The Journals of GILBERT WHITE - Horticulturalist 1751-1783. Two Volume Set

1986 & 1988. Hard cover with dust cover, 531 & 520 pages. Very good condition. Over 2kg.

Francesca Greenoak (Editor) / Century Publishing, London

Vol One: 1754-1773

Vol Two: 1774- 1782

Gilbert White (18 July 1720 - 26 June 1793) was a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist. White is best known for his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). This was a compilation of his letters to Thomas Pennant, the leading British zoologist of the day, and the Hon. Daines Barrington, an English barrister and another Fellow of the Royal Society. These letters contained White's discoveries about local birds, animals and plants. He believed in distinguishing birds by observation rather than by collecting specimens, and was thus one of the first people to separate the similar-looking Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Wood Warbler by means of their song. White is regarded by many as England's first ecologist and one of the founders of modern respect for nature. In addition to his correspondece which became the popular 'Natural history of Selborne' White kept a journal for almost forty years in which he recorded practically everything that interested him from the daily temperatures to the changing of the seasons. This set reprints practically everything in these journals in an annotated unabridges edition for the first time. The text is illustrated for the first time with sketches and pen and ink drawings, many done in and around Selborne by Clare Roberts.