Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Anne Storer, some images courtesy of The Internet Archive and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net BIRDS. ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY ================================ VOL. III. FEBRUARY, 1898. NO. 2. ================================ GILBERT WHITE AND "SELBORNE." I suppose that a habit of minute observation of nature is one of the most difficult things to acquire, as it is one which is less generally pursued than any other study. In almost all departments of learning and investigation there have been numberless works published to illustrate them, and text books would fill the shelves of a large library. Thoreau in his "Walden" has shown an extremely fine and close observation of the scenes in which his all too short life was passed, but his object does not seem at any time to have been the study of nature from an essential love of it, or to add to his own or the world's knowledge. On the contrary, nature was the one resource which enabled him to exemplify his notions of independence, which were of such a sturdy and uncompromising character that Mr. Emerson, who had suffered some inconvenience from his experience of Thoreau as an inmate of his household, thought him fitter to meet occasionally in the open air than as a guest at table and fireside. There is a delicious harmony with nature in all that he has written, but his descriptions of out-of-door life invite us rather to indolent musing than to investigation or study. Who after reading Izaak Walton ever went a-fishing with the vigor and enterprise of Piscator? Washington Irving allowed his cork to drift with the current and lay down in the shadow of a spreading oak to dream with the beloved old author. In White's "Natural History of Selborne" we have a unique book indeed, but of a far more general interest than its title would indicate. Pliny, the elder, was the father of natural history but to many of us Gilbert White is entitled to that honor. To an early edition of the book, without engravings, and much abridged, as compared with Bohn's, published in 1851, many owe their first interest in the subject. Mr. Ireland in his charming little "Book Lover's Enchiridion," tells us that when a boy he was so delighted with it, that in order to possess a copy of his own (books were not so cheap as now) he actually copied out the whole work. In a list of one hundred books, Sir John Lubbock mentions it as "an inestimable blessing." Edward Jesse, author of "Gleanings in Natural History" attributes his own pursuits as an out-door naturalist entirely to White's example. Much of the charm of the book consists in the amiable character of the author, who "----lived in solitude, midst trees and flowers, Life's sunshine mingling with its passing showers; No storms to startle, and few clouds to shade The even path his Christian virtues made."