AN APPRECIATION OF GILBERT WHITE 43 
this interesting exhibition shortly before it closed, we were able 
to take a census of the popularity of these excellent pictures by 
the number of replicas of each then sold. The well-known 
“ My turn, Brother Billy,” two great tits on a cocoanut, the 
young cuckoo being fed by sedge warblers and the white butter- 
flies with dewdrops on their wings, which formed the frontispiece 
to their last volume, proved most successful, as judged by this 
criterion. We were struck by the fact that when by enlarge- 
ment the pictures approach life-size the illusion is more perfect 
than in the illustrations published in the photographer’s various 
books, while such is the technical perfection of the originals 
that they have not suffered in the process. We can imagine no 
more suitable adornment for the walls of a country house than 
these neatly framed, and by no means expensive, transcripts of 
wild nature. 
AN OLD APPRECIATION OF GILBERT WHITE. 
ERHAPS the most interesting portion of the account, 
in Blackwood's Magazine, of a visit to Selborne made on 
April 13, 1840, seems to have been omitted in The 
Mirror. The occurrence of this notice reminds me that 
1 had intended to have sent you the following quotation from 
the article in question, because it refers [inter alia) to no less a 
matter than a “ likeness ” of Gilbert White, of whom, as is well 
known, no kind of portrait was ever taken. 
I must remind your readers that after the naturalist’s death, 
his house, “ The Wakes,” and its contents became the property 
of his brother Benjamin, who left it to his unmarried daughters. 
The survivor of these, Mary White, died on August 26, 1839; 
and, as will be seen, the house was found by the writer of the 
article in Blackwood empty, and in a neglected condition. 
Wandering about the quiet village we found a gate invitingly open, so that 
entrance could hardly there he termed intrusion. Entering accordingly, we passed 
a thatched cottage of recent erection (belonging to one of the members of the 
White family),' and passing through a flower-plot, found ourselves, on opening 
a little wicket, in the garden of the philosopher of Selborne. There was no 
mi.staking it. We had never seen it before, it is true, but there was about it an 
air of philosophic seclusion — a meditative repose — a rich and quiet harmony, that 
left no doubt on our minds of its identity with that same garden wherein long 
flourished the sloping laurel hedge — where marched about in a stately manner the 
exotic hoopoes, until persecuted and driven away by idle boys, who would never 
let them be at rest — and where Timotheus, that most celebrated of tortoises, used 
to spend the sultry hours under the umbrageous shadow of a cabbage leaf, or 
catch the failing warmth of an autumnal sun by tilting his shell against that very 
wall. Here is the walk paved with brick against damp weather, close by the 
' This cottage ornte (as such houses were then called) was built by John 
White, who, at first in partnership with his eldest brother, Benjamin, continued 
the publishing business after his father’s (Benjamin the elder) retirement. It 
stood well out in the little park and rather to the west of The Wakes. 
