NATURE 



569 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1901. 



MI ALL AND FOWLER'S " SELBORNE." 

 The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. By 

 Gilbert Wliite. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, 

 by L. C. Miall, F.R.S., and VV. Warde Fowler, M.A. 

 Pp. xl + 386. (London : Methuen, 1901.) Price bs. 



ECCE ITERUM ! It is little over six months 

 since the "painful" Mr. Sherborn compiled a 

 bibliography of Gilbert White's matchless work, 

 enumerating some 115 editions or issues of it, and here 

 in England at least three more have since made their 

 appearance, while we hear of another in America — to say 

 nothing of the " Life and Letters ' of the author now 

 first fully given to light and recently reviewed in these 

 columns (NATURE, July 18, 1901, p. 276) 1 Still, the 

 edition of the evergreen classic, " Natural History and 

 Antiquities of Selborne," with introduction and notes 

 by Prof Miall and Mr. Warde Fowler, deserves con- 

 sideration here, for though these gentlemen have 

 judiciously availed thetnselves of the labours of some of 

 their predecessors in the art editorial and commentarial, 

 they have added a good many notes of their own, not a 

 few possessmg a quite original character, while their 

 introduction is of itself well worth reading. 



Messrs. Miall and Fowler were, of course, too early to 

 profit by Mr. Holt- White's biography of his great-grand- 

 uncle, for their publication followed his by only a k'n 

 weeks, and they must regret that this is so, since they 

 depended for the most part on the statements of the 

 late Prof Bell, and naturally fell into his mistakes. From 

 some of the worst of them, it is true, they might have 

 saved themselves had they studied, instead of being 

 content to mention, the memoir of Gilbert White which 

 appeared more than eighteen months ago in the " Dic- 

 tionary of National Biography " ; but they seem, like 

 most persons, to have supposed that an article in a 

 dictionary is only for reference and not for reading. It 

 may be said that, except in one case, their errors are of 

 comparatively slight importance ; but they have per- 

 petuated the modern Oxford slander — now'proved to be 

 founded on imperfect acquaintance with the facts — that 

 White was unpopular in his college and only held his 

 fellowship there by holding his tongue, the sole ground 

 of this imputation being two or three private memoran- 

 dums of the then Provost of Oriel, who was temporarily 

 smarting from a contested election in which White had 

 been his rival. The two men had previously been friends, 

 and it is satisfactory to know that friends they became 

 again when the acrimony engendered by the competition 

 had passed off. The worst of this mud having been 

 thrown is that some of it will stick ; but it behoves every 

 member of that distinguished college — nay, every Oxford 

 man — to do his best to wipe away this unfounded asper- 

 sion on White's fair fame. Mr. Fowler himself, we doubt 

 not, must feel sorry that he has helped to spread this 

 baseless accusation. 



But our business here is not with White's book or 



life or character more than as they are dealt with by his 



present editors. With much of what Prof. Miall says we 



cordially agree, but when he writes that " White was a 



NO. 1659, VOL. 64] 



man of few books and of no great range of thought " we 

 wholly dissent. It may be that he could not read French 

 —easily at least— few Oxford clerics of his day could ; 

 but he certainly did know what Buffon was about, and 

 Herissant also, for he criticises both ; and if he did not 

 name Leeuwenhoek (who wrote in English, by the way) 

 or Malpighi, why, we may ask, should he do so ? Un- 

 doubtedly John Hunter was then dissecting, but for 

 the most part of his life he was known to few as being 

 more than a skilful surgeon, and what was there in the 

 six or eight papers he had then published to call for 

 White's notice of them ? Prof. Miall remarks that " all 

 the books which were essential to the ' Natural History of 

 Selborne' would have gone into a single shelf." That is a 

 mistake : the book of Nature is not to be shelved, and 

 therein lay White's chief study. Again, we are told that 

 he cared little for the British Museum or the Botanic 

 Garden at Kew, and that Cook's voyages are not dwelt 

 upon repeatedly and with interest. With all deference 

 to Prof Miall, such objections are futile. The collections 

 then at the British Museum must have been extremely 

 unimportant — the Museum of the time was the Leverian 

 which is repeatedly mentioned by White, and Kew 

 Garden was the King's private affair, to which the public 

 scarcely had access ; but in Cook's voyages White plainly 

 took very great interest, partly, no doubt, through his 

 acquaintance with Banks, Cook's shipmate on the first of 

 them. Reference to them is often made in his corre- 

 spondence, though there was no need to bring it into his 

 book. Surely Prof. Miall would justly resent being 

 accused of indifference to the Challenger's voyage 

 because we see no mention of it in the volume before us ? 

 We may charge him, however, with not having divested 

 himself of the commonplace desire to fall foul of Pennant, 

 who, he says, "was not enough of a zoologist to write 

 books on zoology." This is amazing, for who then, we 

 may ask, wrote the " British Zoology " (of which there 

 were three editions and four issues in his lifetime), the 

 " Indian Zoology " (two editions and a German transla- 

 tion), the "Arctic Zoology" (the same), to say nothing of 

 the '• History of Quadrupeds" and other works ? It may 

 be urged that in these labours he had assistance, and 

 that some classes of animals met with scant treatment ; 

 but when has such not been the case ? and in what other 

 country were contemporary zoologies of similar character 

 published with the same wealth of illustration ? Prof. 

 Miall admits that he was the best-known English 

 zoologist of his day, and if in the later issues of the 

 " British Zoology " his acknowledgment of White's aid 

 was general rather than particular, is not the fact directly 

 due to the latter having corrected, as he himself says he 

 did, the former's proofs, when he naturally did not insert 

 passages in his own favour ? Unless Pennant in his own 

 " Life" is guilty of positive misstatement, which there is 

 not the least reason to believe, he expended very con- 

 siderable sums in the illustration of his several works, 

 and when he paid for the plates he reasonably thought 

 he had some right to use them. This, we take it, was 

 the cause of the misunderstanding, for it seems to have 

 been nothing more, between him and John White in 

 regard to illustrations for the latter's " Fauna Calpensis," 

 which, unfortunately, was never published. It was natural 

 for Gilbert White at first to take his brother's side and 



