GILBERT WHITE AND HIS SUSSEX CONNECTIONS. 295 



In * The Field' of July 15th his lordship supplied the 

 following additional information : — 



"I have just received (July 13th) from Mr. Christopher, who married a 

 daughter of John White (nephew of Gilbert White), the following note ; — 

 * A Miss White, who was much older than my wife, and a constant resident 

 with him (Gilbert), told my wife that all the family regarded Gilbert's 

 likeness in the large print as a thoroughly good representation of him.' 



" A misprint seems to have slipped into my letter in your last issue. 

 The Ven. Henry Masters White (Archdeacon of Grahamstown) is no longer 

 living. His son, the Rev. Henry A. White (Fellow of New College), was 

 present at Selborne. — Stamford." [There was also present the Ven. 

 Archdeacon White of Queensland. — Ed.] 



GILBERT WHITE AND HIS SUSSEX CONNECTIONS. 



By the Rev. Prebendary H. D. Gordon, M.A.* 



The very enjoyable commemoration at Selborne, on June 

 24th, attended by a large body of naturalists from London, 

 Southampton, and the South Coast, may seem a fitting tribute to 

 a book — ' The Natural History of Selborne ' — set out by its gifted 

 author with much hesitation and characteristic modesty. The 

 late Mr. A. Holt White (great-nephew of Gilbert) wrote from 

 Biarritz, February 19th, 1878 : — " The book itself was published 

 at the earnest solicitations of my grandfather" (Thomas White, 

 F.R.S., who finally reviewed it in the ' Gentleman's Magazine'), 

 as Gilbert said he " did not want the reviewers to laugh at an old 

 country clergyman!" And yet from the first no book has been 

 more favourably received; and White's literary life, a century 

 after his death, is more undying than ever. It was said by one 

 who knew the Englishman well, that he lived in the open air and 

 hated books. White's ' Selborne ' is a compromise in this 

 respect, for however fatigued, weary, or sick the reader may be, 

 he is always from the first page to the last out in the open air of 



* This article, by a valued contributor to this Journal, having appeared 

 in a county paper, ' The West Sussex Gazette,' is likely to be missed by the 

 majority of our readers, scattered as they are throughout the United King- 

 dom. It contains so much interesting information in regard to Gilbert 

 "White's family and associations, that we consider it deserves to be more 

 widely read, and, as a matter of record, made more generally accessible. 



