IRature IRotes : 
XTbe Selborne Society’s ^IDagasine. 
No. 140, AUGUST, 1901. VoL. XII. 
SELBORNIANA. 
The Deficit. — Attention is specially directed to the notice 
on page 159 of this number with reference to the special 
effort which the Council is making to at once wipe out the small 
remaining deficit, so as to enable the Society to carry on its 
proper work unhampered. 
Gilbert White. — Mr. W. Warde Fowler writes: — 
“ Kindly allow me to point out that in the current number of Nature Notes 
(p. 134) your reviewer is in error in attributing any ‘ strictures’ on Gilbert White 
to me. The words he quotes are not mine, but those of Professor Miall, and cannot 
even by the most sensitive Selbornian be regarded as a ‘ stricture,’ if they be 
taken in connection with the paragraph which immediately follows them. When 
Professor Miall says that White for fifty years steadily refused all preferment that 
would vacate his Fellowship, he is simply stating a fact which even Mr. Holt- 
White’s admirable biography cannot disprove, as it has undoubtedly disproved the 
notion that White’s private income should have disqualified him trom continuing 
to hold his Fellowship. Professor Miall’s point, as I understand it, and as a Fellow 
of an Oxford College would naturally understand it, is that White did not do 
what was expected of a Fellow, viz., vacate his Fellowship by taking a College 
living of sufficient value to cause the vacancy. lie took an unusual course, 
which locked up a Fellowship for fifty years, and a Fellowship too which had a 
peculiar value in those days, inasmuch as it would have been open to competition 
by members of all other Colleges. It is only just and right that this should be 
said, and it constitutes no ‘ stricture ’ upon White, especially if it be followed by 
a sentence such as that with which Professor Miall concludes the next paragraph. 
‘ White paid his debt to his College fully and nobly, by a masterpiece now to be 
counted among those possessions of the English race which are above price.’ 
“ It is no doubt difficult for those who are not familiar with College life to 
understand why White’s retention of his Fellowship should have ever been matter 
of criticism at Oriel. Let them consider that College endowments were meant 
for men who lived and worked in the College, and that it was a wise statutory 
provision which compelled a man to resign his Fellowship if he took clerical pre- 
ferment or came in for a fortune. If vacancies had not been created in this way 
from time to time, injustice would have been done to younger men on the look 
out for Fellowships. In fifty years, under ordinary circumstances. White’s 
