WHITE, GILBERT ( 72o-1793), English writer on natural history, was born on July 18, 1720, at Selborne, Hants. He was educated at Basingstoke under Thomas Warton, father of the poet, and at Oriel College, Oxford, where in 1744 he was elected to a fellowship. Ordained in 1747, he became curate at Swarraton the same year and at Selborne in 1751. In 1752 he was nominated junior proctor at Oxford and became dean of his college. In 1753 he accepted the curacy of Durley, and afterwards received the college living of Moreton Pinkney, though he did not reside there. In 1761 he became curate at Faringdon, near Selborne, and in 1784 he again became curate in his native parish. He died in his home, The Wakes, Selborne, on June 26, 1793.
Gilbert White's daily life was practically unbroken by any great changes or incidents ; for nearly half a century his pastoral duties, his watchful country walks, the assiduous care of his garden, and the scrupulous posting of his calendar of observations made up the essentials of a full and delightful life. His four brothers were all interested in science, and White corresponded with the chief botanists and antiquarians of his time. In 1771 he sketched out to Thomas Pennant the project of "a natural history of my native parish, an annus historico-naturalis, comprising a journal for a whole year, and illustrated with large notes and ob servations. Such a beginning might induce more able naturalists
to write the history of various districts and might in time occa sion the production of a work so much to be wished for—a full and complete natural history of these kingdoms." Yet the famous Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne did not appear until 1789. It was well received and is constantly reprinted.
White's is the first book which raised natural history into the region of literature, much as the Compleat Angler did for angling. Its charm lies in the sweet and kindly personality of the author, who on his rambles gathers no spoil, but watches the birds and field-mice without disturbing them from their nests, and quietly plants an acorn where he thinks an oak is wanted, or sows beech nuts in what is now a stately row. The encyclopaedic interest in nature, although in White's day culminating in the monumental synthesis of Buffon, was also disappearing before the analytic specialism inaugurated by Linnaeus ; yet the catholic interests of the simple naturalist of Selborne fully reappear a century later in the greater naturalist of Down, Charles Darwin.
The Life and Letters of Gilbert White of Selborne, by his great grand nephew, Rashleigh Holt-White, appeared in 1901.