regular correspondents all their lives, and books cannot be assured in that brief his son "Jack," frequently mentioned in space. For the mere monetary result, the "Letters was most conscientiously which cannot have been very great, he educated, and almost adopted, by the elder probably cared nothing. Had he so cared, brother. John's leisure hours were de- he would no doubt have published his voted to the preparation of a natural his- book by subscription, and thus have at tory of Gibraltar and the neighborhood. least guaranteed himself against actual For some reason or other this was never loss; but of this there is no hint. We can published, although, as we have seen, readily imagine that, in his modest way, there was a publisher ready to hand in the he derived an honest, if perhaps not outfamily; even of the MS. there seems to spoken, satisfaction from the reception of be no vestige remaining - a great loss to his work among scientists hitherto unnaturalists, for a trustworthy synopsis of known to him. Several new correspondSpanish fauna in the middle of the last ents were at once added to his list, and century would now be extremely valuable, the few years that remained to him were, especially in respect of the migrations, we may well believe, the proudest of his which an observer stationed at Gibraltar long life. And, indeed, it was no mean would, of course, have noted to the best feat that he had accomplished. To pub. advantage. Here, then, for a single fam-lish once in a lifetime, and that when the ily, we have a distinctly unusual conver- fatal epoch of threescore years and ten is gence of tastes. It cannot often occur within a twelvemonth's hail, is in itself a that of five brothers three are naturalists, venturesome, and exceedingly rare, expe. enough in earnest to set down in writing rience. But to have published at that age the results of their life-long observation, a book, which was applauded at the outwhile the fourth is a publisher, whose set by competent judges, and which now, energies are devoted by preference to ob. when it is celebrating its centenary, is stetrical services in behalf of books on cherished as one of the classics of the lannatural history. guage and bids fair to fascinate each year an increasing host of readers, this is surely a triumph as unique as it is glorious. The writer, it is true, was happy in his subject. The manners and customs of birds and beasts do not appreciably change with the course of years; there is no such thing as fashion among them, and what was true of them in 1790 is no less true in 1890. This, no doubt, is one step gained towards an author's immortality; his subject can never become out of date. But, even with this advantage, immortality is still a long way off. The master-touch must be there, or the world will refuse to be charmed, be the matter never so entrancing, the laborer never so trustworthy. It was not without much friendly coercion and diffidence, not in his case, we may be sure, the product of affectation, that White consented to give to the world what had for so many years commanded the admiration of his private correspondents. He was already fast becoming an old man when the idea of publication was first suggested to him, and to one of his cautious and retiring temperament the prospect of correcting proofs and making sport for reviewers would naturally be distasteful. Professor Bell, in his (by far the most exhaustive) edition of "The Natural History and Antiquities," quotes some lines, written by the author on the eve of the book's appearance. They are headed, "To myself commencing author," and the last four lines run thus: have When a book has reached its hundredth year, and is still not only alive, but in constant request, it becomes interesting to trace its career. To do this with any thoroughness it is necessary to consult valuable work reveals the fact that up to the British Museum catalogue. This inthe present time more than thirty separate editions of White's "Selborne " been issued. The first, as we have seen, appeared in 1789, and seems to have sat isfied the demand for several years. The edition of 1813 contains a general view of Selborne, and a figure on the brow of the hill, in the costume of the latter half of the eighteenth century, is supposed by some to represent White himself. If so, it is the only counterfeit presentment of him conducted in most correct Latinity, which suggests the reflection that there are not many ornithologists in these days capable of writing not only grammatical but elegant Latin letters. Then we have nearly one hundred pages of Gilbert's "Correspondence with his Family," which may fairly be said to exhibit him in a most favorable light as both brother and uncle. A perusal of his "Account Book will prove that he was well aware of the value of money, but some of the letters prove quite as conclusively that it was not for its own sake or his own sake that he reg istered his daily disbursements so methodically. The Rev. R. Churton, fellow of Brasenose, was for fourteen years one of his correspondents, and frequently spent Christmas at Selborne. Though a much younger man than White, he was evidently regarded by him with something more than mere cordiality, and rather as one whose opinion on most subjects was well worth inviting. A few miscellaneous letters, too, are included to and from Lightfoot, the botanist (who also was the first to distinguish clearly the reed-wren), Montagu, the well-known ornithologist, whose name has been given to one of the harriers, and others, and, lastly, the correspondence between White and Robert Marsham. This gentleman lived on his estate at Stratton Strawless, in Norfolk, and was so impressed by the "Natural History and Antiquities "that he at once put himself in communication with the author, with whom he continued to correspond on various matters connected with birds, beasts, insects, and trees, until White's death in 1793. The last letter from Selborne to Stratton is dated only ten days before that on which the eye that had observed so well, and the pen that. had chronicled so pleasantly were, the one closed, the other laid down, forever. extant. In 1834 Sir William Jardine ap- | Gibraltar, had become vicar of Blackburn. pears as editor, followed in 1837 by E. T. There is also the interesting correspondBennett, a clever and zealous young zool-ence between the latter and Linnæus, ogist, whose premature death was a great loss to natural history. Six years later another naturalist, the Rev. Leonard Jenyns, Darwin's friend, published the now famous "Letters," with notes of his own. In 1875 was issued the version for which Frank Buckland is responsible, and which has remained ever since the most popular. To this edition Lord Selborne contributed a chapter on "Antiquities," abundantly confirming White's belief that the village was known to the Romans. In White's time, as his readers will remember, a great haul of coins was made in Wolmer Pond; more recently other coins, together with fragments of pottery and spear-heads, have been discovered, and there seems to be good reason for concluding that the legions of Claudius were not only aware of the existence of the village, but actually fought some sort of battle within its borders. If, however, Buckland's edition be considered the most popular, owing, in part, to its cheap ness, clear type, and happy illustrations, it must be conceded that Professor Bell's, of 1877, is, of all yet issued, the most complete. This is what might have been expected, for he enjoyed very exceptional facilities. To begin with, he was White's contemporary, though but for one year, having been born in 1792, only three years after the first issue of the book which he lived to edit nearly a century later. Thus, without any great strain of propriety, he may be said to have belonged to White's time, and therefore, perhaps, both being naturalists, to have been in a special degree interested in his subject. In point of fact he devoted many years, thirty he tells us in his preface, to the labor of collecting information on the spot, for he purchased White's house and lived in it, and died in it. As he was a man of remarkable energy and of an extraordinarily green old age, we may be sure that he left no stone unturned in order to do justice to the task he had set himself. He, the editor, was on the verge of eighty-five, as the author had been on the verge of sev enty, when his book saw the light; yet in neither case can any feebleness, incidental to such length of days, be detected. Wherein, then, after all, lies the fascination of the Hampshire parson's work? What are those features of irresistible attractiveness which have made it in natural history what the "Arabian Nights" may be said to be in fiction? The biographies of many distinguished novelists tell us that they were introduced to literature Professor Bell, from his acquaintance through the medium of Sheherazade's exwith Gilbert White's descendants, was travaganzas, but for which they would able to introduce a good deal of new mat- probably have never begun to scribble on ter into his edition. For example, there their own account. How many modern is a series of charming letters from Gil-naturalists, both amateur and professed, bert to John, who, after returning from must there be, who received in the first instance the needful stimulus from a copy | (for Montagu had previously observed it) of White's "Selborne "! One source of the least of our quadrupeds, the harvest its popularity must, no doubt, be attributed mouse (Mus minutus or messorius). The to the fact that it was the first in the field, wretched Pennant, who at about this in a double sense. At the time of its pub- period was compiling his "British Zoollication there was nothing of the kind in ogy,' ," and to whom so many of White's the market, the only works in any degree best letters are addressed, appears to have bearing on the subject being those of Lin- treated him very shabbily, according to næus, Scopoli, Ray, and a few other writ- modern views, by making free use of his ers, who could be studied only by scholars, information without, however, any acfor they were mostly written in Latin; knowledgment. He was notably mean in Montagu's "Birds was not published be- the matter of the harvest mouse. But fore 1802. Nor must it be inferred that its Nemesis has overtaken him, for White popularity was immediate. Appearing as still flourishes apace, while Pennant and it did in the cumbrous shape affected in all his works have sunk into, perhaps, the last century it could scarcely be ex-deserved oblivion. Frank Buckland spepected to take the fancy of a schoolboy, cially and with much difficulty once sehowever great his interest in the subject. It is almost wholly to the enterprise of our nineteenth-century publishers that the credit of its wide and growing circulation is due. The excellence of the book was acknowledged by the best judges from the first, but the brothers Sosii_soon recognized in it the elements of commercial success also. Hence it was soon issued in a cheap and handy form, and speedily became the favorite it has since remained. Our most renowned naturalists have not disdained to lend a helping hand, directly or indirectly, to one or other of the many editions; the names of Owen, Yarrell, and Newton, to mention a few besides those identified with special issues, indicate beyond all question the honor in which it has long been held in strictly professional circles. cured a family of baby hedgehogs, in order to test the truth of White's remarks concerning their bristles, and found them absolutely accurate. Another, and far greater, naturalist condescended to take the hint given in one of the letters to Daines Barrington: "A good monography of worms would afford much entertainment and information at the same time, and would open a large and new field in natural history." It was White who first drew attention to the preponderance of hen-chaffinches in winter, a circumstance which has been confirmed in recent years by Professor Newton in the fourth edition of Yarrell's" Birds." It was White who, among a thousand other minutiæ, first noticed that a diet of hempseed darkened the plumage of cage-birds, a fact now generally known, but never observed before his time. Bearing in mind that he had extremely little save his own senses to trust to, we This, indeed, is one of the grand secrets cannot but regard with unqualified admira- of White's success; nothing is beneath tion White's almost invariable accuracy. his notice. He is as earnest in discussing His actual errors are quite ridiculously the key in which owls hoot or the manufew. He was not quite clear about the facture of the contemporary "rushlight," water-rat or vole, and suspects "there may as he is in following the migrations of the be two species," though he does not swallow tribe or illustrating the natural assert the fact. We now know that there affection of the lower animals. Again, he is only one, but Willughby, Ray, and Lin-makes, and we can see that he makes, no næus had all three made the same mistake attempt at fine writing. He is at no pains in former years. He was also wrong in to ingratiate himself with his reader by supposing that the cavities or glands be- means of his style, or at the expense of neath each eye in deer were for the pur- truth; he never exaggerates. And yet pose of assisting respiration. On the there is a charm about his letters which other hand, some of his observations are other writers have never caught. We feel considered to be unrivalled to this day. that his message comes to us direct from For instance, his account of the stone his heart; we know that we are reading curlew is the best extant; he satisfied almost the ipsissima verba of the notes himself that the domestic pigeon derives which he jotted down in the course of his its origin from the blue rock (Columba evening ramble under Selborne Hanger or livia), a proposition since proved conclu- along the Lythe. He gives us facts rather sively by Darwin; and he was certainly than fancies, and though in his capacity the first to observe one species of British of Oriel don, he likes to air occasionally bat (Scotophilus noctula), and to describe his acquaintance with Virgil (a brother is, could it have been based on the pa tiently gathered records of some thousands of country parsons. Day by day species which in the memory of man were abundant are becoming in this district obsolescent, in that obsolete. In the ab. sence of any well-authenticated record it will one day be doubted whether in this or the other particular village they ever occurred at all. Yet pen and paper and the knowledge of bird and beast which many of us possess or can easily acquire are all that is necessary to settle the question once and forever. As it is, the animal life of our rural districts is, for the most part, an unwritten page of history, depending for its interest on oral tradition, and seldom or never verified by per naturalist) and other classical poets, he steadily eschews all allusion to the symbolism or mysticism of the fowl of the air or the flower of the field. In like manner he never poses as a scientist of the first water, and when he does lay down the law it is in such gentle terms that he seems to be himself the pupil rather than the preceptor. In dealing with the faults of others he is singularly mild and courteous, affording us an agreeable contrast to some of the scientific manners of later days. Moreover, he is always open to conviction, and is constantly asking for details which, if forthcoming, will upset some pet theory of his own. This is the more praiseworthy as coming from one who lived in so circumscribed an area, and whose ideas might therefore not unreasonably be ex-sonal research. pected to be broad only in proportion to There is but one name of our own time the acreage. But herein lies also no which can fairly be connected with that of small part of his strength. By confining Gilbert White, one hedgerow philosopher, his observations to his own special district upon whose shoulders his mantle may be he did not by any means lose the pleasure said to have descended. Readers of of comparing the habits of the Selborne books on natural history cannot yet have fauna with those of other neighborhoods, forgotten how immediate and striking was while, on the other hand, he did not waste the success of the " Gamekeeper at time in attempting to cover too much Home." Its simplicity, its freshness, the ground, as some of his successors have odor of copse and woodland which it exdone. Of this danger he was well aware, haled, all combined to make us welcome and takes occasion to commend Scopoli what read like another instalment from also for having avoided it, though Car- Selborne. It was speedily followed by niola, it must be confessed, is a good deal other volumes, no less meritorious, by demore extensive than Selborne; but the grees, however, becoming less and less principle is, no doubt, thoroughly sound. simple, and requiring to be not only read Men," he says, "that undertake only but studied. The wild poetry of the one district are much more likely to ad- fields with all their denizens was poured vance natural knowledge than those that forth in a manner never before proved grasp at more than they can possibly be possible in prose. And then one morning acquainted with; every kingdom, every we learnt that Richard Jefferies - Gilbert province, should have its own monog White the Second, with sundry elaborarapher." And, we may add, every vil- tions Iwas dead. But still we had no lage. It is a standing reproach to the key to those mysterious outpourings, unnatural history of our age that White's til his " Eulogist," in some of the most example has been so rarely followed. painfully interesting pages to be found in How many a country vicar there is, with modern English, laid bare to us the whole time on his hands, and not without a cer- story. Then, and not till then, did we betain aptitude for observing the ways of come aware that those strangely beautiful his furred and feathered parishioners, who field-rhapsodies were, like the flutings of yet prefers what Gibbon called "the fat the dying swan, the outcome of a life slumbers of the church" (no longer so fat, doomed by the fates. Clotho and Lachesis it must be owned, as in Gibbon's era) to were already spinning its final threads, the light labor of doing for his parish what even as we read and wondered at the new White did for Selborne! A good natural- prophet. Infinite is the pathos of the ist of our own epoch would far rather revelation. So full of love for all nature's compile a necessarily imperfect and prob- handiwork, so rarely gifted with a genius ably erroneous ornithology of some vast to set it forth, as no pen had hitherto set and distant land than chronicle the minor it forth, before the eyes of his fellow-men, glories, in the shape of finches and war- and yet to be snatched away almost before blers, of his native country-side. But the the ink was dry! A strange contrast this, standard "Birds of Great Britain" would to the pleasant, evenly flowing course of be an infinitely more valuable book than it | the Selborne life. And yet, up to a cer the open fields that our propensity sees, tain point, the two men were not unlike. | conditions of life under which our congenThe elder was more precise, more me- ital leaning towards natural history refuses thodical, more inquisitive; the younger to assert itself. But it is, of course, in more impulsive, more imbued with the worship than concerned with the minor economy of the great goddess, Nature. But both were, nevertheless, her true sons. White's aim was to improve the knowledge of his generation, and to compare his notes with those of other observers; in his homely way he was eminently sociable, with abundance of practical wisdom, together with a sufficient income. Jefferies probably compared notes with no man; he was not popular, he could not laugh; he loved rather to range apart, and commune with nature in her most secluded haunts; finally, he was both poor and proud. Yet his books are as charming, though scientifically not so valuable, as White's. He was never reckoned an authority on natural history, for his often really shrewd suggestions are overlaid with so much that is not recognized in the schools. His nine years' career as an author was one long deliverance of his soul. In future years his peculiar, and, in their kind, unsurpassed merits, will doubtless come to be more widely appreciated than they are as yet. He should be read with the key supplied by the "Eulogy." Meanwhile, we may safely prophesy that White will never lose his popularity; he is simpler and more matter-of-fact, and it requires no effort of brain or straining of sympathy to enjoy a remunerative half hour of his company at any time. The same may be said of the "Gamekeeper at Home," but the beauty of Jefferies' later works would be utterly lost, and perhaps be voted intolerably slow, by the schoolboy who revels delightedly in the practical information afforded by "Selborne." or the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over the ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to pray, these are the things that make men happy." Gilbert White did nearly all of them, and he must have been one of the happiest and most contented of mankind. He would probably have described the lanes and woods of Selborne as a panacea, which no nostrums of any faculty could rival. And, had he been somewhat more of a poet, he would certainly have included in his worldrenowned volume, what old Robert Burton has quoted in the "Anatomy," the words, namely, of St. Bernard: "A sick man sits upon a green bank, and when the dog-star parcheth the plains, and dries up rivers, he lies in a shady bower, and feeds his eyes with variety of objects, herbs, trees, to comfort his misery, he receives many delightsome smells, and fills his ears with that sweet and various harmony of birds. Good God (saith he), what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!" ARTHUR GAYE. From Chambers' Journal. It is the pride of our race that we are A TALE OF MANY MONKEYS. not afraid of the open air. If we live in the country, whatever betides, we must ORIENTAL tradition assigns to monkeys each day get face to face with the great a very peculiar beginning. Satan, we are mother of us all. We are born with a told, tried to imitate the works of the love of watching the rooks build, the wild Creator, but failed signally to equal them. hyacinth blossom, the red leaf fall. Long Instead of the horse, he could produce may this noble inheritance remain to us! only the ass; instead of the fish, a serWe can take a genuine interest in the pent; and instead of man, the monkey. bird-life of even the London parks, degen- Yet in India, the paradise of monkeys, erate as it is compared with that of fifty they are held in high honor because of the years ago, or thereabouts, when, as Yar- aid which their king, Hanooman, "in the rell assures us, he counted as many as days of old," gave to the god Rama when, three-and-twenty magpies together one to rescue his wife, Sita, he invaded Ceymorning in Kensington Gardens. Dwell-lon; Hanooman helping to bridge the ers in Spitalfields or Bermondsey from time to time come forward with rich and Duty had taken me to Dharmsala, a carefully classified collections of moths hill-station considerably west of Simla. and beetles. In short, there are very few | On the return journey I turned off the strait. |