ABSTRACT
White's respect for small and 'insignificant' creatures-the hirundines and harvest mice, the field crickets and young frogs he studied - was both genuine and partisan. According to those who knew him, he was a small, neat man. His allegiance to the parish he immortalized, the 'abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods and therefore full of birds',1 was at one level an emotional allegiance. His description of his house and garden as a 'sheltered, unobserved retreat', in one of his rhetorical poems, is not to be taken quite literally; he made regular trips and journeys and regularly put up friends and relatives, he was sociable by nature and enjoyed musical parties; but his satisfaction at getting back to his home territory after any considerable absence is plain. He would travel if there was good reason for it even in the depths of winter, but he seems to have felt entirely secure only amidst 'Selbornian scenes'.
