Was Gilbert White the first to use an ‘X’ as a kiss?

SIR DAVID PRAIN discoursed recently to the Gilbert White Fellowship on “The Rev. Gilbert White and Moral History,” and his address has been issued as a pamphlet. His aim is to show that Gilbert White was as much interested in human manners and customs as in the life of plants and animals. These were the days of all-round interests, and Gilbert was as much a moral as a natural historian. The term “moral history,” which sounds strangely in our ears, used to be familiar as a name for the study of human “mores,” but without sounding the ethical note. After all, the sociologist's “Folk, work, place” is at once the antecedent and the continuation of the naturalist's “organism, function, and environment.” Sir David Prain gives many illustrations of Gilbert White's interest in man's customs. The letters show his curiosity about the different kinds of sheep on different parts of the Sussex downs, the superstitions regarding cleft-ashes and shrew-ashes, the possible causes of leprosy, the far-reaching effects of the sowing of grasses, which was probably introduced to Selborne when his grandfather was vicar. To the historian of the changes in man's habits and customs the “Natural History of Selborne “is good reading. The letters tell us of the “comparatively modern “use of linen changes next the skin, “the plenty of good wheaten bread,” “how vastly the consumption of vegetables has increased,” and how “the religious, being men of leisure, and keeping up a constant correspondence with Italy, were the first people among us that had gardens and fruit trees in any perfection.” Sir David Prain has evidently found his theme congenial, and his account of Gilbert White's “Moral History “is as entertaining as it is instructive. He throws in a good deal of botanical and historical lore of his own. The gleams of subtle Scotch humour are very enjoyable. Perhaps it should be noted that though Gilbert White was much interested in “moral history,” he does not himself use the term; we cannot hope that it will be revived.

Review: Gilbert White: A Biography of the Author of The Natural History of Selborne. By Richard Mabey Reviewed by Elery Hamilton-Smith Charles Sturt University, Australia Mabey, Richard. Gilbert White: A Biography of the Author of The Natural History of Selborne. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007. 239pp. ISBN 978-0-8139-2649-0. US$16.50. Permit me to commence with a little personal reminiscence. I grew up in a rural area, and at 8 years of age (a year prior to attending school as it entailed a three-mile walk), I was given a copy of White’s Natural History. It confirmed my nascent interest in and feeling for the natural environment, and cemented it firmly into a permanent home within my mind. White was one of the first to write about natural history with a “sense of intimacy, or wonder or respect – in short, of human engagement with nature.”Many of those who read and re-read this wondrous book knew that White was curate in a small English village and that both Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington had encouraged White to systematically record his observations and descriptive studies of the village. The outcome was the book that so many of us know and love – one of the most frequently published English language books of all time. It appears as a series of letters to each of White’s great mentors. Regrettably White wrote very little, even in his extensive journals and diaries, of his personal life or feelings. Mabey has made an exhaustive search of the available data, and has built a delightful re-construction of the author as a person. He commences by describing the landscape and lanes of Selborne – which might have been designed to help the human observer to feel a relationship with nature. Gilbert’s ancestors had long lived in the village and he had been born there, left for a considerable period, entered the university life at Oxford, but eventually returned to his home village and spent most of his life there. But the early years were full of wandering and seemingly seeking some purpose in life. On returning, and his appointment as curate of the village, he developed an enthusiasm for gardening, and, in turn, this led him to his painstaking observation of the natural world and a remarkable holism in understanding it. He wrote elegantly of the scenes and creatures of his daily life, but again his approach was a rambling and somewhat directionless one. At one stage he played with the idea of a text but failed to find satisfaction. It is not quite clear why he decided to abandon this, although his regular correction of the errors made by his friend Thomas Pennant may well have been important – he was indeed a font of knowledge, but also had an underlying humility which made him aware of the impossibility of total knowledge. He was delighted in his voyaging through the ocean of ideas, but clearly found the voyage more satisfying then the arrival. Then he realized that the story of his voyage was expressed in his letters to Pennant and Barrington, and that might be the basis of a real book. So, he devoted great attention to editing his letters. It has long been recognized that, in order to provide the context and introduction, he even wrote but never sent further “letters” to Pennant. Mabey gained access to both the original Electronic Green Journal , Issue 26, Spring 2008 ISSN: 1076-7975

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Ecocriticism and Eighteenth‐Century English Studies

Gilbert White – Founding Father

James Grainger’s The Sugar-Cane (1764) offers an aestheticised account of the cultivation of sugar and the management of a Caribbean plantation and its enslaved workforce. Scholars, while showing the poem’s debt to Virgil’s Georgics, have noted its role in defending slavery through a vision of a reformed and supposedly humane plantation. Few, however, have paid attention to the poem’s interest in natural history, explored both in the poetic text and in its copious footnotes. This chapter argues that The Sugar-Cane is a ‘naturalists’ georgic’; a type of poem which describes, celebrates, or offers instruction in the rural labour of undertaking natural history. The chapter closely reads Grainger’s engagement with the natural environment of St Kitts, revealing both his interest in botany and zoology and his abilities as a practitioner of natural history. It concludes by exploring the notion of the ‘naturalists’ georgic’ in a variety of later texts included poetry by Erasmus Darwin, William Cowper, and Gilbert White, and natural history by Gilbert White, W.H. Hudson, and David Attenborough.

“We must not, I think, deny migration in general: because migration certainly does subsist in certain places, as my brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions of these birds he has ocular demonstration”.–Gilbert White, 12 February 1771.Summary1. Migration was stuaied on the south coast of Spain between Gibraltar and Huelva during five successive springs. Systematic observations were made during a total of 11 weeks by four parties, and casual observations made by other observers have also been used.2. West of Cape Trafalgar, grounded passerine night migrants were seen in numbers only during east winds. Observations of birds crossing the moon indicated that this correlation was due to drift, and that in the absence of east winds many more birds pass over the Straits of Gibraltar than over the wider stretch of sea to the west, probably after diversion towards the Straits by the west coast of Morocco.3. The mean heading of nocturnal migrants seen crossing the moon at the Straits of Gibraltar was usually between north and N.N.E., but was N.W. on one night when clouds obscured the stars.4. Within the periods of east winds, observed migration was correlated with dry weather and rising night temperature in Morocco, but not merely with high temperature. It may also have been correlated with clear skies, but there is slight evidence that cloud cover also caused increased drift.5. Migration of raptors and storks was seen on most days. Largest numbers were seen at the east end of the Straits in west winds, and vice versa; this is probably due to drift.6. Other day‐migrants seen included Turtle Dove Streptopelia turtur, Bee‐eater Merops apiaster, Swift Apus apus, Alpine Swift A. melba, Swallow Hirundo rustica, Sand Martin Riparia riparia, and Short‐toed Lark Calandrella cinerea. Many were drifted west of the Straits, retaining their N.E. heading, but others–perhaps those breeding in western Iberia–were seen flying N.W. after crossing the Straits.7. Large numbers of Black Terns Chlidonias niger were seen flying east or N.E. on a few days of strong east wind.

Gilbert White's house at Selborne Get access W. R. Tate W. R. Tate 1Horsell, Woking Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s6-IV, Issue 100, 26 November 1881, Pages 426–427, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s6-IV.100.426h Published: 26 November 1881

Reviewed by: The Divine in the Commonplace: Reverent Natural History and the Novel in Britain by Amy M. King Emma Mason (bio) The Divine in the Commonplace: Reverent Natural History and the Novel in Britain, by Amy M. King; pp. xii + 297. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019, £75.00, $99.99. In a recent online forum exploring the connections between nineteenth-century religion and ecology, a participant asked to which Victorian theologians we might turn in our research and discussions. While modern theology offers a rich field of commentators on ecology and environment, from Norman Wirzba to Catherine Keller, their nineteenthcentury predecessors are largely unfamiliar to literary critics. As my own current work and that of Josh King and Karen Dieleman shows, the period abounds with sermons on creation and nature, from Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, and Dissenting theologians alike. But Amy M. King's outstanding new book, The Divine in the Commonplace: Reverent Natural History and the Novel in Britain, answers the question in a different way by turning to natural history as a source not only of realism and science but also of reverent theological reflection. For King, natural history's scientific observations and descriptions of the everyday and commonplace comprise a reverent empiricism through written acts of devotion that "illustrate or celebrate what is already believed through revelation (primarily scripture)" (90). Drawing on writers such as Gilbert White, Mary Mitford, James Drummond, Philip Gosse, and Charles Kingsley, she suggests that their writing exemplifies God in nature by using the same representational strategies employed by realist novelists like Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope. By putting into conversation nineteenth-century natural historians and novelists, King makes the pioneering and entirely convincing claim that English provincial realism is theological. Read through religion, the "unexceptional and quotidian world" of realism and its representation of the ordinary come alive when we recognize this narration's "reverence for the wonder of God's creation" (25). Habitual pleasure becomes religious meditation, as both the novel and natural history are structured by long, attentive passages venerating the minutiae of what Drummond called the "apparently trifling, a moss, or seaweed, an [End Page 299] insect, or a shell" (qtd. in King 27). Reminding readers of the false dichotomy between religion and science imposed by modern critics, King carefully defines empiricism as at once verifiable and material as well as reverent and faithful. In a series of captivating chapters, she reveals that to ignore reverence in the knowledge-making of nineteenth-century history and science is to miss the significance of theology's obsession with the common and unexceptional in long-form prose. While natural history is broadly defined by King, she focuses on seashore studies as a discrete subgenre that guides her choice of reverent natural histories and produces some of the book's most compelling analyses of tide pools and aquaria. Studying female algologists like Anna Atkins and Mary Wyatt and seaside essays by Gosse and G. H. Lewes, as well as Eliot and Gaskell's "embedded" seaside ecologies (223), King rethinks English realism through an extended poetic narrative style that is, contra Franco Moretti, not "decorative" but serious, protracted, and still (qtd. in King 69). Stillness is a key term, describing the formal weight of a narrative that lingers and dilates rather than pushing forward toward narrative closure. Gilbert White, for example, is read as a slow and mindful observer of the particulars of Selbourne village because he believed that God intended him to vigilantly watch over it. His enchanting passage on cobwebs, suspended in the air and netted across the ground, is matched by King's wonderful concept of "ever-dilating description," in which she marries the infinite, meditative discernments of her writers to their deft, sharp, and critical realist commentary (65). Local and common objects are subjects not of wonder (an "aesthetic of first sight or the exceptional") but of repeated, familiar, everyday contemplation heightened by the microscope and made divine by a recognition of their recurrence and prevalence (108). King's subjects are not collectors on the hunt for unique specimens, but naturalists searching for systems, laws, and divinity. Gosse is especially compelling in...

MR. A. E. HEATH asks (NATURE, March 2, p. 5) how gossamer which “seems to be a kind of spider web, comes to be spread over so large an area.” Mr. Heath need have gone no further than Selborne to find the correct explanation, given by Gilbert White 140 years ago:—“Nobody in these days doubts that they (the cobweb-like appearances) are the real production of small spiders which swarm in the fields in fine weather in autumn, and have a power of shooting out webs from their tails so as to render themselves buoyant.” Possibly the first part of the sentence was not true when Gilbert White wrote it, seeing that it is not always the case to-day. The thick clouds of gossamer noticed by Mr. N. T. Porter when out shooting in the early morning were noticed also by Gilbert White in September, 1741, when “intent on field diversions I rose before daybreak.” If a more recent account of gossamer is preferred it may be found in Fabre's “Life of a Snider.”

Gilbert White's preparation of Selborne (1789) was significantly influenced by his tutoring of his brother, John, at Gibraltar. John White lived at Gibraltar as chaplain to the garrison from 1756 to 1772: prompted by his brother, he began to study natural history during the last few years of his chaplaincy and sent to England (for study by his brother) several consignments of specimens across the entire field of natural history; he also wrote for advice about his studies to the naturalist Giovanni Scopoli and, on return to England, prepared for publication a “Fauna Calpensis”.

IN MY strange and various reading, when I keep coming across a quotation, commentary, or allusion to a particular book, poem, play, biography, or whatnot, ultimately I am led or forced to look it up. If the book is off the beaten track or if it seems particularly enchanting, I keep an eye open for it in the innumerable book catalogues that by hook or crook come my way. Often I get the book. Two books, in particular, I had gone questing for. One was John Livingston Lowe's<i>Road to Xanadu</i>. Not only have I finally found a first edition of this book, but I have sent many paperback copies to friends. Another book that kept coming up in my far ranging reading was<i>The Natural History of Selborne</i>by Gilbert White, or, given more properly and in extenso, "<i>The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne</i>in the county of

Journal Article Gilbert White: Portrait of Get access Edward A. Martin Edward A. Martin 1The Gilbert White Fellowship, 285, Holmesdale Road, South Norwood, S.E. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s12-V, Issue 97, October 1919, Page 264, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s12-V.97.264d Published: 01 October 1919

In a chapter titled Three around Farnham’ in The Country and the City (1973), Raymond Williams draws an exquisite map of three versions of rural society represented in the works of William Cobbett, Jane Austen, and Gilbert White, who lived near Farnham almost in the same era. The present essay focuses on the interrelation or figurative encounter of three writers, beyond time and genre, in a particular local space of the Hampshire village of Selborne: Gilbert White (a clergyman-naturalist of the eighteenth century), Mary Kelly (an amateur pageant writer of the interwar period) and Virginia Woolf.

PurposeThis paper explores the historical roots of accounting for biodiversity and extinction accounting by analysing the 18th-century Naturalist's Journals of Gilbert White and interpreting them as biodiversity accounts produced by an interested party. The authors aim to contribute to the accounting history literature by extending the form of accounting studied to include nature diaries as well as by exploring historical ecological accounts, as well as contributing to the burgeoning literature on accounting for biodiversity and extinction accounting.Design/methodology/approachThe authors’ method involves analysing the content of Gilbert White's Naturalist's Journals by producing an 18th-century biodiversity account of species of flora and fauna and then interpretively drawing out themes from the Journals. The authors then provide a Whitean extinction account by comparing current species' status with White's biodiversity account from 250 years ago.FindingsThis paper uses Gilbert White's Naturalist's Journals as a basis for comparing biodiversity and natural capital 250 years ago with current species' status according to extinction threat and conservation status. Further the paper shows how early nature diary recording represents early (and probably the only) forms of accounting for biodiversity and extinction. The authors also highlight themes within White's accounts including social emancipation, problematisation, aesthetic elements and an example of an early audit of biodiversity accounting.Research limitations/implicationsThere are limitations to analysing Gilbert White's Naturalist's Journals given that the only available source is an edited version. The authors therefore interpret their data as accounts which are indicative of biodiversity and species abundance rather than an exactly accurate account.Practical implicationsFrom the authors’ analysis and reflections, the authors suggest that contemporary biodiversity accounting needs to incorporate a combination of narrative, data accounting and pictorial/aesthetic representation if it is to provide a rich and accurate report of biodiversity and nature. The authors also suggest that extinction accounting should draw on historical data in order to demonstrate change in natural capital over time.Social implicationsSocial implications include the understanding gleaned from the authors’ analysis of the role of Gilbert White as a nature diarist in society and the contribution made over time by his Journals and other writings to the development of nature accounting and recording, as well as to one’s understanding and knowledge of species of flora and fauna.Originality/valueTo the authors’ knowledge this is the first attempt to analyse and interpret nature diaries as accounts of biodiversity and extinction.

At the end of the eighteenth-century Britain fell in love with nature. Two books marked this moment - Gilbert White's Natural of Selborne and Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds, the first 'field-guide' for ordinary people, illustrated by woodcuts of astonishing accuracy and beauty. But it was far more than that, for in the vivid vignettes scattered through the book Bewick drew the life of the country people of the North East, children and farmers, travelling musicians, old soldiers and beggars, housewives and fishermen - a world already vanishing under the threat of enclosures. In this superbly illustrated short life, Jenny Uglow tells the story of the farmer's son from Tyneside who never courted fame yet revolutionised wood-engraving and influenced book illustration for a century to come. It is a story of violent change and radical politics, of Newcastle and the Tyne, workshops and family life, mines and fells, the sea and the fierce west winds - a journey into a past whose energy and power still haunt us today, and the beginning of our lasting obsession with the natural world.