Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/18

xii kindly in speech, getting on well with his neighbours, helping with money and with advice where help was needed, and taking as great an interest in the human affairs of the parish as he did in the bird, animal, and insect life of it. It is not known at what time he turned his attention to the study of Natural History. He was acquainted with many persons of note, and it is by the medium of letters to two of those, Pennant and Daines Barrington, that his work on Natural History was written. The tone of the letters themselves, and the lack of system or arrangement in them, would point to the conclusion that at first White did not intend them for publication, and that when the idea occurred to him, he fortunately did not fuse them into one whole, according to method, but presented them to the world just as they were written. And this book was his only book. It is clear that he was not smitten with the vanity of authorship. His book was first published, in the fashionable quarto size, in 1789, he then being sixty-nine years of age. The book was a success, and brought him into favourable notice. He is said to have been very nervous at first as to its reception by Reviewers; and in the Gentleman's Magazine is a friendly review, written by his brother Thomas, which is rather amusing. It says: "Contemplative persons see with regret the country more and more deserted every day, as they know that every well-regulated family of property, which quits a village to reside in a town, injures the place that is forsaken in many material circumstances. It is with pleasure, therefore, we observe, that so rational an employment of leisure time as the study of nature, promises to become popular; since whatever adds to the number of rural amusements, and consequently counteracts the allurements of the metropolis, is, on this consideration, of national importance.

"Most of the local histories which have fallen into our hands have been taken up with descriptions of the vestiges of ancient art and industry, while natural observations have been too much