When a French anatomist announced that he had discovered why the cuckoo did not hatch its own eggs,--namely, because the crop or craw of the bird was placed back of the sternum, so as to make a protuberance on the belly,--White dissected a cuckoo for himself, and, finding the fact as stated, proceeded to dissect other birds that he knew did incubate, as the fern-owl and a hawk, and finding the craw situated the same as in the cuckoo, justly charged the Frenchman with having reached an unscientific conclusion. In his seventy-seventh letter White clearly anticipates Darwin as to the beneficial functions of earthworms in the soil, and tells farmers and gardeners that the little creatures which they look upon as their enemies are really their best friends. White has had imitators, but no successful rivals. A work much in the spirit and manner of his famous book, called “Jesse’s Gleanings in Natural History,” was published fifty years later. It had some reputation in its own day, but seems to be quite forgotten in our time. A good reader quickly sees that its pages have not the same fresh, distinctive quality as White’s, not the same atmosphere of unconscious curiosity and alert interest. They are stamped with a die far less clear and individual. The field covered is the same, the facts and incidents are the same, but the medium through which we see them all is not the same. The following extract gives a fair sample of the style:-- “The enjoyments and delights of a country life have been sung by poets in all ages, and it is our own fault if we find the country irksome, or less agreeable than a crowded metropolis. It affords many resources of a most agreeable nature, to those who seek for rational and tranquil enjoyments. A beautiful prospect, a walk by the side of a river in fine weather, in the agreeable shade of a wood or cool valley, have great charms for those who are fond of the country. We may then exclaim with Virgil,-- ‘O, qui me gelidis convallibus Haemi Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!’” But even the Virgilian quotation does not give it the flavor of White’s pages. X LUCID LITERATURE