IRature IRotes : 
^be Selbovne Sodetvi’s ar>aoa3ine. 
No. 8i. SEPTEMBER, 1896. Vol. VII. 
AN INTERVIEW WITH GILBERT WHITE. 
[The following extraordinary experience of an American cor- 
respondent reaches us through the post. We have ascertained 
from a member of the naturalist’s family that the information 
given may be regarded as authentic.] 
EING over in the old country on a holiday, I found 
myself at Selborne lately, where I met with the follow- 
ing surprising adventure. 
Having lunched at the village inn, I mounted the 
Hanger by the zig-zag path and strolled across the common — 
“ our sheep down,” I think White calls it— and viewed the south- 
down hills, which I remembered with amusement the old 
naturalist calls “that majestic chain of mountains ” ! Afterwards 
I recrossed the common, and, coming to the edge of the Hanger, 
where the path, called by White “ the Bostal,” I think, begins 
its gradual descent, and whence one can see the old home of 
the naturalist, the church and village in the foreground, and 
the distance gradually melting away towards Hindhead in the 
horizon, I sat down at the foot of a beech tree and fell a-musing. 
Suddenly I was aware of a rather short, slim, and very up- 
right figure, dressed in black stockings and knee-breeches, and 
with a long coat and kind of three-cornered hat on its head, 
standing near me, apparently contemplating the village below. 
A full, old-fashioned, clerical wig crowned a very intelligent- 
looking head, whose eyes, I noticed, were brown, and very 
bright and keen-looking. 
Jumping up from the ground I cried out, “Why, stranger, I 
guess you must be Gilbert White himself! ” 
“ Sir,” he replied, “ that is my name ; may I inquire what is 
yours ? ” 
I instantly produced one of my professional cards, without 
