l would probably have been the 

 most astonished of all people in the world could he have 

 realised that his celebrity as an Englishman would have 

 come near to equalling that of Shakspere ; and yet there 

 exists at the present date as much affection, among natu- 

 ralists at least, for the sayings and doings of Gilbert 

 White as is felt for the records of Shakspere and his 

 time. 



That Gilbert White still lives with us through his book, 

 and speaks to us as if he were alive, can be realised by any 

 naturalist who visits Selborne. The "Natural History of 

 Selborne " has been given to most of us as a prize at school 

 it is included amongst the " hundred best books " which 

 every one is expected to read in these days, or to gather 

 into a standard library ; and yet if one asks any school- 

 boy or school-girl whether they have read their prize-book 

 through, they will mostly answer in the negative. Gilbert 

 White is as far over the heads of the majority of the 

 present generation of children as he was over the heads 

 of the generation in which he lived. It is only as one 

 advances in years that the peace and restfulness of this 

 most delightful of books impresses the mind. 



Gilbert White lived in a different age, and although he 

 tells us sometimes that he was much " hurry'd," there was 

 none of that dreadful feverish haste which characterises our 

 national life at the present day. 



In the course of editing this volume I have pondered 

 a hundred times on the wonderful fact that the world 

 should take such a heartfelt interest in the work of a re- 

 tiring and modest eighteenth-century clergyman ! Selborne 



1 I am often reminded, when standing in Selborne churchyard by the head- 

 stone marked "G. W., June 20, 1793," of that other tomb which I visited in 

 1885 at Delhi, with its epitaph composed by the Princess Jahanini herself three 

 hundred years ago : " Let nothing but the green grass conceal my grave ; for the 

 grass is the best covering for the pure in spirit ; the humble, the transitory 

 Jahinara, the disciple of the holy men of Chist ; the daughter of the Emperor 

 Shah Jahan ; may God illumine his intentions." 



