xiv Introduction 



selves to studies such as those of White, suffered, not merely 

 from isolation in their pursuits, but ran the risk of being ' 

 looked upon as lunatics, whose harmlessness rendered them 

 objects of pity or derision rather than of fear. White was, 

 perhaps, not the father of field-naturalists, but he did more 

 than any other man to popularise and give life to that branch 

 of work, and that without any effort— perhaps without any 

 intention— on his part, by the quiet example of his life. The 

 country squire, and, in many cases, the country parson, too, of 

 those days had a horizon which was bounded by their rod, 

 their gun, their hounds, and their dinner. Their knowledge 

 of nature did not extend further than sufficed to teach them 

 what the weather was likely to be from a hunting point of 

 view, or how best to slay the greatest number of birds or 

 beasts in the shortest possible time. Their epitaphs might 

 have been written, in the words applied by Carlyle to 

 " Phillipus Zaehdarm, Count of Zaehdarm," who, "whilst he 

 still trod these sublunar fields, slew 15,000 partridges and with 

 the help of his servants, quadruped and biped, consumed of 

 various foods one hundred thousand hundredweights." Of 

 such the generation is not yet extinct, but the lump is 

 leavened with others of the race of White. But when that 

 observer still "trod those sublunar fields " he must have been 

 looked upon as little better than an imbecile for wasting his 

 time in watching a tortoise, and concerning himself about the 

 comings and goings of the swallows. His work, however, 

 has told. It has been said that when his letters were pub. 

 lished, the country gentlemen of the period rubbed their 

 eyes in astonishment, to find what things had been going on 

 around them all their lives, without their having once noticed 

 them. Gradually the leaven has permeated the whole lump, 

 the field naturalist is no rarity in the land, sometimes when 

 he devastates the scarce things of a district one wishes that 

 he was rarer ; his vasculum and his butterfly-net attract little 

 attention when they are seen in country lanes ; it is not now 

 considered to be a sign of a mean mind to have some know- 

 ledge of plants and birds neither edible nor usually shootable, 

 and the day may even come when we shall think it as reason- 

 able to have a royal recorder of natural history as we now do 



