296 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



his native country, hills, and dales. It has this characteristic 

 stamp upon it, which may be found from Chaucer and Spenser 

 to Pope in " Windsor Forest," in Cowper, Thomson, Collins, 

 Wordsworth, and Tennyson. Another point, and one specially 

 recommending it to men of few books, is that every line and 

 description is perfectly simple and easily grasped. The whole 

 book is short and idyllic, a model of note-books, giving the 

 golden grain of a lifetime's observation in the happiest bloom of 

 English language. Theocritus can certainly be traced in it. 

 Even the absence of any reference to farming, for which Thomas 

 White, in the * Gentleman's Review,' pleaded that Gilbert was 

 no farmer, is a gain instead of a loss to the English reader. 



It was well said by Lowell, quoted by Lord Selborne, that 

 White's volume is the " Journal of Adam in Paradise." It 

 might be said that it is a journal in country life of Lord 

 Bacon's philosophy too — ever giving experiment and induction 

 on things close at hand. It is probable that from his maternal 

 Sussex ancestors White had this peculiar tendency of mind. Sir 

 Edward Ford, of Uppark, pupil of Chillingworth, and a most 

 practical natural philosopher, won the admiration of Charles II. 

 and Pepys for his many ingenious inventions ; and Gilbert White 

 was a Ford by blood and by tendency of mind. No one who 

 compares Sir Edward Ford's tracts with Gilbert White's book 

 can fail to be struck by the resemblance. 



In that pleasant "As you like it," at Selborne, on June 

 24th, the " Forest of Arden" was represented by " The Hanger," 

 wherein, however, " the sweet bird's throat under the greenwood 

 tree was mute," save that of one fitful Chiffchaif and some Jays. 

 All went well under Lord Selborne's presidency. His lordship, 

 in an admirable address, quoted much from the late Prof. Bell's 

 edition of White's ' Selborne.' This book has several references, 

 new to many readers, as to White's Sussex connections. For 

 instance, Gilbert White writes in his diary, as given by Bell, 

 August 3rd, 1754, " Servants at Chilgrove and Chichester, 6s." 

 The Chilgrove friend was John Woods, Esq., White's authority 

 about the (then as now) scarce Stone Curlew. Three connections 

 of Gilbert White with the Woods family may here be mentioned. 

 First, one of Gilbert White's sisters married a Mr. Woods, in the 

 line of the late Rev. G. Woods, Shopwyke, and the present 

 Master of Trinity College, Oxford; next, G. White had land, 



