Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/585

W H I W H I 549 original building, but owing to a variety of alterations and reconstructions at different periods presents a very incongruous appearance. The principal public buildings are the town-hall, the museum, the public baths, St Hilda s Hall, the temperance hall, and the sea-side home. Pre vious to 1632 the piers of the harbour were constructed of wood, but in that year a west pier of stone was con structed by Sir Hugh Cholmley. Under an Act of Parlia ment obtained in 1702 the west pier was reconstructed and the east pier greatly improved. Lately further im provements have been in progress, including the dredging of the river and the extension of the quay to permit Plan of Wkitby. the landing of fish close to the railway station. In 1886 the number of vessels that entered the port was 384 of 48,439 tons, the number that cleared 371 of 48,504 tons. The chief exports are jet ornaments and iron, but the shipping trade is on the decline ; in fact the town is being gradually transformed into a fashionable watering- place. The manufacture of alum, by which in the reign of Elizabeth the foundations of its prosperity were laid, is now discontinued. The introduction of iron ship-building has also affected an industry (the building of wooden ships) for which Whitby was at one time famous : it was here that the ships for Captain Cook s voyages were built. In 1886 the number of vessels built at the port was 3 of 1356 tons. Whale-fishing, established in 1753, began to decline in 1823, and was abandoned in 1837. The only manufacture that maintains its importance is that of jet ornaments, peculiar to the town, and made from time immemorial from a variety of petrified wood found towards the bottom of the Upper Lias. The fishing industry, owing to improved railway communications, has been progressive within late years. In 1886 it employed 231 boats of 1830 tons. Whitby is an important herring fishing station. The popu lation of the urban sanitary district (area 2008 acres) was 12,400 in 1871 and 14,086 in 1881. Whitby was called by the Saxons Strcon-sJialh, but in Domesday the name occurs as Whitteby or the " white town. " It owes its origin to the foundation of a monastery by Oswy, king of Northum- bria, in 658, in fulfilment of a vow for a victory gained over King 1 unda. The monastery embraced an establishment both for nuns and for monks of the Benedictine order, and under Hilda, a grand- niece of Edwin, a former king of Northumbria, acquired high celebrity. In 664 it was the meeting-place of a synod held under the presidency of Oswy to determine the time of keeping Easter and the shape of the religions tonsure. In 867 the town and abbey were destroyed by the Danes, after which they lay waste for upwards of 200 years. At the Conquest they belonged to Gospatric, earl of Northumberland, whose lands were confiscated by William ami given to Hugh, earl of Chester, who sold them to William dc Percy. In 1074 the restoration of the abbey was begun by Reinfrid, who had been a soldier in the Conqueror s army. In 1539 the abbey and lands were surrendered to the crown, and in 1555 were pur chased by Sir Richard Cholmley. Whitby obtained the grant of a market from Henry II., and of a fair from Henry VI. It was created a parliamentary borough in 1832, but in 1885 it was in cluded in the Whitby division of the North Riding. WHITE, GILBERT (1720-1793), the natural historian of Selborne, was born on 18th July 1720 in the little Hamp shire village which his writings have rendered so familiar to all lovers of either books or nature. He was educated at Basingstoke under Warton, father of the poet, and sub sequently at Oriel College, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship (1744). Entering upon a country curacy in 1753, he returned to Selborne in 1755, where he seems soon to have discontinued his ministrations. He obtained a sinecure living from his college in 1758; but after his father s death in the same year he became curate of the neigh bouring parish of Faringdon, and repeatedly declined valuable livings elsewhere, until 1784, when he returned to the curacy of Selborne, and there ministered until his death on 26th June 1793. He was never married. His daily life was practically unbroken by any great changes or incidents ; for nearly half a cen tury 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, but hardly of a biography. At most we can only fill up the portrait by reference to the tinge of simple old- fashioned scholarship, which 011 its historic side made him an eager searcher for antiquities and among old records, and on its poetic occasionally stirred him to an excursion as far as that gentlest slope of Parnassus inhabited by the descriptive muse. Hence we are thrown back upon that correspondence with brother naturalists which has raised his life and its influence so far beyond the common place. His strong naturalist tendencies are not, however, properly to be realized without a glance at the history of his younger brothers. The eldest, Thomas, retired from trade to devote himself to natural and physical science, and contributed many papers to the Royal Society, of which he was a fellow. The next, Benjamin, became the publisher of most of the leading works of natural history which appeared during his lifetime, including that of his brother. The third, John, became vicar of Gibraltar, where he accumulated much material for a work on the natural history of the rock and its neigh bourhood, and carried on a scientific correspondence, not only with his eldest brother, but with Linnreus. The youngest, Henry, who died soon after entering the church, is mentioned as having engaged in meteorological observations. The sister s son, Samuel Barker, also became in time one of White s most valued correspondents. With other naturalists, too, he had intimate relations : with Pennant and Daines Barrington he was in constant correspondence, often too with the botanist Lightfoot, and sometimes with Sir Joseph Banks and others, while Chandler and other antiquaries kept alive his historic zeal. At first he was -content to furnish in formation from which the works of Pennant and Barrington largely profited ; but gradually the ambition of separate authorship de veloped from a suggestion thrown out by the latter of these writers in 1770. The next year White sketched to 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 largo notes and observations. Such a beginning might induce more able naturalists to write the history of various districts and might in time occasion 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 of Selborne did not appear until 1789. It was well received from the beginning. To be a typical parish natural history so far as completeness or order is concerned, it has of course no pretensions ; batches of letters, an essay on antiquities, a naturalist s calendar, and mis cellaneous jottings of all kinds are but the un systematized material of the work proper, which was never written. Yet it is largely to this very piecemeal character that its popularity has been due. The style has the simple, yet fresh and graphic, directness of all good letter writing, and there is no lack of passages of keen observation,

and even shrewd interpretation. White not only notes the homos