172 LITERARY VALUES 



some old grandfather had seen a man who had taken 

 live swallows out of the mud. Produce the man 

 and let us cross-question him, — that was White's 

 attitude. Dr. Johnson said confidently that swal- 

 lows did thus pass the winter in the mud " congloh- 

 ulated into a ball," but Johnson had that literary 

 cast of mind that prefers a picturesque statement to 

 the exact fact. White was led astray by no literary 

 ambition. His interest in the life of nature was 

 truly a scientific one ; he must know the fact first, 

 and then give it to the humanities. How true it is 

 in science, in literature, in life, that any secondary 

 motive vitiates the result ! Seek ye the kingdom of 

 truth first, and all things shall be added. 



But White seems finally to have persuaded him- 

 self that at least a few swallows passed the winter 

 in England in a torpid state — if not in the bottom 

 of streams or ponds, then in holes in their banks. 

 He reasoned from analogy, though he had expressed 

 his distrust of that mode of reasoning. If bats, in- 

 sects, toads, turtles, and other creatures can thus 

 pass the winter, why not swallows ? On many dif- 

 ferent occasions, during mild days late in the fall 

 and early in the spring, he saw house-martins flying 

 about ; the weather suddenly changing to colder, 

 they quickly disappeared. Bats and turtles came 

 forth, then vanished in the same way. White finally 

 concluded that the mystery was the same in both 

 cases, — that the creatures were brought from their 

 winter retreats by the warmth, only to retire to them 

 again when it changed to cold. If he had adhered 



