viii Gilbert White of Selborne 2 1 3 



Englishman had made any important contribution 

 to the science. So far as England was concerned, 

 White had to take it up almost exactly where 

 Willughby and Eay had left it. And if we open 

 Willughby's book, published by his friend Eay in 

 1678, and turn to his account of any of the insignifi- 

 cant-looking little birds that swarm in our woods 

 and fields, we shall find that the study of their 

 songs, habits, and movements had then hardly begun, 

 and that the scientific mind was still to a great 

 extent under the tyranny of books and traditions. 

 Willughby's is a great name, and had he not died 

 young, he might have settled down in England to 

 a leisurely study of the living birds ; but he seems 

 to have been in temperament the very opposite of 

 White, and his short life was mainly spent in foreign 

 travel. The work was still waiting for the man who 

 would not travel, whose curiosity was indeed un- 

 bounded, but fortunately kept under control by the 

 overpowering love of home. " It is now more than 

 forty years," White wrote in 1779, "that I have paid 

 some attention to the ornithology of this district, 

 without being able to exhaust the subject; new 

 occurrences still arise as long as any inquiries are 

 kept alive." 



It would be quite superfluous to give illustrations 

 of the closeness and acuteness of White's observation 

 of birds. We need but open the book at random, — 



