WINTER IN WEST DOWNLAND 287 



stand — my delusion was just as natural as, and not 

 less laughable than his ; but to meet with a gentleman 

 who was naturalist as well as sportsman, who had 

 spent all the years of his life on that " majestic chain 

 of mountains called the South Downs," and was accus- 

 tomed to ride to Ringmer, yet was ignorant of the 

 name of White of Selborne, filled me with astonish- 

 ment and even humiliation. 



About the house at Ringmer in which White spent 

 so many of his autumns, the late Mark Antony Lower, 

 the well-known and excellent writer on local subjects, 

 relates that some years ago (the date is not given, but 

 I believe it must have been about 1850) a gentleman 

 who occupied it as tenant had all the nightingales 

 frequenting the grounds destroyed. Their late sing- 

 ing disturbed his rest. A strange fate for the birds 

 that " sing darkling," the creatures of " ebulhent 

 heart," to have met at such a spot ! This irritable 

 gentleman, like my downland friend, had never per- 

 haps heard of the parson of Selborne; on the other 

 hand, he had perhaps heard too much about him, and 

 desired, after the fashion of the Stratfordian who 

 cut down the sacred mulberry tree, to express his 

 disapproval of the man or of his work. That his 

 neighbours did not hunt him out of the village, or even 

 gently remove him from a world in which he was mani- 

 festly out of place — " a harsh discordant thing " — does 

 not show us the Ringmerites in too favourable a light. 



There are many memories of Gilbert White in 



