What is my motive in venturing forth? Mr. 

 Gilbert White imagines only one. 



Thomas catches me up in his hands. Returns 

 me to the asparagus. Calm comes over the garden. 



That evening Mr. Gilbert White takes up the 

 pen to summarize why. Timothy, he writes, "had 

 conceived a notion of much satisfaction to be 

 found in the range of the meadow, and Baker's 

 Hill; and that beautiful females might inhabit those 

 vast spaces, which appeared boundless in his eye. 

 But having wandered 'til he was tired, and having 

 met with nothing but weeds, and coarse grass, and 

 soHtude, he was glad to return to the poppies, and 

 lettuces, and the other luxuries of the garden." 



He, indeed. The table that humans love to tell. 

 One bright morning the prodigal tortoise sallies 

 forth. Rich in notions. Wealthy in prospect. But 

 the world is an unrelenting place. Lonely. Coarse 

 grass. Weeds. Imaginary females. Alas the comforts 

 of home. Luxuries of the garden. Old settled ways. 

 Rejoicing over the lost sheep. Fatted calf. A mam- 

 mals' tale told to the sound of a crackling fire. 

 Never leave home unsure of your next good blaze. 



Mr. Gilbert White offers another version in 

 that book of his. "The motives that impel him to 

 undertake these rambles," he notes, "seem to be 

 of the amorous kind: his fancy then becomes in- 

 tent on sexual attachments, which transport him 

 beyond his usual gravity, and induce him to forget 

 for a time his ordinary solemn deportment." 



Humans have their motives. As many as they 

 care to name. Reason is a warehouse full of mo- 

 tives. But only two — says the naturalist — can be- 

 long to the viper and the owl. Only love and 

 hunger to drive the swifts and martins and all the 

 beasts of Selborne. The urge "to perpetuate their 

 kind." And "to preserve individuals." 



How, the naturalist begins to understand, after 

 years of study. He records the when and ii'liere and 

 which of the birds of passage, beasts of the field. 

 Those are the very questions that system is poised 

 to answer. But why will never be solved by system. 

 No number of small corpses, dissected, tagged, 

 and preserved, will ever begin to answer why. 



How the nightingale sings. Pitch of the notes. 

 Melody of the song. Structure of the voice box. But 

 never fiiUy the nightin- 

 gale's why. 



^odsy. Cold dew, 

 louring clouds. 

 Warming, softening. 

 Iron going out of 

 the ground at last. 

 Sun less reluctant. 



Summer promising and overdue. Men wash their 

 sheep. One by one. Ready the fleece for shearing. 

 Ewes and wethers flow past dogs and men in the 

 fields. Flat nasal peals shoal over the parish. Whistles 

 of men. The very voice of mid-June. 



Mr. Gilbert White. In his bed-shirt at the win- 

 dow above the kitchen. There for only a moment 

 a few days past. Face washed by illness. 



His plans are laid. To lie in his bed a little 

 longer. To be borne from St. Mary's by six day- 

 laboring men with families to raise. Six shillings 

 each for a short morning's service. To be placed in 

 a grave in the natural ground in the shade of the 

 church-walls. Simple stone. "G. W." and the nu- 

 meral of a day in June in the human year 1793. 



The naturalist in Mr. Gilbert White will 

 watch as closely as the cleric in him for the ap- 

 proach of that interesting moment. Quiet disso- 

 lution of self. Mrs. John White at his bedside. 

 Warm, strong hands on his. And Thomas. Man, 

 servant, and gardener to him these forty years. 

 Standing beside the window. Looking now at 

 the garden and the Great Mead and Hanger be- 

 yond it. Now at the form in the bed. Outside, 

 the whetting of a mower's scythe on an early, 

 dewy morning. Sound his master rejoiced in. 



In their presence, the answer to one of Mr. 

 Gilbert White's Ufelong questions comes upon him. 

 Merely human at last. One earthly parish only. 



Historical Note: This is a true story TiDiotliy 

 was a tortoise from the Turkish coast, a nicDibcr 

 of a subspecies o/'Testudo graeca that still lii'es near 

 the Byzantine ruin called Anenniriuiii. Timothy died 

 a year after her owner did, having lived in Em^lish 

 captivity for sixty-four years. Her shell is preserved in 

 the Natural History Museum in London (its shape 

 shows that she was indeed female). 



Born in 1720, Gilbert Hliite was the curate of Sel- 

 borne, a Hampshire town about forty miles southwest of 

 Lx>ndon. From 1768 until his death, in 1793, he kept a 

 spare but detailed natural history journal. An edited version 

 was first published in 193 1. He also wrote The Natural 

 History and Antiquities of Selborne, published in 

 1789. Tliese and other documents, includiu'^ White's 

 household receipts and mamiscripts of his sermons held at 

 the Houi^hton Library at Harvard University, pro- 

 vide the basis for this portrait of Selborne 

 and the life around it. □ 



Thi.f essay is adapted from 

 Timothy; or. Notes of an 

 Abject K-t-ptile, by I 'erlyn 

 Kliiikciihori;, which is being^ 

 I'libhslicd this iiioiilh i'y 

 .■ilfrcd .■{. Knopf. 



February 2006 NAIURAl lllMOHN 



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