White, Gilbert

Gilbert (1720-1793), an eminent English naturalist. He was a native of Selborne, Hampshire County. He was educated at Oxford for the English church. He had many offers of appointment, but seems to have preferred to retain humble positions at or near the village of his birth. He was a keen observer of trees, flowers, birds, and four-footed animals. He is known chiefly by his Natural History of Selborne. It is the most widely read record of a naturalist's rambles and observations that has appeared in the English language. White is in a way suggestive of Burroughs and Warner, rather than of Long and Thompson-Seton. See Burroughs