Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/316

226 also fond of catching flies against the warm sides or upon the sloping roofs of large buildings. When first seen it gives the impression of being one of the summer birds which has failed to migrate with the rest; a second glance shows that it is a redstart, greyer and darker in plumage than the "firetail," for whose arrival we watch in spring.

Who is there that takes a pleasure in fresh-turned earth and leafing woods, and in all furred and feathered things which disport themselves therein, but will be ready to honour the pious memory of old Gilbert White, arch-priest of the cult of the field-naturalist, and founder of his craft? No doubt, as there were mighty men before Agamemnon, so there must have been yet earlier votaries of nature who strolled by quiet ways, with quick eye and listening ear, but they passed away, mute, inglorious, because they did not, like the sage of Selborne, commit their observations to writing. And probably he, as he penned that long series of letters to his faithful correspondents, Mr. Pennant and the Honourable Daines Barrington, had little idea of the possibility of their ever appearing in print. Hence, in part, their easy, simple flow, without pose or affectation, no small advantage attaching to the epistolary style. And what a far away eighteenth