Gilbert White Reconsidered. 
637 
1880.] 
these authors. Even Jesse, the least trustworthy of the 
group and the most inclined to put faith in mere hearsay 
evidence, scarcely deserves the severe sentence passed upon 
him by Waterton. But besides these imitators— if the 
reader prefers so to call them— White’s indirect influence 
pervades English natural history to the present day. That 
tendency to study local faunae which has so powerfully 
tended to constitute the science of Animal Geography, and 
has furnished such important data for the elaboration of the 
Dodtrine of Descent, is thoroughly Whitean. We^ recognise 
it in our travelling naturalists, as well as in stationary ob- 
servers ; in T. V. Wbllaston, in Belt, Bates, Wallace, 
Darwin, no less clearly than in White himself. It is some- 
what remarkable that whilst England has been so fruitful 
in faunae, in works descriptive of the habits of animals, and 
in contributions to the philosophy of zoology, she should be 
so poor in systematic works. We have no English Linnaeus 
or Oken, Buffon or Cuvier. This is the more remarkable 
since in chemical science the English press has literally 
teemed with systematic treatises. 
The question may here be raised in how far White can 
be held answerable for that morbid and narrow localism 
known as the “ British ” mania, which leads so many of our 
naturalists, commonly so called, to confine their researches 
within a boundary which is neither natural nor political, but 
an unhappy mixture of both. Thus they will take cogni- 
zance of a species found in Ireland, the Hebrides, or the 
Orkneys, but any form peculiar to the Channel Islands they 
ignore as “ not British.” We think he must be held guilt- 
less. His objedt was to study the fauna of a certain district. 
The true “ British maniac ” aims more at colledtion than 
study, and, provided some one will guarantee that a specimen 
was captured within the four seas of Britain, he cares little 
for its exadt locality. 
It may not be uninstrudtive to contrast White with one 
who was his admirer,— to some extent his disciple, — and 
who cultivated with success the selfsame department of 
Natural History, becoming very eminent as an observer, 
whilst paying little heed to system or to the philosophy of 
zoology. Both these men rank among the happy few who 
are able to devote substantially their whole time to their 
favourite science ; but their opportunities were otherwise 
exceedingly different. Gilbert White was no traveller; his 
days were spent and ended in his native village. An occa- 
sional journey to London and a few excursions in the southern 
counties seem to have formed the extent of his rambles : he 
