A statute was passed A.D. 1307 and 35 Edward I., the title of which is “Ne rector arbores in cemeterio prosternat.”  Now if it is recollected that we seldom see any other very large or ancient tree in a churchyard but yews, this statute must have principally related to this species of tree; and consequently their being planted in churchyards is of much more ancient date than the year 1307.  As to the use of these trees, possibly the more respectable parishioners were buried under their shade before the improper custom was introduced of burying within the body of the church where the living are to assemble.  Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, was buried under an oak—­the most honourable place of interment —­probably next to the cave of Machpelah, which seems to have been appropriated to the remains of the patriarchal family alone.  The further use of yew trees might be as a screen to churches, by their thick foliage, from the violence of winds; perhaps also for the purpose of archery, the best long bows being made of that material, and we do not hear that they are planted in the churchyards of other parts of Europe, where long bows were not so much in use.  They might also be placed as a shelter to the congregation assembling before the church doors were opened, and as an emblem of mortality by their funeral appearance.  In the south of England every churchyard almost has its tree and some two; but in the north we understand few are to be found.”

Even in that passage, full as it is of all the quietness of the English countryside, something of the secret of Gilbert White, his ever living incommunicable charm may be found:  his extraordinary and gentle gift of becoming, as it were, one with the things of which he writes, his wonderfully sympathetic approach to us, his so simple and so consummate manner.  The man might stand in his writings for the countryside of England, incarnate and articulate.  He not only leads you ever out of doors, but he is just that, the very spirit of the open air, the out-of-doors of a country where alone in Europe one can be in the lanes, in the meadows, on the hills under the low soft sky with delight every day of the year.  He teaches, as Nature herself teaches; we seem to move in his books as though they were the fields and the woods, and there the flowers blow and the birds sing.  It is not so much that his observation is extraordinarily wide and accurate, but that we see with his eyes, hear with his ears, and the phenomena, beautiful or wonderful, which he describes, we experience too, and because of him with something of his love, his interest and carefulness.  What other book ever written upon Natural History can we read, who are not Naturalists, over and over and over again, and for its own sake, not for the myriad facts he gathered through a long lifetime, the acute observation and record of which have won him the homage of his fellow scientists, but for the pure human and literary pleasure we find there, a pleasure the like of which is to be found nowhere else in such books in the same satisfying quantity, and at all, only because of him.