VIII Gilbert White of Selborne 2 1 1 



mind. Few men have enjoyed such leisure, and few 

 indeed have been so well qualified to use it fruitfully. 

 In our own day Darwin is a familiar instance ; and 

 it is interesting to find in him too, in his later years, 

 the same discomposure at leaving home, the same 

 unconquerable love of his own home life. I have 

 sometimes felt almost exasperated that White has 

 nothing to tell us of his occupations at Oxford — 

 nothing of the animal life that cannot have been 

 less abundant round the city in his day than it is 

 now. But he was White of Selborne, not White of 

 Oxford. If natural history has lost anything by his 

 want of adventure, it has after all gained more ; for 

 the unique value of his book is mainly due to the 

 persistence with which he followed his own instinct, 

 and to the complete ease and isolation in which his 

 acute mind worked at home. 



To this ease and isolation, — the complete absence 

 of hurry and worry, — we may attribute indeed not 

 only the scientific value of his observations, but the 

 perfection of the form in which he was able to record 

 them. How leisurely his life was we may see if we 

 consider the fact thut he did not publish his book 

 until he was close upon seventy, and that the letters 

 which compose it were spread over a long period of 

 years. During the last forty years of his life he did 

 not often leave home, and when he did leave it, never 

 went far or for long. There was a definite work for 



