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References
There are several biographies: WalterJohnson, Gilbert White, Poet, Pioneer, and Stylist (London: John Murray, 1928); Walter Scott, White of Selborne (London: The Falcon Press, 1950); R. M. Lockley, Gilbert White (London: H. F. & G. Witherby, Ltd., 1954); Cecil S. Emden, Gilbert White in his Village (London: Oxford University Press, 1956). The first, almost a concordance, is rather sentimental, a mixture of genuflection and correction with intrusive, irrelevant guesses and a tendency to censure White for not doing what he had no capacity to do. The second, gossipy and antiquarian, is marred by clichés. The third is an excellent short biography. The fourth, a character sketch, is a brief explication of items in the Natural History and White's other works. In addition, for the total picture, one should consult Journals of Gilbert White, ed. Walter Johnson (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1931); Rashleigh Holt-White, Life and Letters of Gilbert White, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1901), Letters of John Mulso to Gilbert White ed. R. Holt-White (London, 1906); and E. A. Martin, A Bibliography of Gilbert White (London: Halton & Co., 1934). The editions of the Natural History are literally too numerous to mention. I have chiefly depended on those by Sir William Jardine (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1890, first published in 1829: Edinburgh: Constable & Co.); Edward Jesse (London: George Bell and Sons, 1898; first published in 1851); Grant Allen (London: John Lane, 1900); and R. M. Lockley (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1949). All have sketches of White and his work and useful notes, and the first three contain many items besides the Natural History as well as numerous illustrations. The value of Jardine's otherwise informing notes is unfortunately reduced by his failure to distinguish between them and White's. Jesse arranged White's letters chronologically so that the two sets are intermingled, which was not a happy decision since Pennant and Barrington differed substantially in knowledge and interest. Allen's edition, on the whole the most useful and attractive, includes a magnificent bibliography of The Natural History. For easy reference I have cited the number of the letter rather than the page; since there are two sets of letters I have indicated the recipient: P for Pennant, B for Barrington, followed by the number.
Neither Allen nor Jesse includes this informing preface.
Thomas Pennant, much more a collector than a field naturalist, was the author of British Zoology (1766, 4 vols. folio) and History of Quadrupeds (1771), both of which went into several editions; he “toured” and corresponded extensively. Among his many correspondents were Dr. John Lightfoot (1735–1788), author of Flora Scotica (1777), the fruit of a tour with Pennant in 1772; the Reverend George Low, Scottish naturalist; Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), the redoubtable president of the Royal Society for many years; Dr. Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811), pioneer naturalist of Russia, comparative anatomist, and authority on Russian sheep; Samuel Wegg, Hudson's Bay Company committeeman; and Andrew Graham, naturalist of the Hudson's Bay area. From all these men he requested both information and specimens. Daines Barrington (1727–1800), a little of everything—lawyer, antiquary, public servant, naturalist, but, according to Jeremy Bentham, a “quiet, good sort of man”—encouraged White to publish the Natural History. He wrote The Naturalist's Calendar (1767) and contributed papers to the Royal Society, as did Pennant and White. During the years of White's literary career the Transactions of the Royal Society contained dozens upon dozens of papers on natural history; it was of course only the most famous of the many societies publishing such papers.
Rural Rides 2 vols. (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1912), I, 144, 200–201.
This description of land and people is incorporated in nine letters ostensibly addressed to Pennant but actually written about 1784, when White was thinking seriously of publishing both sets of letters; he probably added some subsequent letters for the same purpose of rounding out the narrative. They have more in common with the 26 letters that make up The Antiquities of Selborne (included in Jardine's edition) than with the rest of the Natural History.
P. VII. The Black Act—“An Act for the more effectual punishing wicked and evil disposed Persons going armed in Disguise, and doing Injuries and Violence to the Persons and Properties of His Majesty's Subjects, and for the more speedy bringing the Offenders to Justice”—was passed in 1722 and repealed in 1823. Over the years it was extended to over 50 offenses and 200 sorts of offenders. More than any other capital statute it aroused law reformers, with whom White clearly agreed.
P. X. This modest bid for commiseration must be viewed a little skeptically. White is constantly citing contacts, personal and epistolary, with a diversity of men, among them Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. John Lightfoot, and Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702–1771), author of Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Natural History (1759), the original “blue-stocking,” defender of Linnaeus, and friend of Barrington; as well as “intelligent shepherds,” a “sportsman,” anatomists, and several unidentified “gentlemen.” He visited Sir Ashton Lever's “wonderful collection of art and nature” at Leicester House. He traveled quite extensively, and many men sent him specimens for his opinion.
See the perceptive introduction to Science Before Darwin. A Nineteenth-Century Anthology, ed. Howard Mumford Jones and I. Bernard Cohen with the assistance of Everett Mendelsohn (London: Andre Deutsch, 1963). Of the essays in this volume, the most relevant for present purposes is William Whewell, “Of the Transformation of Hypotheses in the History of Science,” pp. 305–323, which ought to be read again and again by the historians of ideas.
Carl Linnaeus was at the peak of productivity in the years that White was beginning his apprenticeship in natural history. In 1774, on a visit to London, White was much distressed to find a “strange spirit of decrying” the man whom he believed the “greatest naturalist in Europe”. Three years later he advised his brother John, also a devoted naturalist, to refer in his works to the Linnean nomenclature, “because though it is the fashion now to despise Linn. yet many languish privately to understand his method.” That contempt followed not from any scientific revolution but from Linnaeus's primitive piety, which prompted him to accept “creation” when “evolutionism” was already taking hold. White accepted the reality of the latter without dismissing the former. Allen is rather too positive in suggesting that White preferred the system of Ray to that of Linnaeus.
Stephen Hales (1677–1761) sought in plants a system analogous to the circulation of the blood and consequently experimented to that end. White cited both his Vegetable Staticks: or, an account of some statical experiments on the sap in vegetables (1727) and Haemastaticks, or an account of hydraulick and hydrostatical experiments made on the blood and blood-vessels of Animals. This last is contained in Statical Essays, 2 vols. (3rd, ed. 1738).
For contemporary issues and developments in biology and, by extension, White's relation to them, the following are informative: ErikNordenskiöld, The History of Biology (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1928), pt. II, pp. 121–298; Forerunners of Darwin: 1745–1859, ed. Bentley Glass, Owsei Temkin, William Strauss, Jr. (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1959), pp. 3–261; Milton Millhauser, Just Before Darwin: Robert Chambers and Vestiges (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1959), chap. 2; Philip C. Ritterbush, Overtures to Biology: The Speculations of Eighteenth-Century Naturalists (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964); Loren Eiseley, Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men who Discovered It (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1959); Norton Garfinkle, “Science and Religion in England, 1790–1800: The Critical Response to the Work of Erasmus Darwin,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 16 (1955), 376–388; see also the references in footnote 1, especially Grant Allen's edition of the Natural History.
Allen, pp. xxx–xxxvii.
But see also White's letter to his brother John in 1770: “I am glad to find you begin to relish Linn: there is nothing to be done in the wide boundless field of natural history without a system.” KnutHagberg, Carl Linnaeus, trans. Alan Blair (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952), p. 257.
Such sentiments pop up throughout the Natural History: “this extraordinary provision of nature as a new instance of the wisdom of God in creation” “I could not help being touched ... with delight to observe with how much ardour and punctuality these poor little birds [swallows and martins] obeyed the strong impulse towards migration ... imprinted on their minds by the Creator” “It is curious to observe with what different degrees of architectonic skill Providence has endowed birds of the same genus” “We remember a little girl who, as she was going to bed, used to remark ... in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the rooks were saying their prayers; and yet this child was much too young to be aware that the scriptures have said of the Deity—that ‘he feedeth the ravens who call upon him’” (P.XX, XXIII; B.XX, LIX). On the other hand, see also the concluding sentence of B.XXI: “So soon does nature advance small birds to their ... state of perfection; while the progressive growth of men and large quadrupeds is slow and tedious!” On may properly query if the use of Deity is at all significant. White's greatest idols—Ray, Derham, Hales, Linnaeus—had no doubts upon the wisdom of God in Creation. William Derham (1657–1735), like White a country vicar and an observer of nature, delivered sixteen sermons as the Boyle lectures in 1711 and 1712 which were published under the title Physico-Theology: or, a Demonstration of the being and attributes of God, from his Works of creation (1713); Hales's anniversary sermon before the Royal College of Physicians in 1751 bore the title, The Widsom and Goodness of God in the Formation of Man. For a vivid and scholarly survey of the transition from “Static Creationism” to evolution see John C.Greene, The Death of Adam, Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1959).
In this apostrophe (P.XXIV), after reciting what the naturalist may see and hear, White again paid homage to the great Designer: “Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The God of Nature is your secret guide!”
Jardine, Natural History, pp. 374–375. Jesse, Natural History, pp. xii–xv, includes a charming letter written in 1784 from Timothy to Hester Mulso, later Mrs. Chapone, Dr. Johnson's dear friend. “My present master is what men call a naturalist, and much visited by people of that turn ... and twice a year I am carried to the grocer's to be weighed, that it may be seen how much I am wasted during the months of my abstinence, and how much I gain by feeding during the summer. ... My great misfortune, and what I have never divulged to anyone before, is the want of society with my own kind. ... It was in the month of May last that I resolved to elope from my place of confinement; for my fancy had represented to me that probably many agreeable tortoises, of both sexes, might inhabit the heights of Baker's Hill, or the extensive plains of the neighbouring meadow, both of which I could discern from the terrace. One sunny moring I watched my opportunity, found the wicket open, eluded the vigilance of the gardener, and escaped into the sainfoin, which began to be in bloom, and thence into the beans. I was missing eight days, wandering in this wilderness of sweets, and exploring the meadow at times. But my pains were all to no purpose, I could find no society such as I sought for. I began to grow hungry, and to wish myself at home. I therefore came forth in sight, and surrendered myself up to Thomas, who had been inconsolable in my absence.” Jesse prints the section on Timothy in the Antiquities after Letter XCII to Barrington, April 21, 1780. There are also many references to Timothy in White's manuscript (see Jesse p. 262n for examples) and in other letters to Barrington, nos. VII and L. In this connection see Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Portrait of a Tortoise (London: Chatto & Windus, 1946), a charming memoir of Timothy, who, mirabile dictu, turned out to be a “girl.”
P.XL. White specified: Selborne 120 species, Sweden 221, Great Britain 252. According to Lockley, Natural History, p. 104n, “these figures are approximately doubled today, if we include the very rare visitors and valid subspecies.”
R. M.Lockley, Gilbert White (London: H. F. & G. Witherby, Ltd., 1954), p. 64.
B.XXX. White earlier (B.IV) had raised the question whether the cuckoo drops several eggs in different nests during the season. Lockley, (Natural History, p. 124n) points out that the cuckoo usually lays about a dozen, carefully observing newly laid eggs and gnerally choosing the nests of smaller birds; cuckoo eggs hatch in twelve days, those of foster parents in thirteen to fifteen, thus giving the young cuckoo a great advantage in size.
Quoted from White's Journal in Emden, Gilbert White, p. 56.
B.XXIX. White here refers to Hales's Vegetable Staticks.
B.XXXV. This monograph, as we know, was supplied by Darwin, though without a reference to White of whom he was a devoted reader and from whom Eisley (Darwin's Century, p. 14) believes he gained his initial stimulus for earthworm and other studies. For instance he elaborated White's hypothesis (P.XLIV) that housedoves were “derived from the small blue rock-pigeon.” See also Darwin's The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1906), pp. 382, 435, 564, 622–624; and The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1875) II, 293. In 1846 Darwin expressed regred that foreign periodicals showed no interest in such “anecdotal natural history” as White's (Francis Darwin and A. C. Seward, ed., More Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols. (London, John Murray, 1903), I, 55). How closely White observed earthworms is clear from his Journal. (See Emden, Gilbert White, pp. 94–95).
B.VI, VII. Giovanni-Antonio Scopoli (1723–1788), Italian physician, pursued all branches of natural history. His chief works were Methodus Plantarum (1754), Entomologia Carniolica (1763), Annus Historico-Medicus, 5 vols. (1769–72), and Introductio ad Historiam Naturalem (1777).
B.XVI, XVIII, XX, XXI.
B.XXXVII. What White says of diet differs radically from Sir Frederic Eden's description in The State of the Poor (1797). Eden found that the diet of the common people had deteriorated a great deal in the latter half of the century from the first half, when it conformed to White's summary. The latter should by no means be dismissed. Theories of disease were in constant flux during the century, and long before the century ended the relation between diet and health was appreciated by many outside the medical ranks. For a valuable introduction to the whole subject see J. C.Drummond and AnneWilbraham, The Englishman's Food. A History of Five Centuries of English Diet (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939), pp. 205–327.
P.XLII. This letter is dated correctly, March 9, 1775, in Lockley Natural History and in Jesse; but incorrectly, (March 9, 1774,) in Allen and Jardine. The two latter place it as if it had been written in 1775.
Robert Plot (1640–1696), antiquary, professor of chemistry, secretary of the Royal Society, and natural historian, fulfilled White's desire for complete county histories, as witness his Natural History of Oxford-Shire, being an Essay toward the Natural History of England (1677) and Natural History of Stafford-Shire (1686).
See especially P.XXIX; B.XXXII, XXV-XXVII, VII; P.IX; B.LX; similar items run through many letters.
In time White did react to the overthrow of the French monarchy and the effect on England. Johnson, Gilbert White, p. 19.
Marsham, a Norfolk clergyman, would repay investigation. In 1736 he began, at the suggestion of Hales, to record “firsts”—snowdrops, leaves, nestings, and such—year by year, and the family continued the practice generation by generation, with one short gap, until 1950. C. B. Williams, “The Changing Season,,” The Listener (June 22, 1967), pp. 819–820. See also Lockley, Natural History, p. 198n, and Johnson, Gilbert White, p. 36n. No doubt one could find many such recorders in the tradition of the parsonnaturalist.
It is scarcely to be wondered that the stalwart Scottish economist, naturalist, and critic of “mere classification,” James Anderson, invited White to contribute to his weekly, The Bee. For the latter see my article, “The Bee (1790–1794): a Tour of Crotchet Castle,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, 66 (1967), 70–86. Moreover, at the risk of scccumbing to post hoc ergo propter hoc, it is worth suggesting that in 1790 the great Scottish agriculturalist, Sir John Sinclair (1754–1835), in designing his Statistical Account of Scotland (20 vols., 1791–1799) applied White's recommendation of county histories by memorializing all the parish ministers of Scotland for information on natural history, population, and economy. Later on, he sponsored a series of agricultural county histories that in some instances went far beyond agriculture.
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Mullett, C.F. Multum in Parvo: Gilbert White of Selborne. J Hist Biol 2, 363–389 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00125024
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00125024