300 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



John White, Lord Mayor of London, 1563, and the pale Cam- 

 bridge blue silk ribbon that Charles I. gave to Benjamin Hyde, 

 down to the light cane high stool on which Gilbert White sat to 

 write his famous book ; for an armed, or even a backed chair, his 

 Spartan industry would not tolerate. Some of the last words and 

 thoughts of the great naturalist, Mr. Field said, were on the 

 words, "I know that my Redeemer liveth" — words which he 

 seemed to have repeated as a dying watchword, as Bede spoke of 

 his " forthfaring " before his death. It was announced that the 

 early private letters of Gilbert White to " Tom Mulso," his college 

 friend, and Miss Hester Mulso, his sister, the heroine of the 

 lines written by " Timothy," the Sussex Tortoise, from Lewes 

 [Ringmer], would probably be recovered for publication. The 

 shell of " Timothy " is now in South Kensington Museum. 



A very interesting memorial of Gilbert White, which has 

 recently come into the writer's possession, viz., a copy of 

 Hudson's * Flora Britannica,' 1752, with Gilbert White's auto- 

 graph on the first page and his private notes, in ink and pencil, of 

 all the flowers found at Selborne, was exhibited, and was acknow- 

 ledged by Messrs. Field and Holt-White, and Mrs. Martelli, to 

 be genuine. It shows that in 1762 Gilbert White was no mean 

 botanist, but well posted up in the latest book applying the 

 Linnsean system to the Flora of Great Britain. 



For the parentage of Homer seven cities strove. It ought to 

 be an amicable arrangement between Sussex and Hants that 

 Gilbert White belonged to both, as a sojourner and landowner, 

 an illustrious example of the old historical adage that people 

 born on the confines of two races are apt to produce men 

 eminently gifted. Border men from Chaldsea and also in Egypt, 

 in their contacts and rivalries produced in meeting places of the 

 highways of mankind, or sometimes in river basins, those cradles 

 of civilisation, leaders of thought and types of higher life. 

 Aristotle lived from his earliest life, steeped so to say, in the 

 many streams of different kindreds of men. Mahomet was born 

 at Mecca, the meeting place of the tribes. Chaucer, the vintner's 

 son, was born in the throng of London ; and Shakespeare's 

 school was London also. Argos and Mycene must have crowned 

 mutual altars for their great native Hercules or Herakles ; and 

 some day Sussex may set up some memorial — a most delicate 



